Topping Tmall's Double 11 Beauty Rankings, Perfect Diary Wants to Be the New L'Oréal for the Internet Era | A Gaorong Ventures Feature
Tmall Double 11's No. 1 Beauty Brand: The Journey and the Original Vision
As the "top player" among domestic cosmetics brands, Perfect Diary has produced a series of eye-catching "Perfect speeds" since its founding in 2017. Within 18 months of launching, it claimed the #1 spot on Tmall's cosmetics sales rankings — a position it has held ever since. To date, its total fan base across all platforms exceeds 19 million. Its first offline retail store opened in January 2019, and by year-end, the company planned to have 40 locations nationwide.
This year's Singles Day, Perfect Diary surpassed its entire 2018 Singles Day sales in just 28 minutes, becoming the first domestic brand ever to top the Tmall Singles Day cosmetics chart.
In 2018, Gaorong Ventures led the investment in Perfect Diary's parent company Yatsen Holding, and has continued to add to its stake. This Singles Day, we went inside Perfect Diary to observe how this young, sharp team prepared for this annual "e-commerce battle" — and to understand their vision and original aspirations that extend far beyond one shopping festival.
Thirty minutes before the Singles Day midnight launch, the sound of lively drums and gongs filled the hallways as a lion dance troupe weaved through every corner of the office. Staff members were encouraged to reach out and touch the lion's head "for good luck."
Yatsen Holding, parent company of the domestic beauty brand Perfect Diary, is headquartered in Guangzhou, where the lion dance is a traditional ritual performed during festivals and major events. After the brief celebration, employees returned to their desks and began typing furiously. More than 1,600 Yatsen staff were operating at full speed, having prepared for this annual "e-commerce battle" for months. That day, most of the company's men were reassigned to warehouse duty to help with shipping, while women mostly stayed behind to work part-time as customer service representatives. They had undergone two weeks of intensive training and testing before Singles Day so they could respond to the flood of incoming consumer inquiries in real time. This was Yatsen's third Singles Day. In 2016, three co-founders established Yatsen Holding, and in April 2017 launched its first fashion and beauty brand, "Perfect Diary." During 2018's Singles Day, Perfect Diary burst onto the scene to rank on Tmall's cosmetics chart, becoming the first cosmetics brand to break 100 million RMB in sales. For this year's campaign, the team appeared more confident. At this company where the average employee age is just 25, staff waited in tense, orderly anticipation for the midnight countdown.
"Attention, three minutes left!"
Anthony, a Perfect Diary makeup artist, was also working customer service tonight, on duty until 3 a.m. This post-2000s boy had previously been a beauty consultant at the Guangzhou Xicheng Duhui store, and "gained tons of fans" through his passion for creative makeup. "Which shade of the Anti-Gravity Lip Tint works for fall and winter?" "Which shade in the Geography Eyeshadow Palette is more everyday-appropriate?" Anthony typed out answers while wearing a face mask distributed by the company.
Yatsen has many young people like Anthony, distributed across product, marketing, new retail, technology, and content teams. That night, they all wore battle shirts in their department's color, with the same slogan printed on the chest — "Fighting Together."
As the midnight bell officially rang, large screens displayed sales figures ticking upward in real time. "So many people pouring in!" Someone called out data updates live from the office, while others hurried to colleagues' desks as discussions erupted everywhere.
The numbers kept climbing. In 28 minutes, the brand's sales had already surpassed its entire 2018 Singles Day total.
On another floor, in the Taobao livestream room, two female hosts were also busy at work. One host held up an arm covered in lipstick swatches, answering viewers' questions in real time. She could precisely identify the collection and exact shade of each color block, guiding users through their purchases.
By midnight on November 12, Perfect Diary had become the first domestic brand in Singles Day history to top Tmall's cosmetics chart, with its eyeshadow, lip tint, mascara, and eyeliner all ranking #1 in their respective categories.
