Burning Finance Presents
By | Cao Yang Zhang Lin
Edited by | Rao Xiafei
The Olympics may be over, but the winds of "Olympic Champion Nail Art" are still blowing from the Olympic champions.
A manicurist working in Beijing's Chaoyang District, near the China World Trade Center, told Burning Finance that "Yang Qian's same manicure" has become the store's most popular style in recent times. Prior to this, it was rare for multiple consumers to choose the same manicure in unison. Even if there is, most of them are "rice circle" young people in order to be as close as possible to their favorite beans, two or three people to do.
From 2013 onwards, contact with the nail industry, bamboo told Burning Finance, "Olympic champions with the same model of manicure" is the reason for the rapid circle, on the one hand, it is true that and the Olympic heat related, but the more critical reason is that this industry has been very popular in young people's circles. The reason is that this industry has always been very popular in the circle of young people.
As said by the bamboo, the eye of the professional version of the data show that China's existing "nail" related enterprises nearly 630,000. As of August 9, 2021, the number of new nail-related businesses in China this year alone (all businesses) is nearly 140,000, with an average of nearly 20,000 new businesses per month. The data further shows that the number of annual registrations of nail-related businesses in China has been on a steady upward trend over the past decade.
Source / Eye of the Sky
In fact, the development of the nail industry or the fire is not a thing of the past decade. Founded in 2001, Jinwei Nail has a history of 20 years. According to its official WeChat public number, it currently has 2000+ stores across the country. Its sub-brand Yilan Bell also has more than 1,000 stores nationwide.
With its establishment in the same year, there are nail brand LILY NAILS, from the Yaxiu Street 5 square meters of small store to start, positioning is Beijing high-end nail eyelash brand. In its official WeChat shows that there are currently 20 LILY NAILS stores*** retrievable in the popular Dianping. A year later, Liu Juan nail salon was established, with a "nail industry Hermes" said the salon is also loved by female celebrities, Angelababy, Tang Yan, Jia Jingwen, Gao Yuanyuan, etc. have gone to do nail care.
As the forerunners of the nail industry, these brands have also witnessed the progress of nail raw materials from the early nail polish to the current nail polish adhesive. While the materials have progressed, the unit price of nail art has also increased significantly.
A few dollars, a dozen dollars a bottle of nail polish has long been buried in the history of nail art, replaced by nearly a hundred dollars or even hundreds of dollars. In the popularity of Dianping search "nail", the popularity of the higher ranked stores, the lowest unit price of 195 yuan / person, up to 582 yuan / person.
Source / Dianping Burn Finance Screenshot
But even if the price per unit is getting more and more expensive, it will not affect the enthusiasm of consumers in the slightest. 90 Wang Jia told Burn Finance, the hand is their own "second face", usually hand film and other care has been a considerable expenditure, manicure is even more than just a few years ago. Expenditures, manicure is just needed. "Circle of friends sun map of the face shot, revealing the nail and phone case, naturally to embellish some."
Wang Jia started doing nail art from college. "Wudaokou Clothing Market was our nail camp at that time, seems to be the fourth floor is almost all do nail and eyelashes, then 60 yuan can do a solid color nail, my roommate and I almost once a month to do." After work, Wang Jia is getting busier and busier, but the habit of regular manicures has not changed at all.
The rapid development of Internet social platforms has also brought new opportunities for nail art. "My roommate and I often plant different styles in Shake, Xiaohongshu and Weibo, or in our circle of friends, and then go to do the same style." Wang Jia now do the style is basically "so-and-so same style".
However, despite the growing popularity of nail art, it is difficult to form a scale. Currently, there are not many large-scale nail companies, in addition to Lily nails, Liu Juan nail salon and other earlier established nail companies, the larger scale is the O2O platform beaver home, in addition, more small independent studio.
"The main reason why it is difficult to form a scale of nail art is that the technical threshold is low and it is difficult to form barriers." Bamboo bluntly, the nail industry looks "profiteering", but want to large-scale "gold", is not easy.
Today, nail art has long been one of the ways for young people to show themselves. The shape, color and material more and more diversified nail, but also let a lot of people and practitioners of beauty called "nail circle also began to 'involution'."
