Can O2O in the beauty industry revolutionize female consumption?

The life service industry is being changed by O2O to varying degrees. For example, you can use mobile APP to hail a taxi, order food delivery, repair your phone, and do laundry. Now the O2O craze has begun to spread to the beauty industry. The so-called beauty industry, in simple terms, refers to the beauty, hairdressing, nail art, and health care industries, which are an indispensable part of the lives of women who love beauty.

It is not difficult to see from recent investment cases that beauty industry O2O is becoming more and more popular, attracting the attention and favor of investors and entrepreneurs.

Not long ago, Helijia completed its B round of financing and said that its valuation was nearly 1 billion yuan; Xiu Meijia obtained nearly 10 million US dollars in A round of financing jointly invested by Xinzhongli and Ceyuan Venture Capital; in September, the beauty industry O2O platform Meilijia received an 8 million yuan angel investment from Qinjiang Venture Capital and Android Xin Venture Capital; Meimedou and Fangxinmei in the hairdressing field also successively received angel round investment.

Entering O2O from the beauty industry is undoubtedly a good idea, but if you want to become the next explosion point after the taxi market and subvert the consumption model, you must also start from increasing the stickiness of high-quality users and opening up the payment transaction link. While bringing potential customers to merchants, it also allows consumers to enjoy good services and experiences.

How big is the O2O market in the beauty industry?

It is no secret that the beauty industry has high profits. A bottle of nail polish priced at dozens of yuan can be provided to dozens of consumers, and beauty salons and hairdressing salons can also double their profits at a low cost. Coupled with the fact that women have strong consumption desires, strong spending power, and the quality of consumer goods is increasing year by year, there is huge potential and business opportunities here.

Data provided by CNNIC shows that as of June 2014, the size of my country's Internet users reached 632 million, with a male to female ratio of 55.6:44.4, and the potential size of the female market reached 270 million.

Baidu data shows that compared with the beginning of 2013, the growth rate of female users on mobile terminals is the highest, and the growth rate of mobile objects has reached more than 3 times. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, compared with men, women are more dependent on mobile Internet and their development momentum is the fastest.

In this light, it is not difficult to understand why entrepreneurs are optimistic about the beauty industry market.

When it comes to beauty industry O2O, group buying can be considered its predecessor. However, group buying has not completely helped or even subverted the industry. The reason is that, on the one hand, merchants hope to obtain potential users with consumption capacity, while consumers who come from group buying are often "one-time" consumers; on the other hand, consumers also hope to get high-quality services at a lower price, but a large number of group buying consumers makes it difficult for merchants with limited reception and service capabilities to cope.

In this regard, industry insiders told Tencent Technology that relying on the beauty industry to move from offline to online is a more pragmatic and effective approach.

Use the community to retain high-quality users?

One of the biggest characteristics of the beauty industry is its high consumption flexibility. For example, many people spend money on hairdressing once a year or once a month. In addition to enjoying the service, female consumers also have a strong need to share the service results. For example, if they get a satisfactory manicure or hairstyle, they hope to get attention and comments from others.

The natural characteristics of liking to "show off" and share provide entrepreneurs with a way to retain these high-quality users, that is, to create a community to increase the repurchase rate, maximize the value of old customers, and attract new customers.

Nail art, which seems to be an ordinary small business in the streets and alleys, has gradually become a market with a scale of hundreds of billions. Recently, a nail art software called Helijia has spread among girls. Helijia provides one-on-one door-to-door service by nail artists. Currently, there are 1,000 nail artists stationed in the app, and nearly 2,000 orders are received every day.

Manicure is one of Ms. Mao's hobbies. She changes her nails once or twice a month. Usually, she relies on group purchases or goes to the store where she gets her membership card, but the service is not good or the store is far from home. Now, Ms. Mao can use the Helijia app to arrange a manicurist to come to her home or a nearby cafe, and call a few friends to enjoy the manicure service together.

Unlike Helijia's way of directly connecting with technicians, Xiumeijia, founded by Yi Wenfei, a former executive of Dangdang.com and Suning, is a platform product that follows the "Tmall + Taobao" model. It serves nail salons but does not provide specific nail services. Consumers can find nearby nail salons through LBS and then go directly to the nail salons to enjoy the services.

Yi Wenfei told Tencent Technology that Show Nail Art is actually a nail art ecosystem where all needs related to women and nail art can be met.

Yi Wenfei emphasized many times in the interview that Show Nail Art was born out of "show". "Women who love beauty love to share and are naturally driven to communicate. Show Nail Art cultivates user stickiness through the way users share and communicate with each other, and uses this consumption drive to direct users to offline merchants." At present, Show Nail Art has been established for more than a year, with a total of 12 million activated users and 100,000 nail salons.

The beauty industry O2O platform "Meilijia" now mainly covers Shenzhen. Since its launch two months ago, more than 1,000 businesses such as beauty salons, health clubs, and nail salons have settled in. Meilijia has also created a community "Meiliquan" focusing on the beauty industry in its user-oriented APP, allowing individual users to easily exchange experiences.

Open up payment transactions

In the beauty industry, most businesses try to retain users by using stored-value cards and membership cards. Ma Xiaoguang, founder of Meilijia, told Tencent Technology that the consumption characteristics of pre-stored value are more obvious, especially in the beauty industry.

Merchants hope to use stored-value cards and membership cards to keep users firmly in their stores, but the following problems are inevitable: it is difficult for users to get a refund if they are dissatisfied with a purchase; merchants arbitrarily adjust membership discounts or service prices, and consumers can only passively accept them; and some consumers even have to bear the losses themselves due to the bankruptcy of the merchant.

Not long ago, Ms. Yu paid 20,000 yuan to apply for a platinum membership card at a styling salon near her home. She could have enjoyed a 30% discount on membership services, but the store adjusted its service prices not long after, with some prices tripling. When Ms. Yu wanted to return the card, the store refused her request and told her that "the price increase is a company regulation and there is nothing you can do about it."

In order to avoid the situation mentioned above and release the consumption capacity in the beauty industry O2O field to the greatest extent, players in the industry are trying to circumvent this chaos by opening up their own payment transactions, which may be a good way.

For example, Meilijia is preparing to launch the vertical field "Meilibao" to allow consumers to enjoy services without cards. "For example, consumers can deposit money on the Meilijia platform and then use it in any merchant connected to this platform." Ma Xiaoguang said.

After obtaining the A round of financing, Show Nail Art will also launch a trading system in November. Although Yi Wenfei did not reveal too many details, he said that by then, services such as user appointments and door-to-door merchants will be implemented. It also means converting large-scale traffic into orders, thereby realizing the formation of a business model.

However, some industry insiders told Tencent Technology that many O2O entrepreneurs just want to collect money from merchants, but cannot bring the potential users they hope for to the merchants, or even bring undesirable users to the merchants.

It seems that if the beauty industry O2O wants to subvert the traditional consumption model, what it needs to do in the final analysis is to bring customers with purchasing power to the merchants, and at the same time rely on offline resources to find high-quality merchants for consumers, and use good service experience as the most fundamental guarantee.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.