Although fervor for China’s Double 11 shopping festival, also known as Singles’ Day, has cooled in recent years, beauty brands and consumers can’t seem to stay away.
According to data monitor Syntun, from October 7 to November 11, total gross merchandise value rose 4.8% year on year to RMB 1.78 trillion ($267 billion) across online platforms, with Chinese e-commerce giant Tmall ranking first in market share. Skincare sales reached RMB 102.9 billion ($15.4 billion), while fragrance and makeup sales hit RMB 34.7 billion ($5.2 billion), up a modest 3.8% and 3.9%, respectively.
This year, Tmall welcomed a record 1 million global brands, including 60,000 first-time participants. On the platform, Proya retained its No.1 position in skincare while SkinCeuticals climbed to No. 2, boosted by its A.G.E. Interrupter Advanced wrinkle cream, which surpassed RMB 300 million ($45 million) in sales on the first day, according to Chinese e-commerce media outlet Ebrun. YSL and Clé de Peau Beauté led the fragrance and makeup category.
More interesting than brand rankings, however, were the broader trends emerging across China’s beauty market. Evolving consumer preferences and deeper AI integration are reshaping how consumers shop. As fatigue with China’s year-round promotions sets in, brands must look beyond discounts and find new ways to build desire and drive sustainable growth long past November.
What once started as a one-day shopping sprint in 2009 has turned into a month-long marathon. As the rules of Double 11 change, here’s who won, what worked, and what it takes to stay ahead.
On October 20, the first day of Tmall’s Double 11 promotions, new products drove sales. Within the beauty category, three product launches broke into the platform’s top 10 bestsellers list: Proya’s Ruby Cream 4.0, which secured the No. 1 spot after selling over 450,000 units within the first hour, along with La Roche-Posay’s Cicaplast B5 Pro Multi-Action Repair Mask and La Mer’s Treatment Lotion.
“Consumers are increasingly seeking out and adopting new products across categories, including beauty, as well as apparel, electronics, and sports outdoors. Amongst them, the number one best-selling items have all been new releases,” a Tmall spokesperson told BeautyMatter.
At the brand level, Chinese players continued to hold their own against global rivals. Based on Tmall transactions from October 20 to 23, China’s Proya ranked No.1 in the skincare category, followed by SkinCeuticals, Lancôme, Estée Lauder, and SK-II, with fellow Chinese brand Winona pulling in at No. 10, according to Ebrun. In color cosmetics, YSL took the lead, with Chinese brands Mao Geping, Flower Knows, and Timage ranking third, fifth, and tenth, respectively.
For Proya, success was largely fueled by research-driven product innovation. For instance, its reformulated anti-aging Ruby Cream 4.0, which sold 1 million bottles during presales, features a newly developed bicyclic structured peptide designed to provide better wrinkle fading and skin plumping effects, according to the brand. Meanwhile, the Energy Brightening Series, which generated RMB 100 million ($14.9 million) on launch day, includes a patented whitening ingredient, RevMelan, helping to address dull, uneven skin tone.
According to Jacques Roizen, co-founder and Managing Partner of Foresight Performance Partners, a Shanghai-based e-commerce profitability advisory for luxury, beauty, and premium fashion brands, the continued strength of brands like Proya and SkinCeuticals tracks with a broader shift in beauty in China: Consumers want a credible explanation of what a product will do for them.
“Beauty is benefiting from interest in health, science, and longevity,” Roizen told BeautyMatter. “Brands that can substantiate their efficacy claims give consumers a reason to buy beyond the promotion. That opportunity is open to both Chinese and international brands.”
Alongside these shifts in consumer priorities, this year’s festival also saw major changes to promotions. Previously, major e-commerce platforms enabled cross-store discounts, meaning shoppers might get RMB 50 off every RMB 300 (about $7 off every $45) spent across participating stores. Now, Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin have adopted direct discounts on individual items, eliminating the extra math.
At the same time, JD.com and Douyin skipped deposit-based pre-sales, which allowed shoppers to pay a small amount upfront to reserve products before the main sale. ByteDance also expanded its promotional reach beyond Douyin, distributing Double 11 vouchers and coupons through sister apps including news platform Toutiao, short-drama app Hongguo, and AI assistant Doubao.
These changes, while good for shoppers, could have mixed implications for brands. Eliminating cross-store discounts could reduce returns, as consumers would no longer need to add extra items to their cart to meet minimum spending limits, potentially lowering reverse logistics costs. However, direct discounts could place more pressure on margins and erode brand equity.