During the Olympics, 95 Miao Miao watched several live events, was the first gold in China's Yang Qian circled the powder, more grass seeded the sister's pink baroque manicure. "I had a hunch that this manicure was going to be fire, and as expected, the next day I went online to search for the Olympic champion with the same manicure, there has been a young lady released the seeding text, and there are many nail salons have launched the same model, the price ranges from 160 yuan to 480 yuan."
The love of beauty Miao Miao of course can not lag behind, decisively went to do and Yang Qian the same models of baroque retro nail. "A *** do an hour and a half, spent 299 yuan, because I am partial yellow skin, not suitable for doing and sister of the same tender pink, in the nail technician's recommendation to choose the right color, but the style and sister exactly the same." Miao Miao said, the reason why to get the Olympic champion with the same style, in addition to feel really good-looking, but also want to dip into the Olympic champion's joy.
Miao Miao's "nail history" can be traced back to the middle school period. However, at that time, because of the restrictions of the school, can only be done during the summer and winter vacations. "Around 2016, French manicure was particularly popular, I deliberately saved up my pocket money to do the French white edge, the result was spat out by my own mother like malnutrition."
In Miao Miao's opinion, the nail industry styles are pushing the boundaries very quickly because young people like to chase the new. "In addition to the French has been popular, frosted, anti-French, gradient, laser, splicing, ink wind, metal wind and so on have also been popular. Aurora was big again last year, and this summer the shell wind is blowing again." Whenever a new model, Miao Miao always can not help but taste.
Wang Jia told Ignite Finance, when the university do nail, mostly through microblogging to understand the new nail pattern, or directly to the store to see samples to choose the style. "Now the little red book and jittery tone on the picture of the blogger is particularly large, see the favorite pattern I will first collection, choose the opportunity to send to the nail technician, and then about each other are convenient time to do."
In addition to choosing a nail salon close to her office, sometimes she also booked home services according to her schedule. "Getting a manicure is getting easier and faster now. Before the nail polish baking lamp to shine for a minute, but now 15 seconds can be done. I feel like the materials used are also getting more environmentally friendly, there's no pungent odor at all anymore."
00 after the small fish every day in her head is full of wild ideas, in her view, everything can be nail art, and there is nothing that can be difficult to defeat the manicurist. "I never collect celebrities or Netflix same style, my manicure is to have personality, to be different." She once took a cup of milk tea into the store and asked the nail technician to do a milk tea same style. "That cup of milk tea has a high face value, I just want to do a good-looking manicure, take a picture of the milk tea and sunshine."
The little fish said that the nail technician was particularly calm, communicated the style and began to do, the effect is exactly what she wanted. "Nail technician Miss said like her like personalized customization of a lot of consumers, there is a direct request for clothes with the same paragraph, pets with the same paragraph, and even notepads with the same paragraph."
As a nail technician who has been in the business for seven years, Minnie has felt the trend of consumer demand for personalization. "For nail technicians, technology is the foundation of life." Minnie said to Burning Finance, on the one hand, good technology nail technician to get the recognition of consumers, for the nail store to bring traffic; on the other hand, this line of training people is not easy, serious brain drain, mature nail technician can get a good salary.
Minnie said that in the past seven years, her biggest feeling is that the social status of nail technicians and wages are gradually rising. "When I first joined the profession, my salary was only 3,000 yuan, and now my monthly salary is over 10,000 yuan." Minnie is a child from the countryside, only junior high school education, in order to survive in a big city like Beijing, she once worked as a waitress and a nanny. "The threshold of this line is low, I entered the industry because I do not understand the market, found a training organization, spent 5,000 yuan on a 10-day training course. In fact, some chains also have the corresponding training courses, cheaper, and some free training to work against learning."
Today, Minnie feels that her skills, capital, and clientele have accumulated about the same. "After so many years of working for being beaten, I'm planning to be a boss." Minnie said that opening her own nail salon has been put on the agenda.
From the popularization of the concept, to the industry taking shape, to the ever-expanding market, the nail industry, which has been in China since 1995, is still one of the more promising growth areas in the entire beauty industry, even though it has been in the country for 26 years.
