This week L’Oréal of France, the world’s biggest cosmetics firm, said that it will stop selling its Garnier line of beauty products in China. This came on the heels of an announcement by Revlon, an American rival, that it would leave the country altogether.
Price wars between online cosmetics retailers are causing heavy discounting of brands that are supposed to be reassuringly expensive. Consumers are becoming more sophisticated, and are increasingly unwilling to pay a premium for all but the very best brands.
At the same time costs are high and soaring. Wages for the legions of “beauty assistants” and other saleswomen needed to peddle all these lotions and potions are rising at double-digit rates annually. Marketing and logistics, in such a huge and diverse country, are complex. To cap it all, Chinese cosmetics firms are quickly catching up with the foreign ones.
Peddling pots of pricey gunk just isn’t as easy as it used to be.
