New Achievements in Many Fields: Botanee Group Marches Towards Stage 2.0 During Double 11 Festival

New Achievements in Many Fields: Botanee Group Marches Towards Stage 2.0 During Double 11 Festival

The annual Double 11 competition has drawn to a close, and once again, brands under the Botanee Group have impressively stood out among the leading brands. According to the Double 11 report, as of 24:00 on November 11, 2023, Winona had successfully ranked among the Top 10 brands in the beauty industry on Tmall and jumped to the Top 5 in Tmall's beauty category. This achievement marked the highest ranking Winona had ever attained and made it the only Chinese brand to be featured in the Top 10 list for seven consecutive years from 2017 to 2023.

Moreover, driven by both its professional endowment and advanced technology, Winona achieved especially remarkable performance on all platforms. During the Double 11 festival, Winona ranked among the Top 2 domestic beauty brands on JD.com and Vipshop and made it to the Top 9 in Douyin's beauty and skincare category. It claimed the first spot among the beauty product brands on Tencent's WeChat platform and the sales of its Pinduoduo flagship store even achieved a year-on-year growth rate of 60% in all stages. In addition, as a cosmeceutical brand focusing on infant skin under Botanee Group, Winona Baby jumped to the Top 2 in Tmall's baby skincare category, achieving its best historical ranking.

Za and Pure&Mild, two brands of Yuejiang (Guangzhou) Investment Co., Ltd. acquired by Botanee not long ago, also made a good start. Za witnessed over 60% year-on-year growth in sales in its Douyin and Pinduoduo channels. Its flagship product, True White Day Protector, secured the top spot in Tmall's primer repurchase list, Tmall's best-selling whitening sunscreen list, and Douyin's best-selling sunscreen list, firmly establishing itself as a leader in affordable primer/sunscreen products. Thanks to the launch of its new product, Collagen Bouncy Anti-wrinkle Cream, Pure&Mild's sales on Douyin surged by 88.54% year-on-year. The product became the Top 11 in Tmall's best-selling anti-wrinkle face cream list and the Top 4 in Douyin's popular anti-aging face cream list. It marked a significant milestone for Pure&Mild in exploring the gentle anti-aging product segment.

Having experienced the rapid growth stage 1.0 supported by the capital market, Botanee is now in the more challenging stage 2.0, where its brand operation and modern business operation capabilities will be tested. The Group's recent appearance at the World Congress of Dermatology and its performance during the Double 11 competition demonstrate its remarkable achievements in the new development stage. This proves that prioritizing research and development and progressing steadily for long-term success are significant and forward-thinking strategies.

Since its establishment in 2012, Botanee Group's brand Winona has been operating for 10 years. With its efficient and comprehensive brand strategies coupled with increasingly mature research and development strength, the brand has emerged as a leader in the sensitive skincare segment. This success is not just a result of its business strategies and resource deployment but also stems from its initial aspiration to provide consumers with more professional and effective skincare experiences.

With its unstoppable market performance, Winona has once again broken the barriers restricting domestic products' growth and made a "consumption miracle" in the brand competition focused on getting into consumers' minds. Winona's impressive achievements are a true reflection of its solid strength. Winona has further solidified its leading position in China's beauty industry and opened up a new pattern of high-quality and leapfrog development of domestic beauty brands. By continuously outperforming major international brands, it gains a larger competitive edge in the future's international beauty market.

Leveraging Multi-dimensional Marketing to Convey Brand Value and Renew Consumption Miracles

The reasons behind Winona's new achievements this year are traceable. These remarkable achievements not only stem from Botanee Group's long-term commitment to increasing its strength in product, brand, and R&D and becoming a leading cosmeceutical brand in China. They are also attributed to its overall marketing strategy and ability to access targeted consumers.

When consumers delve into a brand, they cannot neglect its professionalism, technology, value, and warmth. With the theme of "living up to the encounter and paying tribute to the classics", on this year's November 11, Winona implemented a promotion strategy integrating emotional marketing, skincare care solutions, and attractive discounts. This move further elevated brand warmth and fostered deeper consumer loyalty.

1. Exploring Both Online and Offline Channels and Consolidating Long-term Competitive Edge

With the rapid growth of the domestic cosmetics market and the evolving demands of Chinese consumers for various segments, global beauty brands have placed ever greater emphasis on increasing their investments in the Chinese market in recent years. The annual Double 11 festival has become a significant battleground for Chinese brands in the beauty and skincare segment to compete with each other.

Amidst fierce competition, Winona, which deploys both online and offline channels, stands out among major brands and safeguards the honor of domestic brands by bucking the trend. In addition to all online platforms as mentioned above, Winona also explores the offline OTC channels and succeeds in building a new model for expanding the chain pharmacy size with its professional products and services. As of September 2023, Winona had established partnerships with nearly 85,000 offline terminal OTC pharmacies and cooperated with over 550 chain pharmacy brands across 30 provinces (including municipalities directly under the central government and autonomous regions). These efforts made it a highly influential cosmeceutical brand in China's pharmacy channel. During this year's Double 11 festival, Winona's total sales in the OTC channel exceeded RMB 413 million, with a year-on-year increase of 56%. This demonstrated that Winona, as a leading domestic cosmeceutical brand, was continuously unleashing its potential to cause a sales boom.

