Beauty contact lenses are priced at 9.9 yuan, and agents are afraid to sell them
Reporter investigates beauty contact market chaos
□ Our reporter Zhao Li
□ Chen Lijia, an intern of this newspaper
"Do you have any reliable contact lenses for your sister to recommend?"
"I have a Korean-made silicone hydrogel for annual disposal, and it is sold out of print in seconds."
On some social platforms, "Pure Deer" and "Charming Electric Contact"... Beauty contact lenses with various gimmicks have attracted countless beauty lovers.
In recent years, with the rise of the face value economy, beauty contact lenses have become almost as common as lipsticks.
Especially after the outbreak of the epidemic, the consumption of beauty products has been greatly reduced. In this context, the eye makeup category has become a fulcrum to support the economy of beauty, and the demand for beauty lenses has arisen from time to time.
Relevant data shows that in the past five years, the market size of US contact lenses has grown rapidly, with a compound annual growth rate of 41%, and terminal sales in 2020 will exceed 20 billion yuan.
However, a recent investigation by a reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" found that while the US contact lens market is prosperous and developed, problems such as unclear business qualifications of US contact lens merchants and poor quality products that endanger eye health have gradually emerged.
The threshold for beauty contact agents is low
No qualifications required
"Will wearing color contact lenses for a long time cause substantial damage to the eyes?" This is the most common question that almost every color contact lens lover encounters.
On some social platforms, the discussion about the harm of beauty contact lenses has always been hot, and the various cases are mixed with all kinds of shocking pictures, which are really or falsely impacting the psychological endurance of consumers.
Yuanyuan has been a beauty contact agent for 7 years. In her opinion, for people with nearsightedness, "color contact lenses can not only replace glasses, but also enlarge the eyes and make them look better."
It is understood that color contact lenses, also known as contact lenses, are directly attached to the tear layer of the cornea to correct vision.
Due to the direct contact with the human eye, the relevant departments will supervise the United States contact lens as a third-class medical device. The seller must hold a business license and a medical device business license to operate legally. If it is sold on an e-commerce platform, it will also be Internet drug information service qualification certificate is required.
Yuanyuan observed and found that because there are not many types of beauty contact lenses on the e-commerce platform and the update is slow, most consumers prefer to buy and sell privately, for example, through social platforms to find a purchasing agent or a beauty contact agent to buy, which leads to a large number of beauty contact agents. appear.
According to her introduction, her team has manufacturers, franchisees and agents, and the status of franchisees is higher than that of agents.
As an agent, her previous home is a large franchisee with considerable "experience". Such franchisees pay higher franchise fees and can get more supply at lower prices.
The team's sales model is mainly based on "customer ordering - one-click link filling - warehouse unified delivery".
At the same time, everyone who joins the team can also develop an agent and make a profit by customizing the agent fee.
The simple and fast working mode has attracted many people to enter the industry part-time.
However, the influx of large numbers of people has also brought about problems such as inconsistent product standards and doubts about the qualifications of merchants.
The reporter compared a number of beauty contact malls and agents and found that the price difference of the same series of beauty contact products under the same brand varies by dozens of yuan.
Taking a certain series of products from the US contact brand Medusee as an example, in the hands of different agents, the prices are 158 yuan/2 pairs and 258 yuan/2 pairs respectively.
"This is a very common phenomenon. The sales price for customers will be much higher than the price of the goods. The more expensive the beauty contact lenses are, the greater the price difference, and each agent can set the price at will according to their own purchase price, as long as they can pay back their original price. ." Yuanyuan explained to reporters.
For a pair of US contact lenses that sells for 168 yuan on the market, what will the agent's actual price be?
"78 yuan a pair. This is just the agency price. The price and actual cost of some big franchisees are much lower than this price." Yuanyuan said.
When the standards cannot be unified, how can consumers ensure that the qualifications of the merchants they buy are credible and reasonable?
In order to have a deeper understanding of the beauty contact agent industry, the reporter joined a beauty contact agent team known as "complete with three certificates".
In response to the issue of business qualifications, the reporter raised concerns and doubts to the franchisees.
