21st century business herald reporter Zhu Yiyi Anhui report

"double 11", a domestic beauty and makeup enterprise, won the first battle.

on November 6, perrier (603605.SH) released the main brand management data of "double 11" this year. the main brand perrier is about 1.8 billion yuan in Tmall flagship store GMV, up about 40% year on year.

according to the data released by Tmall, this year's "double 11" presale was opened for only 10 minutes, and 12 beauty brands announced that their presale exceeded 100 million yuan. presale only one hour, Huaxi Bio (688363.SH)'s Runbaiyan sales increased 216 percent year-on-year; Shanghai Jahwa (600315.SH) brand herborist grew 16 times year-on-year; Marumei shares (603983.SH) the same name brand Marumei sales increased 749 percent year-on-year.

Huaxi Bio, which started with hyaluronic acid raw materials, has laid out four major sectors: raw materials business, medical terminal business, functional skin care business and functional food business. Among them, the functional skincare business is the core source of revenue, accounting for 51.15 percent, 67.09 percent, 72.45 percent and 63.92 percent of revenue from 2020 to the first half of 2023, respectively.

in the functional skin care track, huaxi biology has laid out brands such as "embellish baiyan" focusing on hyaluronic acid technology repair, "kwadi" for anti-primary skin care, "BM muscle activity" for oil skin care, and "Mir" for deep-cultivated sensitive muscle track. Among them, "Run Baiyan", "Quadi" two brands annual income of more than 1.5 billion, "Mibel", "BM muscle live" two brands are expected to run into the 1 billion camp.

recently, a reporter from 21st century business herald visited huaxi biology's Chaohu factory in Anhui province to witness the birth of a functional skin care product from raw materials to finished products, and to explore the path behind the rise of domestic beauty makeup.

Visit the industrialized production of skin care products

in Chaohu factory, Anhui province, reporters from 21st century business herald saw that Huaxi biological's functional skin care product production line consists of central control room, water making link, emulsification room, static room, filling room, packaging room and other workshops.

(Central Control Room of Huaxi Biofunctional Skin Care Workshop)

As the control center of the whole factory, the central control room takes charge of the production scheduling of the whole factory. Only one person is required to operate the system to complete the production scheduling, process control, quality control, data processing, fault analysis and other work. The "central laboratory" captures various parameters of the equipment on the production line, and these data are transmitted to the data processing center of Huaxi biological headquarters to summarize and analyze the production situation of factories all over the country.

On the raw material side, "water" is the most widely used and abundant raw material in the production of cosmetics.

in the "water making workshop", Huaxi biological skin care products use pharmaceutical grade purified water, which is purified by layer filtration of activated carbon, multi-media, resin layer, RO reverse osmosis membrane, etc., and EDI electrodialysis treatment, and converted into clean steam by heating.

"huaxi bio's skin care products focus on giving effective ingredients to enough, and try not to add thickeners, preservatives and other ingredients that have no effect on the skin, so as to achieve high standards of efficacy and safety," Wang Yuling, head of huaxi bio's Wang Yuling studio and senior formulator, also told reporters in 21st century business herald.

(Hua Xi bio-functional skin care emulsification workshop)

"Emulsification" is another key link in the production process of cosmetics. Various raw materials will be stirred and homogenized according to different proportions to ensure that the requirements for homogeneous emulsification of materials in the process are met. In the whole production process, through the MES system (production execution system), to ensure that the material feeding is accurate, process parameters meet the requirements of the regulations.

After the raw materials are prepared, how do they eventually become the products in the hands of consumers? The 21st Century Business Herald reporter saw that the semi-finished materials will be left in the closed storage tank in the static workshop, through the physical and chemical properties and microbiological indicators and other related testing, through fully automated filling, as well as subsequent packaging, and finally complete a complete set of skin care products production process.

Full-link R & D innovation

In addition to the intelligent production process, the domestic beauty brand is also inseparable from the heavy investment in product research and development.

