Winona Ranks First in Chinese Cosmeceutical Category with Sales Exceeding RMB 720 Million During Double 11 Shopping Festival

Winona Ranks First in Chinese Cosmeceutical Category with Sales Exceeding RMB 720 Million During Double 11 Shopping Festival

In the recent 2019 Double 11 shopping spree, Winona achieved total online and offline sales of RMB 720 million, once again securing a spot in the top 9 best-selling beauty and skincare brands on Tmall and ranking first in the Chinese cosmeceutical category. On November 11, Winona racked up sales of RMB 100 million in just 61 minutes after midnight and surpassed the total sales on the same day in 2018 within 3 hours. By the end of November 11, Winona's total sales across all online and offline channels exceeded RMB 720 million, a year-on-year increase of 80%.

In the category of cosmeceutical products, especially those catering to people with sensitive skin, Winona has garnered attention and accolades from consumers due to its continuous research in the field of sensitive skin, strong medical research capability, and excellent product reputation. It became a member of the "RMB 100 million sales club" in 2016 and ranked 9th in the beauty and skincare category in 2019, following well-known international cosmetics brands like Estée Lauder and Lancôme. Winona, a dark horse in the skincare industry, has grown into an industry giant before everyone knows it.

Behind Winona's rapid progress is a trail of solid footprints.

Remarkable achievements in Double 11

It is the logic of the strong to compete with themselves, and Winona is no exception.

In the 2018 Double 11 shopping festival, Winona managed to rank among Tmall's top 9 beauty brands. In 2019, it secured ninth place in Tmall's beauty and skincare category, topping the list of Chinese cosmeceutical brands.

The RMB 100 million sales mark, once seen as a hurdle difficult for brands focusing on sensitive skincare to overcome, was easily surpassed by Winona as early as in the 2018 Double 11 event. In this year's Double 11 shopping spree, the turnover of Winona's flagship store on Tmall exceeded RMB 100 million in 1 hour and 1 minute and RMB 200 million in 1 hour and 20 minutes. It took just 1 hour, 21 minutes, and 51 seconds for Winona to achieve the whole-day sales of its Tmall flagship store on November 11 last year . Winona's Tmall flagship store racked up sales of over RMB 347 million throughout the day. During the Double 11 event, store visits surpassed 2.1 million and the number of followers amounted to 5.21 million. The number of searches for "Winona Tolerance-Extreme Cream" surged, which became one of the most searched product terms in the industry.

The soothing duo of the Sensitiveness Relieving Moisturizing Tolerance-Extreme Cream and the Anti-Sensitive Essence recorded a sales volume of 2.08 million bottles. The Sensitiveness Relieving Moisturizing Tolerance-Extreme Cream, with a sales volume of 1.85 million bottles, became a top seller in Tmall's skincare category during the Double 11 festival. The products sold, if stacked one by one, could reach the height of the Oriental Pearl Tower.

In fact, Winona's growth potential this year was already foreseen in the pre-sale preparation before the Double 11 event started. To get ready for the event, Winona embarked on the preparation early, laying a solid foundation for its Double 11 campaign through forward-looking market analysis, innovative marketing tactics, precise internal and external advertising, thorough customer service training, establishment of a comprehensive logistics support system, and repeated simulations and tests.

While drawing on last year's successful experience, Winona innovated its marketing strategy for this year's Double 11 event, carrying out a series of promotional activities with the theme of "Protecting Sensitive Skin, Enjoying Double 11 Shopping". The merry-go-round gift box of the Sensitiveness Relieving Moisturizing Tolerance-Extreme Cream, which was custom-made for Double 11, caused a sensation as it maximized both product value and sales value with the limited edition of a star product.

In terms of marketing strategy, Winona utilized a comprehensive online and offline media matrix to intercept consumer attention: Online social platforms targeting young consumers like Douyin and Xiaohongshu were engaged to continuously influence consumers' preferences and get inside their minds with creative content; offline tactics were also employed to comprehensively intercept consumer attention in both office scenarios and entertainment venues like cinemas. In addition, Winona made an innovative attempt to collaborate with Alibaba on a co-creation program. They utilized Alibaba's Chaoji Fengbao (a marketing product literally meaning "super exposure") and serialized ad serving, developed a data-based insight into consumers, and refined creative content tailored to different audiences to trigger discussions. From splash ad serving on eight Ali apps to multi-point exposure on Taobao-based platforms, they directly reached target consumers through diverse touchpoints, covering the entire consumer journey from interest to purchase. Moreover, real-time data feedback allowed for dynamic optimization of material performance and contributed to the accumulation of brand data assets.

