Could Kérastase Paris be the next Lancôme? The answer may lie in China's high-end hair salons

"Kérastase Paris is poised to be the next Lancôme."

Ma Xiaoyu, the first deputy CEO of L'Oréal China, had high hopes for Kérastase Paris at the beginning of his tenure in April this year.

Lancôme, which has been benchmarked, is the most outstanding brand under L'Oréal China. As early as 2019, Lancôme set a record in 22 years in China, with a 400-fold increase in performance and annual sales of 26.8 billion yuan for a single brand. According to the data released by Euromonitor International, in 2021, Lancôme ranked with the highest market share in China's skincare market with a market share of 5.1%.

For Kérastase Paris, which has grown 10 times in 8 years, this is a great expectation, but also a lot of pressure.

According to the data of the "Douyin 2023 New Paradigm of Healthy Life White Paper", hair health is gradually rising as a common concern of the public, ranking fourth only after body health. According to a survey of more than 1,200 consumers last year, 80% of consumers strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that hair care/care and facial care are equally important.

But the increase in market attention does not mean that everyone can sit back and enjoy the results. Mojing insight data shows that from January to April 2024, the overall sales of Taotian shampoo hair care track have declined year-on-year; The Jingdong shampoo and hair care track fell 23.03% year-on-year to 1.6741 billion yuan. Douyin's data from January to April 2024 shows that the number of shampoo and hair care stores will drop from 27,800 in 2023 to 13,500, a decrease of 63.01%; The number of brands will drop from 7,943 in 2023 to 4,380 in 2024; The number of goods also decreased from 159,400 in 2023 to 65,300 in April 2024, a year-on-year decrease of 44.86%.

The increase in the scale and attention of the industry has also brought fierce competition and elimination, and a multi-dimensional war around R&D, marketing, branding, efficacy and price is being staged.

How do you make hair as important as your face?

However, as the vice president of L'Oréal China and the general manager of the professional hair products department, Lin Houzhi feels that compared with around 2018, today's hair care market has entered a period of stagnation.

In that era when "volume" was still the core, the hair loss problem of young people often landed on Weibo hot searches, which also drove the rapid growth of the anti-hair loss care business. In addition, young consumers at the time preferred light-colored hair, and hair bleaching techniques were popular for both hair and scalp.

This has become the basis for the rapid expansion of the hair loss market.

According to iiMedia Research, there were about 250 million people with hair loss in China in 2019, with a clear trend of feminization and youth, and 60% of them experienced hair loss at the age of 25. Therefore, anti-hair loss products show great commercial potential. In 2017, the total value of China's nutrition and health care market exceeded 700 billion yuan, of which the future growth space of hair growth health products is huge; The market size of anti-hair loss shampoo was 807 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.8%.

But today's market sentiment is very different.

According to the data, the proportion of 0-100 yuan sales in the Douyin cleaning and care category increased from 50.69% last year to 58.11%, and the trend on the Taotian platform was more significant, and the proportion of cleaning and care products within 100 yuan increased from less than 4% to more than 50%. The sales proportion of products in the middle and high price segments of 100-200 yuan and 200-400 yuan showed a significant decline of 4-5 percentage points on both platforms. But at the same time, high-end products above 400 yuan are obviously more stable, with only a slight decline in Taotian and a slight increase in Douyin.

On the one hand, in the atmosphere of "lying flat", the hair loss problems caused by staying up late and working overtime are no longer the mainstream; On the one hand, after the epidemic, health has become the mainstream of consumption, and scalp health has also become a new focus in the field of washing and care. And the bleaching and dyeing that was once all the rage is no longer a highly regarded trend, and the hot perm that does not require too much effort to care for is more favored by consumers, and the hair oil that helps to repair the damage of the hot perm has quietly become the biggest beneficiary in the new era.

