Go bold or go home: Younger consumers drawn to lip, cheek makeup for self-expression - Chioture

Chioture was established in 2009 but relaunched in 2018 to target beauty consumers aged 18 to 24 with affordable makeup products at around RMB30 to RMB50 (USD4 to USD7).

The brand’s biggest sellers today are its many lip and cheek makeup products.

“The biggest trend today among younger consumers is that they want to do things for themselves. Putting on makeup is not for anyone else, and they are not pursuing it to be beautiful. Makeup is for their own self-expression, to show their moods and attitudes,” said Susie Jiang, head of overseas marketing, Chioture.

“But makeup can be quite time-consuming. They don’t want to put in so much effort and spend too much time on their makeup. Using lipstick and blusher is very easy, you can try many looks without the skill set. We’re seeing that the consumer wants to try many colours and textures and their choices are getting bolder and more intense for lip and cheek.”

The desire to play and experiment with colour is driving them to seek out more affordable products, Jiang added.

“A big part of our strategy is to create high-performance products but keep the price affordable. That’s why we also try to keep our marketing costs down.”

Poised to accelerate international expansion

Last year, the brand made its first foray into the international market by expanding into SEA with markets like Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

“The expansion has been going very well. I think it’s because we have a very wide range of products so people can always find their preferences among our products. We also made good partnerships like our partner in Indonesia, which is very strong in offline selling,” said Jiang.

“When we started, we set a GMV target, and we already managed to surpass that goal. Our overseas business is still very small but it’s growing very fast. We are making plans to expand more into markets like Singapore.”

The brand sees a lot of affinity with the SEA region as it has a large young population and would resonate with its products.

Furthermore, the region has a very large population of Chinese diaspora. Indonesia, for instance, has one of the largest Chinese populations outside of China.

According to Jiang, Indonesia is currently the brand’s best-performing overseas market.

In July, the brand exhibited at the South China Beauty Expo in Shenzhen, China, to find more opportunities to further build its business in SEA and find new market opportunities.

“Expanding overseas is the big goal for us as a company now. We want to find more partners that can help us expand into more channels, like TV shopping, in SEA,” said Jiang.

Chioture is now eyeing potential opportunities in the Middle East and the US.

Accelerating its expansion will also give the company more opportunities to learn about the preferences of international consumers and inform its product development pipeline.