Chinese beauty brands are finding success in Indonesia, bringing with them a wave of innovation and competitive pricing that is beginning to reshape the local beauty market.
As they leverage their homegrown success, companies like Focallure Beauty, based in south China's Guangzhou City, have successfully captured the hearts of Indonesian consumers with high-quality affordable products that make them competitive with the big global names that have long dominated Southeast Asian markets.
"Actually, from our founder himself, he emphasized a lot that when we are doing business in a country, we should adapt to the country, in this case, Indonesia. So it doesn't matter where our brands are from, China, anywhere else. If we're doing business in Indonesia, we are serving the customer in Indonesia. We focus on delivering a huge value to the customer. How do we do that? We get to know the culture. That's why maybe it's kind of different from other Chinese cosmetic brands," said Febryanto Febryanto, Vice General Manager for Focallure Indonesia.
Despite global economic challenges, Southeast Asia's Internet economy remains robust and is expected to grow to some 330 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.
Focallure takes advantage of Indonesia's burgeoning e-commerce ecosystem to boost its sales, with most of its products sold on short-form video platform Tik Tok, as well as Shopee, a major online shopping site.
Industry watchers say what makes Chinese brands so successful in Indonesia is how quickly they are able to adapt to local consumers. Most importantly, their products are high-quality with competitive prices.
"One of the main reasons why Chinese brands are so successful is because of the growth of e-commerce and social media in Indonesia. Many of these companies use social media as their main marketing strategy. We must admit that social behaviors are changing, more people are geared towards their phones rather than TVs. The beauty industry will continue to grow and become more dynamic alongside the e-commerce industry," said Salsabila Azkia Bila, a cosmetic industry researcher.
In large part, Chinese cosmetics bound for the Asia-Pacific region are shipped from Guangzhou ports. Customs in the city observed a hefty 75 percent boost in cosmetic exports through its ports after the implementation of a regional free trade agreement known as RCEP in 2022.
Chinese beauty brands winning over Indonesian consumers