Winona, known for its brand image of "specializing in cosmeceutical products for sensitive skin", invited over 20 authoritative dermatologists to form a powerful live streaming lineup alongside popular Internet celebrities and the "sensitive skin guardian" Luo Yunxi during the Double 11 event. Combining expertise, celebrity effect, and selling capacity, the brand set off a craze in live streaming for nine consecutive days, creating the "Winona Miracle". This year, Winona also sponsored the Tmall Double 11 Gala, which is dubbed the "Fashion Oscars". It creatively inserted its brand concept to achieve high-frequency, strong exposure among billions of global consumers, successfully transforming viewers' enthusiasm for the show into consumption power.

This enabled Winona to accomplish its tasks with ease in this year's Double 11 shopping spree, with the trend of hot sales emerging even during the pre-sale period.

Winona launched the customized edition of its flagship product and released the "Double 11 Shopping Guide" on social platforms, thus achieving explosive growth in both sales and traffic. According to the sales data, 140,000 sets of "Merry-Go-Round Gift Boxes" were sold during the pre-sale period alone; 100,000 bottles of Sensitiveness Relieving Moisturizing Tolerance-Extreme Cream with customized gift box packaging were presold by the end of October, bringing steep discounts for tens of thousands of users with sensitive skin to stock up on the product, and laying a word-of-mouth foundation for the exceptional sales performance during the Double 11 festival.

Challenging top global giants is not new for Winona, but every time it manages to achieve remarkable results. With a combination of product strength and brand influence, the surge in Winona's sales continued throughout October and extended to early November.

In the Double 11 festival, Winona developed an e-commerce distribution network centering on Tmall and covering numerous channels such as JD.com, Vipshop, and Tmall Supermarket, achieving explosive sales online and offline, and reporting record-high total sales of RMB 720 million.

Power of composure

In the competitive market of high-end skincare products, success has always been based on product quality. Winona achieves success in just a few years, not due to it being "fast" but due to its slow and steady accumulation.

As a cosmeceutical brand of Yunnan Botanee Bio-Technology Group Co., Ltd. focusing on sensitive skin care, Winona has specialized in the segment of sensitive skin care since its establishment. The R&D expert team of Winona has developed unique academic advantages through in-depth research on Chinese skin issues, targeted exploration of skincare functions, screening of active ingredients, and observation of clinical product effects. They have published 120 papers in top academic journals at home and abroad, including Nature Communications. They have contributed to the development and publication of 13 national consensuses and guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of dermatologic diseases. In addition, they have worked with nearly 100 Grade 3 Level A hospitals in China to observe product effects, developing a range of high-quality, safe, and effective products.

For most cosmetics, brand building always takes precedence, which requires a lot of effort and money. Winona, however, takes a different approach by dedicating over a decade to product efficacy improvement and basic research, which enables it to achieve instant success at the right time.

With such a solid academic foundation, Winona even outperforms top international brands.

Today, Winona stands on a higher starting point with a remarkable pursuit, shouldering the important mission of revitalizing Chinese cosmeceutical products. Not long ago, Winona was awarded the "Highlight of Chinese Products" in 2019, demonstrating its progress and innovation in products, technology, aesthetics, concepts, as well as marketing and business models. This also reflected the renewal of people's ideas in modern times and embodied their hopes for the development of domestic products.

Facts have proved that Chinese skincare brands are no longer in the era of creating concepts; the brand value lies in delivering efficacy to consumers. As consumers' mind matures, we have every reason to believe they will only pay for good brands and products. Caring for consumers and crafting products with dedication—this is exactly where Winona's commitment to "protecting sensitive skin" lies.

In the future, Winona will continue to solidify the academic foundation of products, stay true to its original intention, polish the brand with craftsmanship, and repay the market with better products and services. In addition to focusing on sensitive skin, it will timely expand its makeup line and establish offline immersive experience centers, exploiting broader markets with its brand advantages. With the awakening of national confidence, the path ahead for Chinese skincare brands represented by Winona will become broader and more promising.