In the first three quarters of 2020-2023, Huaxi Bio's R & D investment was 0.141 billion yuan, 0.284 billion yuan, 0.388 billion yuan and 0.277 billion yuan respectively, and R & D investment accounted for 5.36 percent, 5.75 percent, 6.10 percent and 6.56 percent of revenue respectively. Compared with the average research and development cost rate of domestic cosmetics listed enterprises of 2%-3%, Huaxi Bio's research and development cost rate is higher.

"Starting from the essence of science, we constantly create the possibility of technology; starting from the needs of consumers, we constantly have insight into the needs of consumers." Liu Zhe, director of research and development management of Huaxi biological skin care products, told the 21st century economic reporter that Huaxi biological functional skin care products combine the two to provide consumers with valuable products.

"functional skin care products are by no means a' raw material bucket'-a combination of functional ingredients," Liu Zhe said. Huaxi Biology's research and development of functional skin care products is a full-link process, running through many links such as raw materials, formula technology, packaging dosage forms, production technology, etc.

Raw material innovation is one of the underlying driving forces of end product innovation.

Raw material innovation is mainly divided into two aspects. The first is the development of new substances through synthetic biotechnology. Compared with the extraction of related raw materials from animals or plants, using synthetic biotechnology to produce, yield and purity can be significantly improved, greatly reducing costs at the same time, more green.

In addition to long-term research and development of hyaluronic acid raw materials, Huaxi Bio is also looking for new growth curves on the track of collagen, ergothione, edoin, human milk oligosaccharides, etc.

according to the twenty-first Century economic report reporter was informed that through synthetic biotechnology, Huaxi biological has launched a new generation of micro molecular hyaluronic acid Hybloom™Weizhen and Bioyouth™-EGT Pure ultra-pure ergothioneine and other raw material products. At the same time, salidroside, glycerol glucoside, human milk oligosaccharides and carnosine and other substances are also further industrialization.

In addition, in addition to actively storing new substances, Liu Zhe's team is also expanding the efficacy dimension of existing substances and doing secondary mining of "gold mines.

Liu Zhe's team innovated through three routes of "chemical grafting", "supramolecular assembly" and "mixing efficiency" of existing components.

For example, "supramolecular assembly" allows two molecules to "entangle" with each other, and the formed supramolecules can carry a variety of active ingredients to form a combination of 1 + N. The advantage of this technology is that it can design and screen out possible supramolecular combinations with the help of computer simulation in the early stage, effectively reducing the screening cost and cycle.

in the newly listed seaweed charging water and charging cream of "BM muscle activity" brand, huaxi biology has used GABA(γ-aminobutyric acid) supramolecule, which carries a variety of active ingredients at the same time, and has the advantages of promoting absorption, long-term effect and reducing irritation.

"on the basis of raw material innovation, the innovation of formula technology is to select the appropriate carrier and technology for good raw materials, so that they can present the expected efficacy and experience as much as possible," Wang Yuling, head of Huaxi Biology Wang Yuling Studio and senior formulator, further pointed out.

At present, Huaxi Bio has a variety of formulation technologies, including three-dimensional suspension technology, liposome technology, Hyatarcol conduction technology, phase inversion technology, etc., which have been applied to some products.

For example, the star product of "Run Baiyan" brand "Hyaluronic Acid Barrier Conditioning Essence" uses liposome technology, which helps to enhance transdermal absorption. The "BM Muscle Live" brand "Unicorn Double Extraction Essence Oil", "Seaweed Filling Cream" and "Brown Rice Balance Oil Control Emulsion" use Hyatarcol conduction technology, which uses hyaluronic acid of different molecular weights as carriers and combines with compounding technology or preparation technology to promote or hinder the absorption of specific active ingredients by the skin barrier and help different ingredients to play their respective roles on the skin surface and deep layers.