According to Mojing data, in the first half of 2023, the growth rate of hair care essential oil will be rapid, with the sales of hair care essential oil ampoule and hair care essential oil increasing by 306% and 52% year-on-year respectively, and the sales volume increasing by 55% and 35% year-on-year respectively. Driven by the overall market, Kérastase Paris's ELIXIR series (Camellia Hair Oil), GENESIS series (Ginger Essence) and CHRONOLOGISTE series (Haiyuan Black Diamond Hair Mask) have also become the most popular and hot-selling products in China, and all of them have achieved the first place in the category during Tmall Double 11.

However, the core of scalp and hair care products to maintain sustainable growth lies in the change of consumption habits. How to make Chinese consumers who value their face more than their hair, and continue to pay more attention to hair and scalp is the common challenge faced by the entire hairdressing and care track - the scalp is wrinkled and almost imperceptible; The hair is split and it's not so noticeable. Therefore, there is still a long way to go for Chinese consumers to spend as much money on their hair and scalp as they do on their faces.

In the process of market iteration and consumer education, some people quit the market, some people ventured, and for Kérastase, a brand that only focuses on hair business, market iteration and trend flow, even if it has accumulated 26 years of first-mover advantage, it still has to face the complex and critical scrutiny of Chinese consumers.

Dream Maker's Dreams and Challenges

In this process, solving consumers' concerns about the product level is the first link that needs to be overcome in the long march. According to Lin Houzhi's observation, Chinese consumers are generally very wary of "oil", and this psychology has almost become an invisible ceiling that hinders the growth of all oil care products. For this reason, in the latest hair care oil products, Kérastase Paris has chosen to make the oil products have the characteristics of rapid absorption, so as to reduce the "vigilance" of consumers.

Of course, price is also a factor that cannot be bypassed.

According to media reports, if the average price of the top 10 brands on the Taotian platform in the first four months of 2024 is compared with 2023, the average price of several brands that continue to be on the list shows a year-on-year downward trend, with a decline ranging from 24% to 44%.

"Consumers feel like your product isn't worth buying, and they're going to downgrade it. But as long as he feels you're worth it, he won't be demoted. In order to better understand today's consumers, Lin and his team conducted about 30 consumer forums last year. In the latest release of the Kérastase Paris Gilt Camellia Hair Oil, the concentration of the original basic version of the hair oil has been doubled, and the dosage has also been reduced by half, catering to the needs of today's consumers in a more effective and economical way.

However, for high-end brands, efficacy alone is far from enough, and more "dream-making" capabilities are needed to convince target consumers.

For high-end users, it is necessary to have a beautiful appearance, but also to impress them in connotation, efficacy is the threshold, but they need a more perfect solution.

"'Dream making' is our job." In Lin Houzhi's view, the high-end luxury goods and basic consumer goods have completely different operating ideas. One of the key jobs of premium brands is to create consumers' desire for high-end haircare, rather than just telling them what they want.

From hand-picked camellia flowers from 50-year-old camellia trees in Brittany, France, cold brew technology, to a new look and replaceable liners, Kérastase Paris has upgraded its products in all aspects - in terms of basic care, Kérastase Paris is no longer limited to shampoos, conditioners and hair masks, but has developed different textures and targeted shampoos for different parts of the scalp and hair; At the level of care products, Kérastase Paris also focuses on essential oils, lotions and other care products.

And for dreamers, the real obstacle comes from visibility.

In Lin Houzhi's view, in today's market, the lack of visibility is fatal for high-end brands. For Kérastase Paris, how to make Kérastase paris popularity penetrate into the vast Chinese market is really a big test.

Covering high-end hair salons

However, if you want to raise the ceiling of the high-end cleaning and care market, the difficulty is not only in the product, but also in the education market.

According to the data, the market share of high-end products in the beauty hair care market is only 8%.

Therefore, Lin Houzhi always believes that if L'Oréal's professional hairdressing business wants to achieve higher growth, it must break through the 8% market share through sufficient market education and move towards a wider market coverage. It is precisely for this reason that for Lin Houzhi, who has been in the hairdressing business for 16 years at L'Oréal, although there are endless new products on the market, most of them are just involutions in the red sea, and have not created more new demand.