"The Pride of Domestic Brands": Perfect Diary
As a new beauty brand born in the internet era, how did Perfect Diary achieve such growth momentum? From the brand's inception, the founding team — with cross-disciplinary backgrounds at Procter & Gamble, Yishion, and other beauty and fashion companies — targeted women aged 18 to 28, developing high-quality, ultra-affordable, easy-to-use, and meticulously designed makeup products spanning base makeup, eye makeup, lip makeup, removal products, and tools. Compared to overseas markets, Chinese consumers still have significant room to grow in cosmetics penetration. In 2017, per capita cosmetics retail spending in China's urban areas was just $5.90 — only 11%, 12%, and 13% of Japan's, America's, and Britain's levels respectively. Additionally, as e-commerce channels rose, Chinese consumers' spending philosophy grew more rational, and domestic brands gradually expanded their market share.
Perfect Diary's products were quickly embraced by consumers after launch. According to Yatsen VP Yigeng Huang, there are two main reasons. "First, we place heavy emphasis on product strength. Take our animal eyeshadow palettes co-branded with Discovery — we focus on diverse texture combinations and thoughtful color arrangements, catering to both beginners and creative makeup enthusiasts."
Second, Perfect Diary's product development is guided by consumer big data, with constant innovation. To date, Perfect Diary has over 700 SKUs, with continuous new releases. Huang explained, "We have numerous channels for direct communication with consumers, plus accumulated data at scale, which provides very timely and powerful guidance for developing new products."
The rise of new channels including WeChat, Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Taobao livestreaming has also become a major force driving the brand's growth momentum. In early 2018, a user posted Perfect Diary swatches and product recommendations on Xiaohongshu, sparking heated discussion. Huang said, "We realized that cosmetics are particularly suited to content-based promotion. From there, we established our strategy of using quality content to drive traffic, with the clear approach of 'content drives products, and products are content.'"
In the view of Rui Han, Managing Director at Gaorong Ventures, an important tailwind and structural opportunity for domestic cosmetics right now is that livestreaming and short video have "democratized" the ability to use makeup to become more beautiful. Han elaborated, "The desire to become beautiful has always been a natural aspiration for women — that 'will to be beautiful' has always existed. But today, because of livestreaming and short video, it's easier for people to acquire the 'ability to be beautiful,' including no longer needing to go to physical stores to try on makeup as in the past. This is a structural change brought by infrastructure."
In brand operations, Perfect Diary has also leveraged its team's extensive experience to keenly capture user preferences, creating hit products while elevating brand reputation. For example, in 2019, Perfect Diary launched creative co-branded products with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Discovery Channel, and Chinese National Geography magazine, becoming hot topics on social media. During the 2019 "618" shopping festival, Perfect Diary's sales grew by a four-digit percentage year-over-year, with the single Discovery co-branded animal eyeshadow blockbuster selling 370,000 units. The Chinese National Geography co-branded eyeshadow achieved over 400 million impressions across the internet.
Beyond product strength and brand strength, Han believes Yatsen's core competitiveness stems from the company solidly building "highways." "The Yatsen team is particularly visionary. They proposed very early on to become the new L'Oréal for the internet era. And Perfect Diary is just the first car running on this highway."
Yatsen's new retail strategy, gradually implemented beginning in early 2019, represents another critical piece of infrastructure the company is building.
Redefining New Retail
At 6 p.m. on November 10, at Perfect Diary's Grandview Mall store in Guangzhou, every makeup testing station was surrounded by young women picking up eyeshadows and lipsticks from the counters, skillfully swatching them on the backs of their hands.
The Grandview store is Perfect Diary's first offline flagship, officially opening in January 2019. On opening day, Perfect Diary invited Li Jiaqi to livestream from inside the store, driving traffic to the physical location. "The first week required queuing to enter. Now average monthly foot traffic exceeds 100,000." Haoran Huang is the store's assistant manager. He and more than 20 beauty consultants provide customers with product introductions, makeup advice, and mobile ordering services. Huang described three very typical customer types: first, lipstick collectors — "some people buy entire shade ranges to collect at home"; second, creative makeup enthusiasts — "after our Chinese National Geography co-branded eyeshadow launched, many came specifically to try different makeup looks"; and third, makeup beginners — "a major feature of our products is being easy to use. Beyond the beginner tips our beauty consultants provide, the store also offers makeover services for ordinary people, bookable through our WeChat official account."
