From "user scale" to "wallet share", Tmall Beauty's growth logic has changed.

On August 31st, the Tmall Golden Makeup Awards were held in Shanghai. This year, Tmall shifted its focus to a more practical question: with consumers largely embracing online shopping, where can beauty brands find growth opportunities?

Ji Yun, General Manager of FMCG and Tmall Luxury at Taotian Group, stated at the event that future brand growth will no longer primarily stem from increased user base, but rather from the shift in consumer spending power. Looking ahead to the next decade, the biggest challenge for every brand is breaking through category boundaries.

This means that Tmall Beauty's operational focus is shifting. In the past, the platform and brands mainly acquired more traffic and new customers through advertising, promotions, and creating blockbuster products; as user growth slows down, the operational goal is shifting towards increasing the purchase frequency, category coverage, and lifetime value of the same consumer.

Jiyun believes that consumers' consumption choices are not determined by fixed identity labels.

The same person may adopt different consumption strategies in different categories and scenarios: pursuing cost-effectiveness in daily necessities, while being willing to pay a premium for brand, quality and experience in interest areas such as beauty, fragrance or sports.

Brands should not just look for a general "high-spending population," but rather for consumers' upgrade needs that emerge at specific times, in specific categories, and in specific scenarios.

This year, the number of 88VIP users on Tmall's FMCG sector has exceeded 60 million, with new member sales increasing by over 30% and repeat purchases by over 10%. The platform aims to leverage the synergy between brand members and 88VIP to transform a single transaction into a sustainable user asset.

To further expand consumers' spending power, Tmall integrated its beauty and personal care teams this year, driving brands to shift from single best-selling products and single categories to a multi-category product matrix.

Tmall believes that cross-category operations can help brands reduce repeat customer acquisition costs and enter more aspects of consumers' lives. Brands such as L'Occitane and Jo Malone have already expanded into both the beauty and personal care categories.

Search, live streaming, and membership systems constitute the main links of this business model. After brands complete content seeding on external platforms, consumers often return to Tmall to search and make purchases. In the first half of the year, the number of users returning to search after product seeding increased by more than 30% year-on-year, and live streaming by core merchants increased by more than 20%. After the purchase, brands then use the membership system to drive repeat purchases and purchases of related categories.

For example, pet-friendly household detergents are gaining popularity, women's sports activities require customized makeup and sun protection products, and emerging sports such as peakball and HYROX are opening up new growth opportunities in the personal care industry.

AI plays a more supporting role in this process. Tmall has already used AI for consumer shopping guidance and merchant management tools, and combined with user insights and trend recognition, it has brought some capabilities forward to product definition and new product development.

Kefumei's Soft Focus Essence was co-created based on Tmall consumer insights and became a top-selling product with sales exceeding 10 million RMB in its first month. Kerastase's "Golden Night Honey" was launched on Tmall, driving a 61% year-on-year increase in the brand's sales during the 618 shopping festival. Currently, there are over 1,000 "Tmall Exclusive" products.

Data released this year shows that it's not just emerging brands that have regained growth. From January to July this year, L'Oréal, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido Group all achieved double-digit growth on Tmall; among the top 20 brands in terms of transaction volume, 15 achieved double-digit growth, with brands such as Estée Lauder, SkinCeuticals, Helena Rubinstein, Clarins, and Guerlain experiencing year-on-year growth of over 50%.

Jiyun attributes this round of growth to a renewed focus on brand power, product strength, and user experience. Compared to the past reliance on a single marketing "trick" or a blockbuster product to open up the market, Tmall hopes that brands will build comprehensive capabilities covering products, supply chain, membership, and multi-category operations.

For Tmall, whether it can reuse this operational capability across more brands and categories will determine the platform's growth potential in a competitive environment.

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