Behind The Rise Of "National Tide": How Does Qingsong Fund Invest In "Beautiful" Business

The impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic still remains, but the pursuit of "beauty" by capital has not slowed down significantly.

Since March this year, girlcult has made equity changes, introduced IDG investment, completed the d-round financing of 100 million US dollars led by Tiger Global Fund, Yanli, a cosmetics chain, welcomed Huaping Tencent and other important shareholders, and Beaver family obtained a new round of hundreds of millions of yuan investment from Alibaba.

"We are still optimistic about the opportunity of" national tide. " In an exclusive interview in August this year, Dong Zhanbin, founding partner of Qingsong fund, told the 21st century economic report that when a new generation of consumers with more confidence in national culture meet high-quality and good taste of domestic products, the local consumer market will usher in the emergence of super brands in many fields.

Dong Zhanbin's career as a professional investor began in the investment department of Shanda group. In 2012, he and Liu Xiaosong and Su Wei jointly established Qingsong fund, which focuses on early investment, focusing on investment in culture and education, large consumption, innovative technology and application.

In recent years, the iron triangle of Qingsong fund has invested a number of local consumer brands related to "Mei" and "Hao". Since this year, the representative cases include the brand of new style bean products "moutiao", chaoqu social e-commerce platform "Meikai", and Turkey electric appliances founded by Wang Qiang, the former CTO of boss electric appliances.

"The number of people who are keen on the national trend is much larger than expected." Dong Zhanbin can see from the user data of invested enterprises that the majority of users of many local consumer brands are millennials and generation Z, but there is still room for expansion in the age group of target users.

Confidence in the future of "Guochao" also comes from what we see in our lives: on the streets of Shanghai, there are not only trendy youths wearing corade dinosaur T-shirts and stepping on retro white shoes, but also young parents whose T-shirts are printed with characters such as "quite irritable" and "eager to rest".

"Scavenging" domestic beauty

Beauty is a big market. According to a Goldman Sachs report, China's cosmetics market share will reach $79 billion in 2019 and is expected to double to $145 billion in five years.

Goldman Sachs believes that the time is ripe for Chinese cosmetics brands to stand out. The driving factors include: the post-90s (millennials / Z generations) who have been exposed to the Internet since childhood have become the main consumer force; the further development of retail digital trend has expanded the brand's coverage of third and fourth tier cities; the more interactive and dynamic relationship between brands and consumers; and consumers' preference for the Internet Chinese brands with Chinese traditional aesthetic and cultural concepts are becoming more and more popular.

Under the theme of domestic beauty and skin care, the projects launched by the Qingsong foundation in the past five years include homefacial pro, girlcult, and Sangu shampoo, as well as the beauty cultivation of "component party" service, as well as the skin care brand "Junping" founded by beauty blogger Junping Mahatma.

Dong Zhanbin told reporters that the investment of Qingsong fund in the field of beauty and skin care mainly focuses on "generation Z" represented by the post-95s and post-00s, and finds out the new products they need.

By reviewing the past investment, we can find that the early investment of Qingsong fund under this theme mainly focused on functional skin care products, which can be traced back to the investment in skin care brand homefacialpro in 2016. Since 2018, the team has expanded its investment tentacles into the field of cosmetics, becoming the earliest external investment agency for the style makeup brand girlcult.

The reason for the rapid growth of Mr. Dong's track is that he has the opportunity to invest in the company. For the category of beauty, it is very important to quickly occupy the cognitive ability of consumers. "

Today, girlcult still focuses on the post-90s and post-95s consumer groups. Its product line has covered cosmetics such as blush, eye shadow, high gloss, lipstick and cosmetic. In 2019, its Omni channel sales exceeded 60 million yuan.

Invest in a "good" life

Behind the rise of the national tide in recent years is the change of consumption mode and consumption channel of the new generation of consumers. The motivation of young consumers to pay for the "Guochao" brand is not only because of the high cost-effective demand for "flat replacement", but also the recognition of local brands based on the improvement of cultural confidence.

The investment path of Qingsong fund in the field of consumption is to invest in innovative products in large categories with high growth potential. In the view of the team, the beauty market is large enough to have the opportunity to grow into a Chinese super brand; in addition, the team has made a number of investments in kitchen appliances, pet consumption, sports brands, fast food and other fields.

Dong Zhanbin added in an interview that from the perspective of the whole industry, China has a highly mature supply chain in the fields of home appliances, clothing, shoes and hats, accessories, chemical industry, etc., and entrepreneurs have the foundation to make trial and error with a small amount of capital in these industries.

"Does it shine in front of your eyes?" In his opinion, under the premise of ensuring the product quality and conforming to the user's aesthetics, the key to the success of emerging brands is whether they can achieve differentiation. "The key to winning a new generation of consumers is whether they can make differentiation that users can perceive. Only by integrating differentiation with quality and taste can we create a product that users are willing to spread and like to comment on. "

It is worth noting that R & D and design are still the weaknesses of local emerging brands. Because of this, Qingsong foundation pays special attention to the competitiveness of the founding team in product R & D and design capabilities in project selection.

Talking about the market in the next 3-5 years, Dong Zhanbin said that the rapid growth of local emerging brands will show a trend of multi-point blossom. For the Qingsong foundation, cosmetics, small household appliances, drinks, clothing, sports equipment are still worthy of further cultivation.