Meituan released the "China Life Beauty Industry Development Report 2020", pointing out that, as an important service industry of "her economy" and "value economy", the scale of the consumer population in the life beauty service industry continues to expand, supporting the development of the whole industry. The report points out that as an important service industry of "her economy" and "face value economy", the scale of consumer population in the life beauty service industry continues to expand, supporting the development of the whole industry. The consumption data of active users of Meituan Liren shows that hairdressing, beauty salon and nail salon occupy the top three positions in online consumption, accounting for 57.2%, 21% and 17.5% respectively, and female users will account for 73% of the total in 2020, with the highest proportion of people aged 21-30 years old.
For a long time, the main scenario of nail service is that consumers enter the store to receive services, and many small stores rely on consumers to do card pre-deposit to obtain cash flow and maintain the repurchase rate.
"Around 2015, Beijing's nail stores are particularly hot, a supermarket next to the nail store is only a few square meters, but every day there are a lot of people queuing up to do nails." Xiaoran is the nail store opened in 2015, a typical "store in the store" model, she and her friends together rented a high-end district of Beijing East Fourth Ring Road, the bottom of the store, a small self-built Loft rent of 8,000 yuan per month, the first floor is a friend's clothing store, the second floor is Xiaoran's nail store.
Xiao Ran introduced to the burning finance, nail store opening costs are low, their own start-up capital of less than 60,000 yuan. "Zhu Shi Kou has a beauty salon wholesale market, you just say open nail store, the clerk will immediately give you a complete set of equipment, from equipment to materials basically no expensive things. Pay half a year's rent, hire a manicurist, the store opened up." In order to return to the capital as soon as possible, Xiaoran's store also launched a membership card, pre-deposit 2000 yuan, every time you can do 20% off.
With the continuous development and progress of the nail industry, nail salons began to develop from a single nail service to a diverse range of integrated services, including nail, hand and foot care, makeup, image design, clothing and so on. Xiao Ran also discussed with friends to change the idea, and called on a friend to do photography, the small store upgraded to a diversified comprehensive store, but because of the site selection and other issues, and ultimately did not continue to operate.
At the same time, a number of door-to-door services to provide the rise of the nail platform, extending the nail consumer scene. 2014 was born a group of beaver home as the representative of the O2O brand. As the first domestic door-to-door beauty industry platform, beaver home door-to-door nail as an entry point, change the past people looking for service mode, let the service to find people, redefined the mobile Internet era beauty industry industry industry model. Now the business has been expanded to beauty, eyelashes, hand and foot care, makeup styling, hair, fitness and other "pan-beauty" field.
A nail industry insider told Burning Finance that before the creation of Beaver, nail technicians were dependent on the store, and the money paid by the customer had to go through the boss first, after deducting the store rent and other costs, before it could flow into the pockets of the nail technicians. The Beaver family, on the other hand, has promised from the beginning "never to collect commission from nail technicians", which has triggered a wave of nail technicians leaving the business in a short period of time and turning to the Beaver family to register as independent nail technicians.
The bamboo is a member of the wave of departures. It told Burning Finance that around 2015, she quit her job as a nail technician at the store and registered with Beaver, and then began to run around various urban areas in Beijing every day. "At that time, this kind of door-to-door nail service order is particularly large, I almost every day is full of appointments." Shanzhu said, his monthly income at that time also more than 20,000 yuan, but also because too busy, and nail time need to keep their heads down, Shanzhu fell cervical spondylosis, in the condition of the seriousness of the time, it had to give up their favorite industry.
Photo / Weibo @河狸家
At the same time that Mangosteen was becoming an independent nail technician, Fawn was also entering the industry. But the biggest reason for her to choose this industry is that "the working time is more free and unrestrained". Xiaolu told Burning Finance that she also registered for the Beaver account, and at that time, she posted some nail styles on the platform for consumers to choose from. But slowly, with more and more people sharing nail art on the social platform, simply a few styles can no longer satisfy consumers. More consumers began to take the initiative to bring nail art fancy to ask to do the same style, in this way, simply rely on the platform or online communication is very easy to produce differences, in order to better avoid this problem, deer set up their own nail studio.
Deer said that the nail industry is actually a one-time investment, especially equipment and so on. Subsequent product stocking, in fact, mainly into some of the current popular styles need accessories, not too much need for big overhead. "Although the cost investment is not high, but the nail technician to pay a lot of time and energy, but also need to constantly improve their skills."
