Domestic fragrance: "fragrance" enters the homes of ordinary people
"Panda Pupu" series of indoor aromatherapy.
Photo by our reporter Wang Jingyue
Guanxia's fragrance products.
From left to right are Baihua Highway, Kunlun Boiled Snow, and Pine Art Museum.
Photo by our reporter Wang Jingyue
The perfume fragrance market is a new blue ocean.
Many industry reports give similar data: China's fragrance market was about US$800 million in 2017, and the perfume market was about US$5 to 6 billion; but by 2020, the market size has doubled, and the two are approaching. 1.6 billion and 12.6 billion US dollars, even if affected by the epidemic, the year-on-year growth rate is still over 10%.
Fragrance and aromatherapy, these niche products in our impression, are quickly entering the lives of ordinary consumers.
Looking back at the Chinese perfume fragrance market a few years ago, there are many international big names, and domestic brands are rare.
However, with the rapid development of the "olfactory economy" in recent years, some domestic fragrances have sprung up, changing the situation where international products "dominate" the market, conquering many young Chinese consumers, and using popularity and sales to prove their strength and the strength of Chinese brands .
Open up territory on the subdivision track
In New Zealand in 2008, a Chinese student witnessed an unusual installation art exhibition: a variety of yellow wax wrapped apples, exuding different flavors, permeating the college.
Out of curiosity, she searched the Internet for keywords such as "smell" and "olfactory", hoping to learn about related industries, but found that there was very little related content.
"Scientific research shows that the human nose can theoretically smell 1 trillion flavors, but no one in China has explored the charm of'olfactory art'!" Young international students see business opportunities in this blank field and are determined to return to China after graduation , To create a "library" to collect smells.
This is the story of the domestic brand-Scent Library and its founder Lou Nanshi.
At that time, many well-known international brands have gained a firm foothold in China and have a relatively fixed consumer base. What can a fledgling domestic brand do?
The approach of the smell library is to "avoid its edge", not to be too entangled in the perfume products of the international big brands for a long time, but to expand the product range and expand on other subdivision tracks.
In 2009, Lou Nanshi opened the first physical store in Sanlitun, Beijing, where all kinds of perfumes, aromatherapy and even toothpaste and other daily necessities were placed in an effort to show customers a variety of flavors and rich odor carriers.
In 2015, the brand established a research and development team to launch its own perfumes independently designed and produced locally, and then expanded the category layout, adding shower gels, body lotions, hand sanitizers and other care products, as well as non-flame aromatherapy, scented candles Home fragrances, etc., these products have achieved gratifying results in sales.
Lou Nanshi said: "Since the original intention of starting a business is around'smell', the product form should not be restricted. Perfumes, fragrances, daily cosmetics and beauty products with the main fragrance can all be classified into the category of olfactory economy."
Facts have proved that Lou Nanshi's idea is correct.
In addition to perfumes, more and more fragrance products are favored by consumers.
For example, the domestic brand "The Beast", the previous sales champion has always been immortal flower products, and now the top 5 sales are all related to fragrance.
The new consumer trend has made the economy of smell a new outlet, and has also spawned a variety of domestic brands and fragrance products: Beast Pie launched products such as diffuser essential oil, spar, fragrance diffuser, indoor fragrance spray, etc.; DAILY LAB focuses on creating in-vehicle aromatherapy, extending the use of fragrance to the car... The clothes washing and care products with long-lasting fragrance have also become a new growth point. The sales of laundry gel beads and fragrance beads with different flavors are gratifying. This year "6·18" During the period, the turnover of Fragrant Beads on an e-commerce platform increased by more than 10 times year-on-year.
A wide variety of olfactory economic products emerge in an endless stream. In such a promising incremental market, more products will be combined with "olfactory", opening up more possibilities for the fragrance track.
Incorporate Chinese culture into fragrance products
In a documentary about well-known fragrances, the chief perfumer of the brand said: "Making fragrances is like translating, integrating images that you remember in your heart into the production process. So selling fragrances is equivalent to selling dreams."
For the Chinese market, a successful fragrance lies not only in the fragrance of the front, middle, and back notes of the product, what kind of picture it presents, and whether it can be described in words, but more importantly, whether it is close enough to the lives of Chinese people.
Lou Nanshi explained to reporters with an example of the star product "Cool Baikai" of the Scent Library: "Everyone has drunk cool Baikai. This is the taste that exists in everyone's memory. After launching the series named after this, it doesn't even need to be too much. Explain that buyers can roughly imagine the product tonalities and are interested in learning more about it."
The mineral scent of the water molecules in the first tune fully shows the pure taste of the water itself; the aldehyde and ambergris are added to the last tune, which mimics the metallic scent left by boiling water in an aluminum pot, and naturally cools it after boiling, thus making consumers' minds. The cool white open.
This year, the Smell Library took the Chinese city memory as the starting point and launched a regional limited edition of "Cool White Open", adding a unique "scent complex" to the middle notes of different versions.
