With the continuous improvement of people's living standards, skin care has become a topic of concern to everyone. Not only women, but also many men have joined the field of beauty consumption, setting off a new round of beauty economy.

According to Euromonitor data, the current scale of my country's cosmetics market is about 500 billion yuan, maintaining a double-digit growth rate, and it is the second largest cosmetics consumer in the world. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, even in the first nine months of 2020, affected by the epidemic, the retail sales of cosmetics in units above the designated size still achieved a year-on-year increase of 4.5%.

According to the forecast of iiMedia Consulting, the scale of China's cosmetics market is expected to reach 478.1 billion yuan in 2021. The output of cosmetics in China has shown a growth trend in the past six years, and it is expected that the output will reach 1.99 million tons this year. iiMedia analysts believe that according to this trend, China will become an important production base and consumer market for the world's cosmetics industry in the future.

But behind the prosperity of the market, there are many chaos in the industry such as shoddy, counterfeit, and unknown sources. How to trace the source channels of cosmetics and skin care products, and how to track logistics in real time, so that consumers can buy and use with confidence, have become the focus of the industry.

Last year, the British beauty network CultBeauty reached a cooperation with the blockchain business service platform Provenance, aiming to use blockchain technology to improve the transparency of beauty products and highlight the brand's environmental protection concept and ethics.

In addition, the perfume product lines of famous luxury brands LouisVuitton and Dior have also begun to introduce blockchain technology. On May 17 last year, LVMH Group launched the first luxury blockchain platform Aura, which aims to help consumers better track the source of luxury goods and verify their authenticity.

Looking back to China, the third-generation pearl white series of the domestic brand Ou Shiman also uses blockchain technology, which is the first blockchain product in the field of Chinese cosmetics. By scanning the QR code of the product, users can query the product blockchain certificate and trace the source of product production.

As a new generation of disruptive technology, the blockchain may become a "breaker" that breaks through the pain points of the cosmetics industry and optimizes the industrial environment.

The industry is full of chaos, and the three major pain points need to be solved urgently

For a long time, cosmetics have been hailed as a "profiteering" industry. On the one hand, the transparency of the industry is low, and it has been criticized that buying skin care products is paying "IQ tax"; on the other hand, marketing costs account for a relatively high proportion, while product quality is uneven, and there is a lack of effective industry supervision; coupled with the market space of the entire industry Huge, lucrative, and extremely low barriers to entry, this also makes counterfeiters focus on this, making the entire cosmetics industry chaotic.

First of all, the cosmetics industry is rampant with counterfeit and fake products, and the quality of products is uneven.It happens from time to time that some counterfeiters shoddy good ones, which not only bring irreparable losses to consumers, but also immeasurable damage to the reputation of the entire industry. Some cosmetics even have potential safety hazards. Raw materials cannot be traced through multi-level circulation. Consumers have adverse reactions such as allergies and discomfort after use, and even disfigurement in severe cases.

Second, the trust system needs to be reconstructed urgently.For a long time, the brand side and the channel provider have been separated from each other, and they have not been able to monitor each channel in a timely and effective manner, resulting in the brand side being unable to accurately obtain first-hand data on retail outlets. In addition, some channels are also prone to "baiting", channeling and counterfeiting, which have seriously affected consumers' trust in brands. The media has repeatedly reported that some e-commerce channels use counterfeit cosmetics and use low-price strategies to attract consumers, but what consumers buy are counterfeit products.

Finally, in this product chain, the participation of consumers is extremely low.The traditional anti-counterfeiting query process, due to the complexity of the operation and the long process chain, leads to low consumer participation, poor interactive experience, weak brand stickiness, and lack of trust.

With the upgrading of consumption and the gradual enhancement of consumer protection awareness, consumers are increasingly calling for the disclosure of cosmetics information. Only by providing consumers with products with production records, information that can be queried, and quality that can be traced can we gain the trust and love of consumers. The transparency and traceability of product information has become one of the key development directions of the cosmetics industry in the future.

Reduce "beauty cost", blockchain empowers "beauty economy"

Using blockchain technology, combined with Internet of Things technology, can store the key data of cosmetic raw material procurement, production and processing, product packaging, transportation and warehousing, quality inspection, terminal sales and other links in the underlying platform of blockchain. Ensure that the source of the full-link information of cosmetics can be traced, the whereabouts can be traced, the responsibility can be investigated, and the product can be recalled.

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Establish a supervision mechanism to ensure quality and safety

Thanks to the rapid development of the Internet and the sudden emergence of the Internet celebrity economy, the cosmetics industry has become a real "Internet celebrity". Under the joint effect of planting grass on social platforms, online celebrity live streaming and fancy promotions on e-commerce platforms, China's cosmetics industry has embarked on a fast track of rapid development. Although these new channels and platforms have brought opportunities to cosmetics companies, the corresponding regulatory mechanisms have not "caught up". How to ensure the quality and safety of cosmetics and improve consumer trust has become a top priority.

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Reconstruct the trust system and spread brand value

The unique distributed ledger technology of the blockchain can use the content data generated by each node in the field of cosmetics production and sales to build an industry alliance chain, thereby realizing the transfer of value. Through asymmetric encryption authentication means and peer-to-peer network architecture, the cosmetics industry can no longer rely on traditional offline agencies. This reconstruction of the credit paradigm is expected to become an important underlying technology for cosmetics to go digital.

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Reduce costs and increase efficiency, boosting the healthy development of the industry

Blockchain technology helps all aspects of the cosmetics industry chain to reduce agency costs, improve post-transaction processing efficiency, and even completely replace the existing system. After the transaction is executed, programmatic authentication can effectively reduce intermediate links, replace human operations, and reduce processing costs and error risks.

In terms of efficiency, the verification, delivery, and recording of cosmetics can be realized on the blockchain, and all parties involved can verify together. The transaction information is completely traceable and cannot be tampered with, and effective industry data can be opened to supervision, which is helpful Construct new industry norms and promote the healthy development of the cosmetics industry.

Scenario landing, empowering the digital transformation of the physical industry

As a next-generation disruptive technology comparable to steam engines, electricity, and the Internet, blockchain may trigger a huge change in the real economy. Practitioners in the cosmetics industry should prepare in advance to meet a new round of opportunities and challenges. At present, from large European and American cosmetics groups to domestic cosmetics upstarts, many brands have begun to test the waters of blockchain × cosmetics, further broadening and enriching the application scenarios of blockchain technology in the cosmetics industry.

As an innovator in the blockchain industry, Wangchain Technology has been committed to the integration and interoperability of blockchain technology and traditional industries, and strives to realize the large-scale and scene-based application of emerging technologies. In the future, Wanglian Technology will take it as its mission to solve the difficulties and pain points in the development process of the cosmetics industry, and continue to empower the digital transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.