Fawn said bluntly that in the seven years since she started practicing, if we really say the biggest change in the whole industry, it's that "there are fewer and fewer craftsmen." Deer added, the previous nail is basically handmade, but now there are many, many nail aids on the market. But if you really want to keep their consumers, you still need excellent nail technology.
As Deer said, for store owners, the high mobility of nail technicians and rising labor costs have become an important problem to be solved in the operation. Thus, the intelligent nail machine class of digital equipment came into being, become the nail industry efficiency tools. Compared to the traditional artificial nail, the use of machines, a nail painting session time from 2-3 hours shortened to about 20 seconds, reducing the cost of the user experience, but also improve the efficiency of the nail store; while no longer subject to the level of nail technician limitations, can help consumers to achieve personalized manicure, but also make the nail store expansion without the need to be subjected to human talent.
In addition to the evolution of the equipment, in the consumer demand continues to improve the drive, the nail industry was born in addition to stickers and customized models of nails and other derivative business.
In April last year, the Palace Cultural Creation launched a "Begonia Palace cat around the finger - nail stickers", patterned around the Forbidden City in the "imperial cat group" design, the product on-line soon, by a crowd of exquisite girl coaxing. The product was coveted by a group of exquisite girls soon after it was launched. Li Jiaqi and Viya Taobao head anchor have also brought goods over the nail.
Another derivative of "wearing armor" is not strictly speaking a new species, once in a small store such as the famous Yuping, 10-20 yuan can buy a set of wearing armor. Now, in the consumer upgrading, customized wearing armor again fire up, in the small red book search "wearing armor", related notes more than 11 million.
Unlike plastic nails made on an assembly line, customized nails are made by shopkeepers who ask consumers to provide nail size data and draw them according to their needs, with prices ranging from $60 to several hundred dollars.
"Because wearable nails can be reused and are also easy to match with different clothing shapes, customized nails solve the problem of wearing comfort and fit, which meets the needs of consumers, and are therefore quite popular among consumers." Ah Hua, a former nail technician, quit her job at a nail salon in order to take care of her young children and make and sell her own handmade wearable nails. "The pricing of customized nails is usually not too high because there are less costs such as rent, utilities and so on. Generally sellers sell on Little Red Book, Taobao, Jitterbug, Shutterbug and Idle Fish."
Although it is to rely on the craft to make money, but A flower still feel that the threshold of wearing nails is relatively low, "Doing this line of work of the majority of novices, because it is not a face-to-face display of craftsmanship, everyone dares to call themselves a manicurist." For the future development of the wear nail industry, A flower is not too optimistic, "the current price war is more serious, and most of the individual workshop form of existence, it is difficult to scale."
If the microblogging is the origin of the nail enthusiasts "sun" nails, then today's social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, short videos, and other social media platforms, give these enthusiasts as well as the business of a greater sharing space.
In Xiaohongshu search "nail", related notes more than 4.32 million, just search "nail polish" in the nail a category, there are more than 90,000 + related notes. In addition, when searching for the keyword "nails", more than 1.18 million notes popped up, almost all of them are nail color, nail style to share and match.
Jitterbug is full of nail-related bloggers with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. After reviewing the videos posted by the first few bloggers, Ignite Finance found that the content was similar, basically centered around "nail tutorials," "holiday nails," "white nails," and so on. And so on.
The "2019 Racer Live Ecology Report" released by the Racer Big Data Research Institute is even more direct, pointing out that the four major contents of the fashion live broadcasts are skin care, makeup, hair and nails, which have the highest number of anchors and total number of comments, and the highest total amount of gifts received.
A engaged in nail work for many years, a chain of nail brand stores store manager Luo Xi told Burning Finance, whether it is like a manicure of people or nail stores, with "ubiquitous" to describe today's nail industry is not exaggerated, with dozens of, hundreds or even thousands of stores of the nail brand.
But even such a seemingly mature market, so far there is still not a dominant or its out of the circle of the nail brand.
Eye of the sky shows that the country **** there are 12 business scope or business name contains nail, and listed companies, but in these 12 companies are basically included in the nail business of the integrated company, and we are not familiar with the day-to-day, such as the "into the Wei Nail", "Lily Nails", "Yue - fingertips", "love eyelashes", "Liu Juan nail" and other brands. brands.