Therefore, the franchisee provided the reporter with a photo copy of the medical device business license and business license, and told the reporter that if a customer asked about qualifications, the same photo could be used.
At the same time, there are some merchants who stopped responding when the reporter asked them to provide a medical device business license.
In this regard, Yuanyuan told reporters that many consumers want this certificate not because they must verify it, but because of a test - to check whether the store is reliable. As for the authenticity of the source of this paper certificate, they Some don't care.
Xiaofan has also been a beauty contact agent for many years. According to her introduction, many agents and consumers around her have not established the cognition of "color contact lenses = medical equipment", and they almost view and buy color contact products from the perspective of cosmetics. .
During her agency, the team not only did not provide any medical device business license certificate, but also did not popularize relevant knowledge to her, and more focused on the color palette of beauty contact lenses and the quality of promotion.
Various ways of promotion
Attract traffic and earn money
In what ways will the promotion that US contact agents attach so much importance to?
In the process of the reporter joining the above-mentioned US contact lens team, whenever a new agent joins, the team will conduct some simple "training".
After the reporter paid the agency fee of 88 yuan, the online company sent several documents to the reporter, which listed in detail how to establish a reliable "business image" and provide suitable marketing plans.
In the training document, the team asked the reporter to change the simple and catchy name and nickname, and stipulated that about 5 pieces of walk-through pictures and buyer show feedback should be sent every day, and it was recommended to update it at a fixed time period every day, such as 7:00 to 9:00 , 12:00 to 14:00 and 20:00 to 22:00, which are in line with everyone's daily work and rest time.
In addition, in the promotion and marketing plan, the team recommends that each agent should like and interact with people on social platforms to increase familiarity.
The same model for baby, the same model for Yu Shuxin, and the same model for blackpink... The reporter found that a large number of beauty contact brands are on sale with the name of "the same style as the star". They are all very high. An e-commerce platform, Shangyu Shuxin, sells more than 50,000 pieces of the same color contact lenses per month.
The new Advertising Law, which came into effect on September 1, 2015, clearly stipulates that "the four types of advertisements of medical treatment, medicine, medical equipment and health food shall not use advertising spokespersons for recommendation or certification".
Many experts interviewed by reporters believe that the use of "celebrity same style" propaganda to stimulate sales of these beauty contact products is a "edge ball" for celebrity promotion and endorsement.
The reporter noticed that the team also gave 20 Weibo accounts with strong purchasing power at the end of the document, and made detailed portraits of target customers: groupies, little girls, lack of social experience, and high spending power.
Agents can attract the attention of group followers, interact with them frequently and then follow each other.
Secondly, the team also recommends agents to dress up their various social accounts, including but not limited to setting up beautiful avatars, designing account layouts, recharging platform members, and spending a few yuan to buy thousands of fans on e-commerce platforms to "decorate the facade", etc. Attract attention.
In addition, these teams will also hold various activities from time to time to attract traffic, such as holding benefits for buying beauty contact lenses, and cooperating with nail salons and bakeries to implement activities such as scanning codes to participate in free orders.
It even includes the "pet drainage method" - such as posting a post about having a pet that you need to adopt, and then writing in the copy "sincerely seeking adoption from a kind-hearted person", leaving your contact information at the end of the article, and saying "there will definitely be A lot of people inquire."
Of course, if you really mistakenly think that there are pets that need to be adopted, it would be wrong, because the promotion plan reads: "If a beautiful woman adds you and asks you about giving your pet, you just need to say that your pet has been given to someone else. It's so easy to attract female fans with this trick."
The reporter found that the most effective way to promote is to find Internet celebrities and pupil models, shoot and plant grass products, and some good-looking agents will also part-time pupil models themselves.
According to Yuanyuan, the price ranged from a few hundred yuan to a thousand yuan when she asked Internet celebrities to help her advertise, which was mainly determined by the size of the blogger's fans.
"Some agents have several contact methods to contact different customers, and they even change the customer's nickname to the information about the goods they have bought." Yuanyuan recalled, "I once read my WeChat account, she All accounts add up to at least a few thousand customers."
Medical values are ambiguous
It's hard to have both good quality and low price
In the case of unclear qualifications and excessive publicity, the quality of US contact lenses has become a problem that consumers have to carefully identify.
