Image: @perfectdiaryofficial.

Perfect Diary was the best-selling Chinese beauty brand on Alibaba’s Tmall during the recent Singles’ Day event.

Parent company, Yatsen, which also owns the popular Little Ondine and Abby’s Choice brands, acquired Galenic, the luxury skincare brand, from Pierre Fabre this month.

The four-year-old company raised a very impressive US$617 million in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange last week. Founders David Huang, Yuwen Chen and Jianhua Lu rang the trading floor bell remotely from their home base in Guangzhou.

Financial heavyweights, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and China International Capital, spearheaded the transaction with Yatsen shares now trading under the YSG symbol.

With a market capitalisation of US$11 billion, Yatsen revealed it served 23.5 million direct-to-consumer customers in the first nine months of the year.

Yatsen announced it would use the money raised for marketing and daily operations of the company, potential strategic investments and acquisitions, product development and physical retail expansion outside China.

C-beauty, makeup, skincare and haircare manufactured and labeled in China, has boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic and is giving international beauty brands a serious run for their money inside China, propelled by so-called patriotic spending.

After decades of manufacturing for overseas beauty multinationals, the C-beauty industry offers sophisticated and cost-effective products and many brands have made large charitable donations during the coronavirus crisis.

On Weibo, the giant social media platform, the hashtag – C-style makeup everyone – was attached to more than 250,000 selfies this year.

Japan and Korea, two of the most sophisticated beauty markets in the world, have recognised the new upscale quality of C-beauty products, notes Jing Daily, the leading digital publication on luxury consumer goods in China. Pointing out that innovative local Chinese beauty brands have an edge that most international players can’t emulate.

Major strategic moves such as Yatsen’s IPO strongly signal that C-beauty is ready to take on the world.

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