Yatsen Global First Quarter Report 2021

Perfect Diary parent company Yatsen Global recently released a 2021 Q1 highlights report. Below we share key sales metrics, new products releases, customer growth data, and info on overseas expansion efforts.

Yatsen Global multi-brand strategy

At the moment, Yatsen Global owns 7 brands. They are Perfect Diary, Little Ondine, Abby’s Choice, Galénic, DR. WU, Pink Bear and EVE LOM. They cover beauty, skincare and personal care.

• Total revenue: In the first quarter of 2021, those brands brought in 1.4 billion RMB, 42.7% growth compared with Q1 2020.
• Gross margin: The number in Q1 2021 is 992 million RMB, a 58.8% growth compared with Q1 2020.
• Gross profit rate: In Q1 2021 the number is 68.6%, which is a 6.9% growth YoY.

Perfect Diary

As its first and most famous brand, Yatsen Global continues to focus heavily on Perfect Diary.

• In the first quarter of 2021, Perfect Diary launched Name Card Lip Gloss. It has sold 670k pieces and become the TOP 1 on Tmall’s lip gloss ranking board.
• The brand’s High Heel Lipstick is the TOP 1 on Tmall’s lipstick ranking board.
• Its Animal Collection Eye Shadow is the TOP 1 on Tmall’s eyeshadow palette ranking board.

Little Ondine

• Little Ondine’s sales volume grew nearly 100% compared with Q1 2020.
• Its hero eye liner product maintains its TOP 1 position on Tmall’s eyeliner ranking board.
• Its mascara also stays tightly as the TOP 1 on Tmall’s mascara ranking board.

Abby’s Choice

• The sales volume of Abby’s Choice grew over 100% compared with Q1 2020 (note: the brand didn’t officially launch until Q2 2020 but it had started selling products in early 2020 prior to the launch).
• In the first quarter of 2021, it introduced a new version of its repairing face masks and sold over 1.47 million pieces.

Performance of other Yatsen Global Brands

• The newly purchased skincare brand Galénic also performed well in the first quarter of 2021. The amount of Tmall livestream viewers grew 360%.
• DR. WU, a skincare brand purchased by Yatsen Global in January, becomes the TOP 1 on Tmall’s skincare acids product ranking board with its hero product: Daily Renewal Serum.
• DR. WU appeared twice on Viya’s livestream and its sales broke 5 million RMB in total.
• Pink Bear is a very girly beauty brand developed by the company. It achieved over 10 million RMB GMV in the first month after it opened a store on Tmall.
• The brand’s mirror lip gloss ranks as the TOP1 on Tmall’s lip gloss ranking board.

Yatsen Global plans to invest more in product development

• In Q1 2021, Yatsen Global spent 27.7 million RMB on product development, which is more than twice the scale that it did in Q1 2020.
• The spending of its product development takes up 1.9% of its total revenue in Q1 2021, a 0.7% growth.
• By the end of March 2021, Yatsen Global owned 75 patents. 
• In April, Yatsen Global’ Open Lab was founded.
• Other than developing its own R&D centers, Yatsen also works with other renowned labs globally, including Pierre Fabre from France and Sensient Technologies, a global manufacturer and marketer of colors.
• Along with Yatsen Global’s investment in product development, it has created quite a few results, such as the Smartlock ingredient that targets oil absorption and it built the first 3D and damaged skin model.

Yatsen Global consumers

• The number of its DTC users reached 9.6 million, a 11.6% growth compared with Q1 2020.
• The average amount that each customer spends at Yatsen Global is 122.9 RMB, a 24.5% growth compared with Q1 2020.
• In total, the amount of Yatsen Global’s followers across all channels reached 60 million.

Yatsen Global is targeting the overseas market

• The first brand that Yatsen Global sent overseas is Perfect Diary. The brand has covered markets such as Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines.
• Perfect Diary ranks TOP 1 on Shopee, the biggest ecommerce app in South East Asia. It is also the TOP 1 on Malaysia’s lip product category ranking and the TOP 1 on Philippines’ powder ranking.

Our Takeaways

Not long ago we wrote another article about Yatsen Global presenting some of the issues that the brand is facing due to its extremely rapid expansion. There are many voices saying the company will have issues in the long term, and its stock prices have dipped dramatically.

This article is a major contrast because the report highlights all of the company’s achievements over the past few months. We are somewhere in the middle. While we recognize the issues the company faces, we are still optimistic. Personally, I am a loyal customer for some of its brands such as Perfect Diary, Abby’s Choice, and EVE LOM. The quality of those self-developed brands such as Perfect Diary and Abby’s Choice surprised me when I first tried them, and their prices are very affordable, so I repurchase them very often. I doubt I am the only person that feels this way, so I feel the brand has a strong chance of succeeding in the long term.

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