“Before, a discount was hidden inside a complicated mechanism,” Olivier Verot, founder of Gentlemen Marketing Agency, who has 15 years of experience helping beauty brands to sell in China, told BeautyMatter. “Now the price cut is visible on the product page, and the brand pays for it. So every discount is public, and it stays in the shopper’s memory.”
Verot advises brands to decide their “bottom price” before the festival instead of during it. “Once a serum has been sold at 40% off on Douyin, it is very hard to sell it at full price in January,” he warned. He urges brands to protect the price of their hero products by discounting supporting products, creating gift boxes and travel sizes, or using bundles (e.g., buy the serum, get the mask).
Even brands known for their exclusivity are not immune to Double 11 pressures. Roizen noted that Hermès, “often treated as a gold standard of brand equity protection,” took a “transactional and promotional approach” to its Tmall beauty and fragrance store. Consumers who spent over RMB 1,300 ($195) could receive gifts like a 12.5ml fragrance, a lip color sample palette, and a trial-sized 2ml perfume. The French luxury brand also offered gifts for new members, orange gift boxes for full-sized orders over RMB 850 ($127), and custom engraving services.
“When it comes to e-commerce, it seems Hermès has been driving forward a lot of promotional initiatives without really taking the time to stop and reflect on how it damages their brand equity and their long-term desirability in China beyond their beauty business,” Roizen said.
Another defining change this Double 11? Deeper AI integration.
In April, ByteDance added a dedicated AI shopping feature to its conversational chatbot app Doubao. Ahead of Double 11, it further integrated Douyin livestreams into product recommendations, allowing users to watch content, claim coupons, and place orders within their AI conversations.
In May, Alibaba connected its AI shopping assistant Qwen to its entire Taobao and Tmall catalog, helping users discover and compare products, virtually try on products, and stack promotional offers. Meanwhile, in September, JD.com launched Dongdong, an AI assistant that supports voice, text, and video shopping. During this year’s festival, Dongdong assisted nearly 80 million users, more than triple last year’s figure, reported Reuters.
The rise of AI-powered shopping has shifted the Double 11 consumer experience from keyword search to conversational discovery. “For the beauty category, where personalized, research-driven guidance is the key driver of consumer confidence, this integration is proving powerful,” said the Tmall spokesperson.
Merchants are benefiting too. “We continue to deploy the AI tools rolled out in previous years to drive efficiency, such as generating product images, writing marketing copy, and using AI customer service chatbots to handle routine inquiries,” the spokesperson added.
Looking ahead, the next challenge for brands may no longer be winning search rankings but making the shortlists generated by AI agents.
For beauty brands interested in joining Double 11 for the first time, preparation should begin as early as May, said Verot. As he elaborated in a LinkedIn post, “If nobody in China has heard of your brand in September, a 15% discount in November will not change much. You will pay for traffic, sell a little, and lose money.”
For China newcomers, he recommends a six-month plan:
For brands that already have a presence in China, festival preparation should focus on giving consumers reasons to continue choosing the brand. This means offering differentiated products, credible evidence of efficacy, useful content, and a consistent experience across the store and product pages.
“Brands should establish which products and customer groups can support profitable investment before the festival starts. Double 11 is an opportunity to scale what has already demonstrated that it works,” said Roizen.
With shopping festivals scattered throughout the year, Double 11 has lost much of its exclusivity and excitement. Although brands can still capture massive consumer demand, the event should be viewed as just one moment in a broader marketing calendar, or, as a Proya spokesperson put it, “a window to verify our achievements, not the final destination.”
As such, success shouldn’t be defined just by what happens during this promotional window, but, more critically, what happens long after.
“Success should be measured across the surrounding months: net revenue after returns, contribution profit after marketing and promotional costs, and whether newly acquired customers come back,” Roizen explained. “Moving an existing customer’s December purchase into October at a lower margin is a very different result from recruiting someone who buys again.”
The real test for brands is seeing what remains after the cancellations, returns, and the full cost of generating those orders. It’s maintaining relationships with new customers and differentiating oneself through innovation and better execution rather than lower prices.
Double 11 can incentivize purchases, but it should not be the sole reason consumers buy. Rather than a day of seeding growth, the festival should be viewed more like a harvest, reaping the rewards of months—or years—of groundwork in the Chinese market.
