The Blue Ocean Of Nearly 10 Billion Household Beauty Instruments Needs To Be Supervised

"As the beauty instrument industry is between medical devices and home appliances, many products have begun to exaggerate publicity, overuse medical institutions and lax clinical data endorsement, which has led to the trend of bad money driving out good money." A household beauty instrument practitioners recently said to the 21st century economic reporter.

According to the data of tmall, the market scale of home beauty instrument may reach 8 billion in 2020, with a compound annual growth rate of 30%. The rapid development of the market has attracted a large number of domestic and foreign brands. According to Xinhua, nearly 250000 home beauty devices were sold on Taobao platform during the "double 12" period last year. However, China's supervision in this field seems not to be able to fully keep up with the market development speed. Problems such as poor product quality, false advertising and brand infringement make the industry chaotic.

On August 3 last year, Shenzhen Municipal Consumer Council released a comparative test of beauty instrument products. This comparative test found that the main safety risks of home beauty equipment were mainly electrical safety and sensitization, and many famous brands were exposed, and heavy metals did not meet the standards.

The results showed that the nickel release of 6 products exceeded the standard, and 2 products had the risk of low temperature scald. In addition, the cleaning function of 5 products is not clean, and the warm import effect of 5 products is not consistent with the publicity. The products in the test are all popular, but the quality problem is worrying.

There is a lot of confusion

The 21st century economic report reporter found that as early as June 2018, the official website of Guangdong Provincial Bureau of quality and technical supervision had published the announcement of "double random" special supervision and spot check results of skin and hair care appliances in Guangdong Province in 2017. Among them, 11 kinds of unqualified products include 3 kinds of beauty instrument with the function of humidifying and steaming face. The problems include unstable input power and current, unqualified continuous disturbance voltage and so on. Long term use may cause short circuit, trip, etc., and bring potential safety hazards.

However, the comparative test of the beauty instrument conducted by Shenzhen Municipal consumption Committee focused on the efficacy and sensitization of the beauty instrument. Indicators such as product appearance and workmanship, handle structure, readability of instructions, instant lifting, secondary cleaning and warm introduction effect are all more subjective and biased evaluation factors.

According to the report of Shenzhen consumption Commission, the nickel release of 6 kinds of household beauty instrument samples exceeded the limit requirements, which did not meet the requirements of EU REACH regulations. According to the regulations, the nickel release rate of products directly or for long-term contact with skin should not exceed 0.5 μ g / cm ^ 2 / week, while the detection value of nickel in some cosmetic instruments is as high as 50.52 μ g / cm ^ 2 / week. It is reported that nickel is a heavy metal element that can easily lead to skin contact allergy. Long term or repeated use of products that do not meet the requirements of nickel release is likely to cause allergic symptoms, and in serious cases, physical injury.

Secondly, using artificial skin test, it was found that there was a risk of low-temperature scald in two kinds of electric ion household beauty instrument samples. Low temperature scald refers to the long-term exposure of the body to low-temperature heat sources, resulting in heat accumulation, resulting in skin and subcutaneous tissue burns. According to the relevant regulations, the surface temperature rise of the test apparatus should not be higher than 23K within 10 minutes, while the surface temperature rise of notime and SKG reached 24.1k and 32.4k.

In addition, 20 consumers were invited to compare the effect of manual make-up removal and the effect of the second cleaning and removing makeup of the beauty instrument. The results showed that five samples used the cleaning function to remove makeup was not as clean as the daily manual makeup removal, and the secondary cleaning effect was not obvious. In addition, due to the design problems of the products, the cosmetic cotton pieces could not be fastened, and the problem of easy falling off appeared, which was extremely inconvenient to use. At the same time, the effect of half of the samples was not obvious, which could not reach the effect of advertising.

It is understood that at present, the applicable laws and regulations of beauty instrument products in China are implemented in accordance with the implementation standards of small household appliances, mainly according to the national standard document GB / t26419-2018 household and similar skin beauty appliances, which will be implemented in 2019. The standard specifies the technical requirements, test methods, detection rules, labeling, description, packaging and transportation requirements of the beauty instrument.

However, the details of the standard need to be improved. For example, in terms of material safety requirements, the standard requires that "for skin beauty appliances that have direct contact with the person being cared for, the parts materials (including coating) that contact the skin shall avoid damage to the skin and human body". However, there is no further explanation on how to measure the damage and the nickel content standard mentioned in the test. Moreover, the standard is not mandatory.

