For greater than a decade, China’s aspirational buyers, spurred by a fast-growing financial system and rising wages, snapped up merchandise from cosmetics giants like L’Oreal, Estee Lauder, and Shiseido. Earlier than the COVID pandemic hit, China appeared set to overhaul the U.S. because the world’s largest make-up market.
These increase occasions are over, as extra Chinese language shoppers now flip to up-and-coming native manufacturers, like Mao Geping and Florasis.
L’Oreal’s gross sales in Mainland China dropped final 12 months, shrinking its general North Asia gross sales by round 3%. The Chinese language market, the majority of the agency’s North Asia income, now accounts for 17% of group gross sales, down from 23% in 2022. The French agency continues to name China an essential market, however has reportedly began slicing its retail workforce attributable to slower Chinese language demand.
As China stagnates, L’Oreal is now trying to areas, just like the Center East and Southeast Asia, as a supply of progress.
SAPMENA—L’Oreal’s time period for “South Asia Pacific, Center East, and North Africa”—will quickly “play a a lot larger position” on the subject of magnificence, says Vismay Sharma, who oversees the area for the French cosmetics agency.
L’Oreal, No. 91 on Fortune’s Europe 500, reported gross sales of 1.1 billion euros ($1.19 billion) for the primary quarter of 2025, up 12.2% year-on-year, throughout SAPMENA and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
That’s nonetheless small in comparison with different areas, sitting far behind Europe, North America and North Asia. However whereas SAPMENA-SSA solely contributed 9.2% of L’Oreal’s quarterly income, it was the one area to log double-digit progress.
SAPMENA covers an enormous swathe of the globe, stretching from Morocco all the best way all the way down to New Zealand slightly below 19,000 kilometers away. The area’s 35 markets cowl 3 billion folks, or about 40% of the world’s inhabitants, but solely accounts for 10% of world magnificence gross sales. “It has to come back collectively, and ultimately demographics need to win,” Sharma says.
SAPMENA’s fast progress doesn’t shock Sharma. “The shoppers on this a part of the world are about 5 years youthful than the remainder of the world, stay in aspirational societies and in economies which are rising quick,” he says.
China has proved to be a tough marketplace for world cosmetics companies post-pandemic. Sluggish China gross sales have dragged down the monetary outcomes of U.S. agency Estee Lauder and Japan’s Shiseido.
A sluggish financial system and stagnant consumption are partly responsible. However there’s additionally new competitors. “C-Magnificence” manufacturers are beginning to choose up steam amongst Chinese language buyers, with new manufacturers going viral on Douyin, the Chinese language model of TikTok, and different social media platforms. (L’Oreal is paying consideration, investing in native Chinese language manufacturers like To Summer season)
Nonetheless, Sharma thinks China affords classes for SAPMENA.
Southeast Asia, like China, has extremely linked shoppers who’re used to e-commerce and livestreaming. For instance, Sharma notes that over 50% of L’Oreal’s enterprise in Vietnam comes from e-commerce.
That is much less true of the Center East and North Africa.
“While you take a look at the ecosystem of magnificence over there, you continue to don’t have TikTok Store. They’re nonetheless just a few years behind platforms like Shopee, like Lazada,” he says.
But shoppers within the Center East share related preferences to these in Southeast Asia. “Expectations for magnificence are very related. We will see aspirations when it comes to sort of hair, pores and skin, lips, and eyes,” Sharma says, pointing to a desire for longer black hair for example.
That offers L’Oreal an opportunity to develop within the area. “Our skill to create content material at scale within the GCC turns into an enormous benefit,” Sharma says.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
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