Pierre Fabre
China insights masterclass: digital, eCommerce and AIGC
France’s leading dermo-cosmetic group asked for a frontline read on China’s beauty market. We built a masterclass around six live cases, real numbers and the trends moving the category.
3D Digital Growth ModelDouyin, Tmall, JD, Xiaohongshu, WeChat6
live case studies from China beauty
5
platforms covered, from Douyin to WeChat
4
category trends unpacked
The ask The brief
A leadership team that wanted the view from the ground
Pierre Fabre is France’s leading dermo-cosmetic group. Its brands include Avène, Klorane and Ducray, and its roots are in pharmacy.
The leadership team asked for intelligence from the frontline: what’s actually working in Chinese beauty right now, and lessons they could carry straight into their own China business.
So the brief named the platforms, asked for real cases and flagged the trends to cover: live commerce, AI-generated content and CRM.
The platforms on the agenda
- Douyin
- Tmall
- JD
- Xiaohongshu
Each one plays a different role in a beauty brand’s China business, and the session took them one by one.
The cases Six live cases
Six brands, six problems, all from the China market
We skipped the theory and built the day around cases. Each one tackled a single question a beauty brand faces in China, with the brand that answered it best.
Proya
How a strategic campaign gets developed.
Collgene
Switching on digital sales channels.
Estée Lauder
Strategy on the eCommerce platforms.
Lancôme, offline
Marketing initiatives off the screen.
Lancôme, CRM
Managing customer relationships.
IP collaborations
Marketing built on collaborations with IP.
From the Proya case
Proya runs several Douyin accounts side by side. The slide puts them next to each other so the room could compare what each one does.
The same campaign, broken down: which accounts sell, which build the brand and which chase niche audiences.
Trends we unpacked
- Recession Glam
- Live selling
- Blind boxes and collectibles
- Beauty SOS
Four forces shaping Chinese beauty, each discussed against the cases above.
The numbers Reference data
The numbers the room worked with
Every case came with figures. These are reference points from the session about other brands’ China businesses, used to test what Pierre Fabre could apply to its own.
Collgene: where the sales come from
Share of the channel mix, as presented in the session
With that mix, Collgene grew 47.6% year over year.
Estée Lauder on Tmall
Tmall’s share of total GMV, over ten years
- Ten years earlier
- At the time of the session
Tmall share of GMV
Collgene
+47.6%
Growth, year over year
On a channel mix led by livestreams.
Lancôme
~200M RMB
A year, for the “Annual Collectible” campaign
An estimate shared in the session, and a good example of collectibles at scale.
Takeaways What they took home
A framework, a competitor file and a shared view
The team left with tools they could use the next morning, plus a common picture of the market across functions.
3D Digital Growth Model
A strategic framework
For planning digital growth in China
Competitor intel
On international and local brands
Drawn from the live cases
Shared view
Stronger cross-functional agreement
One read of the market, across teams
Openings
To apply right away
In Pierre Fabre’s China business
What carries over
Teach with cases
Leaders remember a brand that pulled it off. A framework sticks better once it’s tied to one.
Bring the numbers
A channel mix or a GMV share gives a room something concrete to argue about.
Put every function in the room
Teams that hear the same cases together tend to leave with the same plan.
Services delivered
- Consulting
- Masterclass
- Training
About the data: figures on Collgene, Estée Lauder and Lancôme are reference points presented during the masterclass, not Pierre Fabre results. The Lancôme figure is an estimate. This case doesn’t cover fees or commercial terms.
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