Prestige Beauty Grows 21% in China in 2011

On the heels of a report on the significant growth of Internet beauty purchases in China, research by The NPD Group, Inc. shows that in 2011, total prestige beauty in China increased 21% versus 2010. The skin care and makeup categories each showed healthy growth of 23% and 17%, respectively.

In prestige skin care, all the segments (face essence, face moisturizer, face basic care, eye, sun treatment, body, and all other: hair, lip, nail, etc.) had steady growth, with face essence (+25%) and moisturizer (+21%) taking the lead by capturing nearly half of skin care sales.

By attribute, anti-aging continued to play as the driving engine by taking half of the skin care category sales and posting a robust growth of nearly 27% in 2011, compared to 2010. Hydrating (+19%) and whitening (+15%) skin care also played a big role in category growth.

In prestige makeup, the face segment captured 59% of the category’s dollar share and increased 18% in dollar sales from 2010. Products that make the face look lighter and smoother, like foundation and makeup base, continued to play a key role in China. Foundation and makeup base led the face category, up 24% and 30%, respectively.

In addition to face products, lip helped drive the growth in makeup, up 26.5% in 2011. Lipstick sales grew 31% and lip gloss posted a 22% increase. On the other hand, sales of eye products were soft (up 6%) due to mascara’s sharp decline of -3% in dollars and the slower paced sales of eye shadow and eye liner.

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