In The Age Of Selfie Economy, How Does 4Inlook Dig Into Meitong Circuit?

In recent years, with the increase of residents' disposable income and the growth of new generation of consumers, beauty economy has become a consumption boom. Medical cosmetology, weight loss and fitness, beauty and skin care are subdivided into racetracks, which burst out innovative vitality.

As a psychological window, the eyes are the focus of attention of beauty lovers. Meitong is popular among more and more young people because of its dual properties of contact lens function and color makeup effect. Behind the growth of demand, the players in Meitong industry are gradually enriched, including not only traditional giants such as Johnson & Johnson, boswellen and Alcon, but also many start-up companies entering the board and gaining the favor of capital.

For example, moody, which launched its product in January this year, has obtained two rounds of investment totaling 60 million yuan. Among them, the angel round is led by hillhood venture capital and followed by plum blossom venture capital. Round a is led by Jingwei China, followed by source capital, and continuously added by hillhood venture capital. Cofancy candy, which officially launched Meitong products online in March this year, also received tens of millions of angel round financing from Zhenge fund and Sequoia China.

In this increasingly competitive industry, 4inbook is the player who forms a certain first mover advantage. Founded in 2007, the company owns hypersize, richangel, popmagic and other brands. After years of deep cultivation, 4inbook has formed a certain brand scale online and offline. Through the rapid expansion of the core shopping centers in the first and second tier cities in China to more than 300 Meitong stores in the past three years, 4inlook has become a leading and cutting-edge brand in the industry in Meitong subdivision category, and has rapidly established brand awareness in the minds of consumers.

Last year, the sales volume of 4inbook exceeded 300 million yuan, which is expected to double this year. At the same time, 4inbook has also obtained investment from Hutong fund, XingTuo capital and Honghui capital in recent two years. Why does 4inbook, which has been deeply cultivated in Meitong for many years, choose to borrow capital to expand its development at this stage? After forming a certain volume, how will it be arranged in the future?

From self built website to Omni channel development

COODY, chief operating officer of 4inlook, recalled to 21st century economic reporter that in early 2000, the Internet was just on the rise. At that time, the team was a group of friends, and the first thing they wanted to do was start a business project similar to Facebook. However, due to the emergence and rapid development of the campus network, the team tried to change the track and started new businesses in other fields. Therefore, from the start-up, 4inbook team has always had a strong Internet gene, and has experienced several waves of e-commerce development.

At that time, the Internet fast fashion brand VANCL was developing rapidly, and brand advertising swept the streets and lanes of Shanghai. In this case, the majority of the members of the e-commerce group are interested in the field of e-commerce. However, it is the chance of the whole team of men to start a business in nlik.

"First of all, contact lenses are very small and convenient for express delivery. Second, this is a standard product. You don't need to measure the distance like frame glasses. You only need to know the degree of glasses to buy. Third, there were no outstanding brands in the industry at that time. " Said COODY.

At the beginning of the company's establishment, 4inbook developed through independent development of B2C website, self built ERP system, page design and website promotion were also solved by the team. Later, with the rise of e-commerce platforms such as Jingdong and tmall, the traffic gradually shifted from independent websites to integrated e-commerce platforms and mobile terminals. 4inbook chose to follow the trend, abandoning B2C websites and entering e-commerce platforms.

In 2016, the company opened its tmall flagship store by positioning its sub brand popmagic, which is more in line with Taobao's crowd. Meanwhile, it opened its 4inlook flagship store in August 2019. As soon as the 4inbook flagship store was launched, it became the fastest growing store of tmall Meitong category in the whole year. As of 618 promotion in 2020, the company occupied two seats in the top three flagship stores of tmall Meitong category.

At the same time, the company began to explore offline stores in 2015. According to COODY, the original intention of opening offline stores is to get close to users and provide users with a platform to experience products, without excessive sales targets. But unexpectedly, offline stores are welcomed by users, and bring good conversion effect.

"After experiencing the products, offline consumers are willing to accept products with a slightly higher customer price than online ones, and may buy a lot of them at one time. Therefore, online consumers will be more price sensitive." COODY explains. As a result, 4inbook has developed into an online and offline Omni channel brand.

In the first half of this year, due to epidemic factors, many offline stores were greatly impacted. In the case of many competing products choosing to close offline stores, 4inbook still chooses to insist. "Good brands go against the trend. When others give up, they will win more market opportunities. " Said COODY. In August, the monthly sales of 4inbook's offline stores have returned to the same level of last year. At the same time, the company's online sales volume has been growing, and the repurchase rate has even reached more than 50%.

Reforming the supply chain and consolidating the head advantage

In the first ten years of 4inbook development, the company mainly used its own funds to start businesses. In 2017, with the change of market competition pattern, 4inbook once again embraced the change and decided to introduce venture capital to support the rapid development of the company.

"The market structure is always changing dynamically, we choose to constantly adapt to the new environment." Said COODY. Just like giving up B2C website and choosing to settle in tmall, there is no hope for the future if the company does not change. For 4inbook, the team's ambition is not only to make a little money, but also to make the company bigger and better, which really needs the help of capital. At the same time, if 4inbook does not take the investment and the competitors take the investment, the company may gradually lose the first mover advantage in the competition.

From 2018 to 2020, 4inlook has successively completed the angel round, round a and round a + financing, with investors including tiger children's fund, XingTuo capital, etc.

Talking about the core logic of investing in 4inlook, Liu Zehui, founder partner of XingTuo capital, told the 21st century economic report that the team has been paying close attention to the competition in the consumption field, and the iteration of the crowd has brought about the emergence of new categories in the consumption field and the upgrading of traditional categories. Meitong is one of them.

"What young people mean, what investors want, their preferences are our investment orientation." Liu Zehui said that there are now three major investment themes, "love beauty, fear of death and loneliness", which are the core needs of young consumers. From the big logic point of view, beauty pupil is also a kind of beauty economy.

Beautiful pupil and make-up are very similar, both experienced the functional to decorative change. In the past, Meitong was more concerned by the myopia group, and it was a functional product needed for vision correction. Now, Meitong users are facing all groups, paying attention to the functions of decoration and make-up, preferring to use daily throwing products, and the attributes of FMCG products are becoming more and more obvious. Different mood, different occasions have different colors of the beautiful pupil matching, also gave birth to a huge market demand.

"Meitong category can support a market scale of 10 billion yuan. Such a competition can't be the only one, and it needs a hundred flowers to blossom. At the same time, from a horizontal perspective, eye shadow and cosmetics are also the future development direction of Meitong company Liu Zehui said.

The main reason why we chose to invest in 4inbook is that the company is a pioneer in the industry and has formed competitiveness through online and offline channels.

At present, 4inbook is in the latest round of financing, in order to consolidate 4inbook's leading position in the industry. COODY revealed that the original brand production lines are concentrated in South Korea and Taiwan, and it will take at least six months to run in from design proofing to product production. At present, most brands do not have the ability to independently design products, and the products can not quickly follow the market.

For this reason, 4inbook took the lead in deepening the transformation of the supply chain this year, and established 4inbook overseas design laboratory. Through the popular direction of the Japanese and Korean market and the popular elements loved by domestic consumers, more and more young consumers' favorite products were created. At the same time, accelerate the time from product design to market.

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