For example, the "Beijing Edition" Cool Baikai uses palmetto leaves, and the fragrance of plants makes you feel the old Beijing life with a palm fan; the "Guangzhou Edition" Cool Baikai uses mint elements, the icy cool smell and the refreshing summer freezer "Frozen boiling water" overlapped.
In the final analysis, domestic brands are to concretize the collective memories and emotions of Chinese people.
Lou Nanshi said that when observing the details of life, there are many materials that can be used for reference. Hot soy milk, tomatoes mixed with sugar, freshly squeezed watermelon juice, and white rabbit toffee can all be sources of inspiration.
For comparison, the white rose and magnolia, sage and sea salt that were launched at the same time as "Cool White Open" tasted good, but they were not directly related to the memories of the Chinese people, and the results did not explode.
If the "Cool White Open Series" interprets users’ love of nostalgia, then brands such as Guanxia and Wuduoli provide another R&D idea-to incorporate oriental stories into the design and carry the uniqueness. It belongs to the traditional Chinese cultural expression.
"On the day I ordered'Kunlun Cooking Snow', I didn't leave the house... Only once I went downstairs to take the courier and left the house. When I came back, I realized that there had been a snowfall in the house and a cedar tree had grown." Guanxia Products "Kunlun" "Cooking Snow" uses rosin as the main note, matched with the corresponding copywriting, to introduce the buyer into a vast and uninhabited state of snow-capped mountains and towering mountains. In the silence, I suddenly smelled the cedar clearness, quite "returning for dozens of steps, suddenly enlightened." "Atmosphere.
Explore this kind of products, such as Guanxia’s "Study Pond", "Yihe Golden Osmanthus", "Floating Light Bamboo Shadow", the four floral fragrances of Gui, Plum, Orchid, and Smile in Wuduoli, and the fragrance room of RECLASSIFIED "Shengdan cleans up the ugliness"... all are shown in the image of oriental aesthetics, and the traditional cultural elements contained in it are also catering to the preferences of young people.
"A few years ago, a French team came to Yunnan to incubate a fragrance brand related to Pu'er tea, but it did not succeed. I said, this is the taste of tea in the hearts of you French people, not our Chinese." Co-founder of Guanxia Shen Li said.
In the olfactory economy market, the advantage of domestic brands lies in their familiarity with the local Chinese culture and the ability to put their products in the context of the Chinese.
Xiao Xiao, who works in the museum, is a loyal fan of domestic fragrances. She told reporters: "For friends, you can choose styles based on the copy; when you give them to foreign friends, they will deepen their understanding of China-only Chinese can To make such a product."
Build a communication bridge with consumers
If traditional e-commerce companies use text and pictures to display products and lack the intuitive experience of touch and smell, then offline stores are building a bridge between buyers and sellers, turning abstract concepts into physical products that can be seen and touched.
“No matter how many recommendations you see, it’s better to smell it yourself.” Lou Nanshi said, “After all, the sense of smell cannot be equated with vision and words. Products will eventually return to physical stores.” Smell libraries are all over the country. There are nearly 80 stores, and pop-up stores will also be opened in business districts such as Beijing Xidan and Shanghai Global Port this summer. Inside the huge aluminum pot-shaped building, four booths each present a "cool white open" regional limited edition, customers can understand For each perfume, you can get a sample of perfume through game interaction; outside the aluminum pot installation exhibition, there is also an exhibition area where you can purchase other products of the "Cool White Open Series".
The store setting of Fauvism fully conveys the brand's own concept and temperament to customers. The relevant person in charge said that Fauvism advocates a "flower-like life" and not only provides products, but also hopes to convey to consumers a kind of exquisite elegance and certain aesthetics. Lifestyle.
It can be seen in its offline stores that the aromatherapy zone is often adjacent to another characteristic "flower zone", with exquisite small decorations and chic decorations, it has a sense of enjoying life.
The "Guanxia Living Room" opened in Sanlitun, Beijing obviously has a similar idea.
Shen Li said that taking the name "living room" is hoping that the store will carry the aesthetics of life advocated by the brand and break the stereotype that "domestic products are not high-end", rather than playing the role of a shelf.
Large metal screens cover the decoration of the store, and customers can only enter this "cave-like" store through the "cave passage".
Walking in, abstract water ripple mirrors, stone texture walls carved by a stone carving artist with a single stroke, stone furniture full of artistic sense... These decorations vividly reflect Guanxia's concise and ingenious design.
"In the future, we will create different offline experience spaces according to the style and characteristics of each city, and continue to consolidate the concept of'serious life'." Shen Li said.
Talking about the relationship between online and offline, Lou Nanshi believes that the two need to be linked: online exposure will be increased to divert offline stores; offline will act as an online display space, and offline experience will be repurchased online. At present, due to the need to split with stores, most domestic fragrance brands have not dared to test the water line hastily. However, it cannot be ignored that the focus of fragrance products is on actual experience, and physical stores are the content that domestic fragrance brands need to consider in the future.