However, the essence of increasing new demand is not only to increase market share, but to improve consumers' refinement of the category. Women's daily skin care steps can range from water, cream, sunscreen to foundation, etc., while most people's shampoo steps are still only at the level of shampoo and conditioner, when most consumers can further evolve the degree of refinement of hair, then this market will no longer be limited to 8%.

If you want to better convince consumers, you need to take a multi-pronged approach. On the one hand, it is necessary to tell everyone from the level of communication that the scalp is both important and fragile - the scalp is second only to the eyelids in weakness, and the scalp is the fastest part of the human body, and the scalp ages 6 times faster than the skin on the face and 12 times that of the skin on the body. On the other hand, it is necessary to educate consumers more specifically and deeply through high-end hair salons and hairstylists.

To this end, Kérastase Paris has established a standardized system of cooperation with high-end hair salons. Through a comprehensive evaluation of the salon's store management capacity and the service level of the hairstylist, only stores that meet the requirements can enter the Kérastase Paris cooperation system.

At the same time, Kérastase Paris conducts annual training and audits of the service capabilities of stores and hairstylists in its partner stores. At present, Kérastase Paris has cooperated with nearly 1,500 domestic high-end hair salons.

However, as a key channel to build consumers' cognitive minds, the most critical part of the development of B-end business is to allow hairstylists to build trust with consumers.

As a non-standardized service format, people are the most critical and difficult part of the hairdressing business. To become an attractive hairstylist, you often need to have two basic skills: sufficient professionalism and an accurate grasp of consumer psychology.

In terms of professionalism, L'Oréal Professional Hair Products Division, where Kérastase works, teaches professional hairdressing techniques to hairstylists in partner salons through a series of courses such as hair cutting, hair coloring, and color master classes, and integrates L'Oréal PRO professional products into them. On the one hand, through the high-end hair salon channel, consumers can understand camellia essential oil and caviar care; On the other hand, it is necessary to lay out C-end home products to achieve the linkage between the brand and the product level, so as to achieve higher barriers.

From B-end store cooperation to hairstylist training, this is a long, complex and costly strategy. "It's very expensive to invest and operate a B-end hair salon." It takes at least three years to develop a full-fledged hairstylist, starting with how to use L'Oréal PRO's hair color creams, and it often takes another three years for hairstylists to build effective trust with consumers...... But for Lam, covering the high-end hair salon channel is an uncompromising development route, as long as the stores meet high-end standards, whether it is a first-tier or fourth-tier city, L'Oréal's professional hair products business will penetrate.

However, compared to how to find a high-end salon in a fourth-tier city that can be cooperated, how to maintain the existing position in the fiercely competitive first-tier city is the biggest challenge faced by Kérastase Paris.

After all, there are too many high-end hair salons in first-tier cities, and consumer needs are changing all the time.

Born in a high-end salon and growing up in the C-end, this idea has also become the product shaping idea of L'Oréal's professional hair products business line.

Since three years ago, L'Oréal PRO, another professional hair brand that belongs to L'Oréal's professional hair products department with Kérastase Paris, has also begun to go out of the hair salon and launch products for mass consumers, bringing hair technology products that can only be experienced in high-end salons to thousands of households, so that consumers can feel the technology and charm of professional hair products at home. At the same time, in order to highlight the professional salon DNA of L'Oréal PRO, L'Oréal PRO has opened two L'Oréal PRO global flagship salons in Shanghai and Guangzhou, emphasizing the professionalism of salon services.

As a new growth point for L'Oréal in the Chinese market, Kérastase Paris shoulders a heavy responsibility.

From the mediocre performance when he first took over 8 years ago, to the continuous growth of more than 10 times in 7-8 years, Lin Houzhi still needs to keep Kérastase Paris growing at double-digit rates. "There is no distinction between high-end and lower-end markets in my heart, as long as it is in China, they are all my consumers, and we are more concerned about whether we can let everyone know Kérastase Paris. As long as consumers desire to have, there is no question of consumption downgrading. (This article was first published on Titanium Media APP, author | Xie Xuan, editor - Fang Yu)