Luo Xi analyzed that the reason why it is difficult to make the nail industry bigger is that, on the one hand, although the nail technician's skills and craftsmanship are very important, the design and technology of the nails itself can not be a brand's competitive barriers.
On the contrary, the mobility of nail technicians is very large, which increases the cost of brand operation and management, but this seems to be the most basic "personnel management" to a large extent difficult to be resolved. The store manager said, looking at the nail industry nearly 20 years of development, in fact, most of the practitioners are young women, they chose the industry's biggest reason is their own pursuit of beauty and the industry's freedom. But it is precisely this freedom that has caused the loss of personnel.
Photo / microblog @beaver
Luo Xi added, trapped in the nail industry is difficult to scale another major problem is standardization. Whether it's the staff or the style of the nails, it's an industry that's almost impossible to manage in a standardized way, which can be seen in the fate of nail O2O platforms Dudu Nail and Beaver.
Eye of the sky information shows that the doodle nail is subordinate to the Beijing Dwarf Technology Co. However, just 2 years later, Tootsie Nail was acquired by 58 to home in 2016 in the accelerated reshuffle of O2O in the beauty industry.
"Nail salon violent profiteering? Full case analysis of Cretina, into the Wei, Beaver, InNail, nail help ... for you to reveal the nail cross-industry war of chaos" article analyzed that doodle nail the most important piece of innovation is the hope of standardized management of nail technicians, but unified pricing and management, which makes excellent nail technicians no possibility of premium, doodle nail quickly fell.
The same O2O platform, but adhere to the C2C model of the beaver home to avoid the industry shuffle. According to the information from the eye of the sky, Beaver House, which was founded 2 months earlier than Dudu Nail, has completed 6 rounds of financing totaling hundreds of millions of RMB. Its most recent financing occurred on August 25, 2020, from Alibaba hundreds of millions of yuan of strategic financing.
Zhong Ping, CEO of Beaver Home, said, "The introduction of Ali's investment has undoubtedly deepened the partnership between the two sides, and more importantly, Beaver Home's strategy has the opportunity to extend beyond door-to-door services and synergize with Ali's new retail strategy, and the two sides have ushered in a new development opportunity in the field of beauty industry services*** together. "
It is worth noting that Beaver has long been a comprehensive platform for beauty and nail care, which further supports the "single nail brand is difficult to do big" thesis mentioned in the above article. In fact, as early as 2019, the beaver family has already cooperated with Alibaba's box stores to launch offline experience activities to attract customers around the store.
Photo / Visual China
Luo Xi told Burning Finance that the reason behind the cooperation between Beaver and Box Office and its easy to understand. While the skill of the nail technician is important, what ultimately determines a consumer's decision to go into a nail salon is the distance, the "proximity principle"," he said. It's just a matter of finding a nail salon that is close to your home, or your workplace, or your place of study.
Of course, this uniqueness of the nail industry has also allowed it to win a place in the fight for local life in the Internet giant. Public information shows that as early as 2015, Meituan went online to include 12 subcategories of beauty business such as hair, beauty, nail, medical beauty and makeup.
Now, "nail and eyelashes" is still in the second place in the beauty section of Meituan. In the "public comment list" published by the public comment of the American group, "nail and eyelash" has a separate list.
Luo Xi told Burning Finance that although it is not uncommon to see hundreds of stores and nearly 1,000 nail chain brands, most of them are based on the franchise model, although there are directly managed stores, but relatively less. The biggest drawback of the franchise model is that the management is chaotic, the level of practitioners is uneven. And in the Z generation gradually become the main force of nail consumers, social media has become the carrier of nail style, whether it is the brand or store, or nail technician, the challenge will undoubtedly be greater.
References:
"Beaver House receives hundreds of millions of dollars in strategic investment from Ali, with China Renaissance acting as the exclusive financial advisor | China Renaissance Transactions", source, China Renaissance.
"Nail salon violent profiteering? Full case analysis of Cretina, into the Wei, Beaver, InNail, nail help ... ... for you to reveal the nail cross-industry war of chaos ", source, egg to solve entrepreneurship.
*The title image and some of the accompanying pictures are from unsplash. Miao Miao, Wang Jia, Xiaoyu, Xiaoran, Shanzhu, Xiaoxu, Luo Xi are all pseudonyms in the article.