Other domestic standards related to beauty apparatus include safety standards gb4706.1 safety of household and similar electrical appliances - General requirements and gb4706.15 special requirements for safety of skin and hair care appliances for household and similar electrical appliances. However, the requirements are more specific in terms of electrical performance.

An industry insiders admitted that there is a national recommended standard for beauty instrument industry, but the content is relatively broad, and the reference is all European IEC standards.

Even if the quality of the beauty instrument is up to standard, there is no harm to human body and skin, and its effect is often questioned. Especially when faced with a large number of exaggerated, magical beauty instrument advertising language, it is difficult for the public not to doubt the publicity effect.

Interestingly, according to the test results of the Sdcc, the advertising slogan of SKG beauty instrument shows that the product can "deeply clean pores and experience freshness MKE's beauty instrument also publicizes its use of the principle of positive and negative charge ions to "deeply clean and lead out dirt". However, participants in the experiment who used the products believed that the effect of the two products was very general and could not reach the effect publicized by the manufacturer.

Blue ocean to be regulated

In recent years, convenient and easy to operate household beauty instrument has become a necessity for many young people. According to the 2020 online home beauty instrument consumption insight report, 59% of the 3000 Internet users aged 20-49 said they had used at least one home beauty instrument.

In particular, under the epidemic atmosphere, many consumers who originally went to beauty salons may choose to turn to home beauty. According to tmall global, as the first long holiday after the epidemic, the sales of imported beauty equipment increased by 930% during the golden week and Mid Autumn Festival last year. According to the data of tmall, in 2020, the market scale of home beauty instrument will reach 6 billion-8 billion, and the compound annual growth rate will reach 30%. Only in November, the transaction amount will reach 1.5 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 71.3%.

Strong purchasing power has attracted domestic and foreign manufacturers to enter, many of which are cross-border. According to the data, in the first half of last year, the number of new brands of imported beauty instrument of tmall international increased by 69%, the number of new products released increased by 129%, and the turnover of new products increased by 606%. As of October 2020, there are more than 80000 beauty instrument related enterprises in China, with a year-on-year increase of 41.6%.

In addition to professional beauty instrument companies, many well-known home appliance brands such as Panasonic, Haier, Hitachi, etc. have successively launched beauty instrument products. International cosmetics giants such as Shiseido, P & G and huawang also put forward plans for cross-border production of beauty instruments in 2020.

However, there are many fake and shoddy products in the market. In December 2016, MTG of Japan, the manufacturer of refa beauty instrument, jointly investigated 5500 counterfeit products and semi-finished products of refa in cooperation with Chinese public security. MTG said that these counterfeit products do not have the function of refa itself, will not produce micro current, and the quality is not up to standard, the section is sharp, no platinum coating, easy to cause metal allergy.

In November 2019, Zhuhai Jindao Electric Appliance Co., Ltd. was awarded a compensation of 3 million yuan by Shanghai Intellectual Property Court for infringing the Luna face washing instrument design patent of foreo company. According to media reports at that time, the sales volume of the infringing products had reached 358074, with sales of more than 35 million yuan. Even in the "sales share brand list" of facial cleaners from January 2018 to August 2018, foreo ranked first, followed by Jindao.

In view of this phenomenon, the above-mentioned domestic beauty instrument practitioners believe that the current beauty instrument market is just like the smart phone market in the early stage of development, with high-end brands competing with Shanzhai imitations. However, unlike smart phones, its research and development relies on the technical precipitation of medical beauty products, clinical research of skin physiology and experience of product clinical trials.

"A lot of start-up teams or companies from other industries have entered the home beauty apparatus, and they have only one idea in front of them - to imitate the existing mature products. And imitation is impossible to lead this industry to carry out primary research, it is impossible to make home beauty instrument to a new level The household beauty instrument practitioners said.

The reporter found that at present, many products on the market imitate Japanese household beauty instrument. These devices generally add a string of LED beads on the head to indicate the physiological effect of light on the skin of consumers. But in fact, this energy, which is so weak that it can't really work.

Due to the over segmentation of consumers and the lack of education and cognition in the market, the current sales of beauty apparatus are mainly online, and have not entered the mass consumer goods market. The above-mentioned domestic beauty instrument practitioners believe that businesses need enough information to educate the market, but the current promotion channels are very narrow, and it is difficult for advertisements and short videos to explain things clearly, so it is difficult for consumers to make consumption decisions.