As a company-level strategy, according to Qiyao Feng, President of Yatsen's New Retail Division, the new retail business "will be Yatsen's fastest-growing business segment" in coming years. Currently, Perfect Diary has entered cities in South and Southwest China including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Jiangmen, Chongqing, Chengdu, and Changsha. In the second half of 2019, Perfect Diary planned to open 7 offline retail stores in the Southwest region — 3 in Chengdu and 4 in Chongqing — while simultaneously entering East China cities including Shanghai.
Feng noted that Yatsen aims to create a data-driven retail format centered on consumer experience, providing consumers with richer, more thoughtful, and more comprehensive beauty services and experiences. Through a series of initiatives, Perfect Diary achieves online-offline integration, channeling online momentum to offline while using multi-dimensional offline services to capture new traffic that feeds back online — a growth flywheel.
For example, when offline stores open, they coordinate with Tmall livestreaming and Douyin livestreaming to drive traffic to physical locations; stores also redirect offline organic traffic back online, such as guiding users to obtain after-sales service through official accounts, or to book personalized services like makeovers.
Walking into a Perfect Diary offline store, you see large, elongated makeup testing tables and mirrors. "We want consumers to feel unconstrained freedom to try products," Feng said. An innovative checkout system allows store associates to help customers place orders via mobile phone; after consumers scan to pay, the back-end handles fulfillment, and customers can continue testing makeup in-store until notified to pick up their purchase.
Perfect Diary has also built a data middle platform enabling online-offline data connectivity, allowing more precise understanding of user needs. Through its new retail layout, Yatsen has comprehensively expanded the time and space for consumers to purchase, experience, and access after-sales service.
For young consumers, Perfect Diary has created an entirely new beauty community space. On September 7, Perfect Diary launched its Dreamscape Store on Chengdu's Chunxi Road. "It was our first mixed-format experiment — 5 floors, 1,100 square meters, the largest single cosmetics store in the country, including photo spots, product displays, a café, and a membership experience center, becoming a social space for beauty-loving women."
The success of Perfect Diary's offline retail stores has also won welcome from commercial real estate. Feng explained, "On Chunxi Road, where brands cluster, we're also testing Perfect Diary's brand affinity among consumers. The result is that the store basically starts queuing every day from 2 p.m."
Going forward, Yatsen plans to build its new retail business along two dimensions: consumer experience upgrades and operational efficiency upgrades. By year-end, total nationwide stores are expected to exceed 40, with over 600 stores within three years.
Beyond Singles Day: Becoming the New L'Oréal for the Internet Era
As Yatsen's highway is gradually completed, more "vehicles" will run on it in the future.
Yigeng Huang noted that beyond the new retail strategy, Yatsen will also evolve from a single brand to a multi-brand company. Toward this goal, Yatsen is actively building infrastructure covering four directions: product manufacturing, logistics and warehousing, quality control systems, and technology R&D.
On the production end, Yatsen plans to build Asia's largest cosmetics production base in Guangzhou within two years, designed to high standards to support the company's future capacity needs.
On logistics and warehousing, Yatsen's self-operated logistics warehouse in Conghua, Guangzhou is already operational, with daily reserve capacity of 100,000 orders and peak Singles Day storage capacity exceeding 1 million orders.
Additionally, Huang explained, Yatsen has invested heavily since early 2019 in building a quality assurance system, achieving full quality control coverage from production to logistics to online-offline sales and after-sales.
The multi-brand strategy also tests Yatsen's product R&D and innovation capabilities. The company aims to build the "domestic chip" for domestic beauty brands, continuously improving independent product development and innovation capabilities.
After Singles Day, Yatsen will continue to focus on its original mission of "creating value for customers," advancing toward its vision of becoming "the new L'Oréal for the internet era."
"As Yatsen's founder said, if Perfect Diary can become China's new L'Oréal for the internet era, then it will be Perfect Diary for the world," Han said. He believes that a new generation of internet entrepreneurial teams represented by Yatsen is creating entirely new era-defining brands in this new historical cycle.
Han said, "We believe Chinese companies not only have hope of becoming China's L'Oréal, but also have hope of becoming China's Coca-Cola, China's Procter & Gamble. In the future, we hope to find a 'Perfect Diary' for every different consumer category in China."