In recent years, it is not uncommon to see news such as vision loss and eye stones due to frequent wearing of US lenses. Behind the booming market and fancy marketing of US lenses, many consumers who have been attracted but have not yet matured their ability to discriminate often become victims of inferior US lenses. By.
In April 2021, there were media reports that a junior high school boy in Beijing was almost blinded by wearing beauty contact lenses.
One of the boy's eyes was often red and tearful. The parents took the child to the ophthalmology department of the hospital for treatment and found that the boy's left cornea had an ulcer with a depth of 1/2 of the cornea. Ulcers may perforate.
In January of the same year, a woman who bought US contact lenses from a WeChat business had discomfort in her eyes. After going to the hospital for an examination, she was told that it was because of the corneal ulcer caused by the US contact lenses.
After using these lenses for 2 months, the tear film on her eye surface was damaged to a certain extent, and her eyes were easily fatigued. The doctor did not recommend her to wear any kind of contact lenses.
According to some senior fans of color lenses, to buy a qualified color lens product, the base arc, oxygen permeability, material and water content are all indicators that need to be understood, especially the oxygen permeability.
According to the public information of the International Association of Contact Lens Educators, the oxygen transmission rate, or Dk/t, is an index that allows the eyeball to breathe freely, which is an important criterion that affects the quality of color lenses.
However, for such an important indicator, many publicity about US contact lenses in the market tend to ignore the important ones, and only talk about the color, water content and diameter of the US lenses, not the oxygen permeability of the US lenses.
The reporter contacted the agent of a certain brand of beauty contact lenses to inquire about the oxygen permeability.
Dr. Zhang, an ophthalmologist from a tertiary hospital in Beijing, told reporters that US contact lenses belong to the third category of medical devices, which are "medical devices that are potentially dangerous to the human body and whose safety and effectiveness must be strictly controlled", and other products of the same level , all of which are important medical supplies such as disposable intravenous infusion needles, bone plates, and vascular stents.
In addition, the reporter noticed that due to the large market demand and the high barriers for overseas products to enter the Chinese market, US contact agents have become the way for some overseas brands without imported batch numbers, especially Japanese and Korean brands, to enter the Chinese market.
However, are these beauty contact lenses advertised by the beauty contact agent as "original imported" really "pure overseas blood"?
Probably not.
According to Xiaofan, almost all the color lenses she has handled are shipped from China, and she also expressed concern about the unknown source of the color contacts: "At that time, I sold many so-called Japanese and Korean color contacts, although I was instructed to do so. Both are marked with Japanese and Korean origin, but in fact the warehouses for production and delivery are all in China, and the manufacturer verbally guarantees that it is the same as the Japanese and Korean products, but I can’t help but worry.”
The explanation given by the big franchisee of her team is that the cost of US contact lenses is not high and the replacement speed is fast. If you want to wait for domestic imports, it will cost more time and money, which is not conducive to the team's profits and sales.
"I have also been exposed to beauty contact lenses that cost 9.9 yuan. I can't guarantee the quality of these products, let alone sell them to consumers." Xiaofan said.
The reporter noticed that on an e-commerce platform, there are many beauty contact lenses for tens of yuan.
Previously, some media exposed a small factory in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, which sold more than 1.2 million fake color contact products in more than 4 months without any qualifications.
A platform shop owner who has been engaged in the beauty contact industry for many years said that the cost of domestically labeled imitation products ranges from 2 yuan to 8 yuan.
Both Yuanyuan and Yifan said that the expensive daily disposable products do not sell well. Most of the people who like to buy color contact lenses are school students and new professionals with little social experience. Therefore, they are more inclined to represent good-looking colors and higher prices. Low-profile lenses that can be worn for a long time.
However, have the quality of these so-called "good quality and low price" beauty contact lenses really passed the test?
This may require many color lens lovers to keep their eyes open and be vigilant - the manufacturers behind these color lenses do not care about the good-looking eyes of consumers after using them, but the wealth that these eyes bring to them.
(At the request of the interviewee, Yuanyuan and Xiaofan are pseudonyms in the text)