By comprehensively leveraging the dividends of public and private traffic in the online channel and exploring the offline OTC channel, Winona continues to be part of the top domestic beauty brand list during the Double 11 festival. Its access to different groups of consumers is also maximized. Its image as a leading domestic brand is steadily consolidated and its brand momentum continues to improve.

2. Exploring More Potential and Improving the Technological Level of Products

Products serve as the most effective medium to transmit brand recognition and constitute Winona's core competitive advantage.

Based on market trends and consumer insights, Winona paid further attention to users' pain points and urgent demand to improve product efficacy and increase product categories during this year's Double 11 festival. With its classic products as the core, Winona introduced integrated Sensitive Skin Care Plus solutions, including "Sensitiveness Relieving + Anti-Aging", "Sensitiveness Relieving + Whitening", and "Sensitiveness Relieving + Sunscreen". Additionally, it launched new products like the Extra Care three-piece set and Barrier Repairing Lotion and Cream set.

While enriching its product categories, Winona also focused on differentiating sensitive skin types and extending product usage scenarios. To address the pain point in whitening sensitive skin, Winona introduced a comprehensive whitening and spot-fading solution designed to maintain the health of sensitive skin while promoting the reduction of spots and lightening of the complexion from the four aspects of "relieving, repairing, balancing, and resisting". As a result, the Camellia-Lucent Spot-Correcting Essence (also known as the "Spot-Correcting and Whitening Bottle") was launched as a cornerstone product in the domestic whitening product segment. Winona's sensitive skin whitening set, centered around the "Spot-Correcting and Whitening Bottle", ranked among the bestsellers and generated RMB 40 million in sales on Douyin in early October, with a 300% year-on-year growth on the brand matrix. During the Double 11 festival, it maintained its momentum and continued to rank first on the Douyin Top 100 High-quality Beauty Product List. This marked that it received recognition from the consumer market.

3. Upgrading Marketing Strategy and Conveying Brand Value

The diversity of consumers necessitates the creation of a brand with warmth in today's market environment.

In mid-October, Winona collaborated with 17 Party and central media outlets such as CCTV.com, China Daily and The Paper to release the brand's attitude-conveying short film titled "The Answer to Mission". This film delicately conveyed the core mission of the brand: "More than simply meeting you: We are dedicated to staying true to our original aspiration, devoted to our specialty, and committed to creating the finest products possible, so as to live up to our encounter with you."

Later, Winona joined hands with Shanghai Animation Film Studio Co., Ltd. (SAFS) to release a series of co-branded IP high-end short films such as Meeting Monkey King, Meeting Ne Zha, and Meeting Seven Fairies on all platforms. It also customized limited edition gift boxes co-branded with SAFS's IPs, including the "Extra Care Series", "Barrier Repairing Series" and "Spot-Correcting and Whitening Bottle Set". The three star series products accurately aligned with the three kinds of spirit conveyed in the short films: "determination", "resilience" and "belief". While awakening the childhood and youth memories of a generation, these products also expressed Winona's original aspiration and significance of walking side by side with every user and living up to the encounters with them. Through them, the brand further rooted its concept of "Specialized Research on Sensitive Skin" in the heart of every user, deeply transmitted its warmth, and interpreted its spiritual core.

As a top dermatological-grade brand dedicated to sensitive skin, Winona serves as an important window for observing Chinese brands and showcasing the limitless possibilities of domestic brands to transcend traditional paradigms with their product strength, brand power, and operational logic.

Moving forward, based on China's dermatology clinical research and international cutting-edge research in dermatology, Botanee will utilize the results of international clinical research to conduct cooperative research. The initial cooperation aims to carry out research in frontier areas to explore the occurrence path and mechanism of sensitive skin problems. In the future, there are plans to research the occurrence mechanisms of more skin problems. Leveraging the strengths of both research teams, we will translate dermatological achievements into practical applications to further advance the development of the skin health ecosystem.

Previously, Botanee's new central factory with an investment of nearly RMB 500 million was officially put into operation. It is clearly foreseeable that under the combined efforts of the BTN French Research Center, the two centers in Yunnan and Shanghai, and the new central factory, scientific and effective solutions will undoubtedly be found for Chinese and global consumers.

With scientific research as its backbone, Botanee Group has flourished based on domestic and international research. As the new journey of globalization begins, we will continue to march forward with our continuously advancing scientific research and growing brand strength in the future. Transitioning from the Chinese market to the global stage, Botanee is poised to commence a magnificent prelude dedicated to bringing skin health and beauty to the world.