"Appearance Economy" Upgrades, Domestic Beauty Device ANLAN Has Found A New Solution In So

In the past few years, home beauty devices have quietly completed a role change in the global market. It is no longer just a "taste item" in the skin care routine, but has begun to assume a clearer functional positioning - a daily care tool that is safe, stable, and can be used for a long time.

In this wave of globalization, the rise of the Southeast Asian market is particularly eye-catching. As one of the regions with the youngest population structure in the world, consumers here not only follow Japanese and Korean beauty trends, but also prefer cost-effective products. With the improvement of economic level and the penetration rate of consumer electronics, the awareness of beauty care is rapidly moving from its infancy to maturity, providing an unprecedented market window for home beauty equipment brands. According to data from global market research organization Inkwood Research, home dermatology equipment is growing rapidly in Southeast Asia: the market size in the Asia-Pacific region will reach US$3.36 billion in 2025, and is expected to increase to US$7.41 billion in 2032, with a compound annual growth rate of as high as 12%.

Under such a trend, the overseas paths of a number of Chinese beauty device brands have also shown a completely different rhythm from the past. ANLAN, a beauty instrument brand founded in 2018, is one of the representatives. Unlike many brands that first validate themselves in the domestic market and then expand overseas, ANLAN has placed overseas markets at the core of its strategy since its inception. Accurately grasping the growth opportunities of home beauty devices in Southeast Asia, ANLAN is based on its professional capabilities honed in the Japanese market and is taking advantage of the trend to lay out this blue ocean of potential.

With full-process control capabilities from R&D, design to production, strict quality management, and collaborative operations with the e-commerce platform Shopee, ANLAN integrates long-termism into every aspect: it does not pursue short-term breakthroughs, but continues to accumulate reputation with product professionalism and user experience, writing a new and sustainable new path to overseas expansion for "China Intelligent Manufacturing".

Go to sea first: not to be fast, but to do things right

When many brands regard going overseas as a "scale accelerator", ANLAN has made a different choice - to polish its capabilities first. When the brand really launched its international business, it did not prioritize entering emerging markets where traffic was easier to obtain. Instead, it placed its first stop in Japan, which is known for its strict standards. Japan is one of the earliest markets in the field of beauty equipment. Users have a clear understanding of product safety, efficacy and professionalism, and have developed a set of mature and strict judgment standards.

For ANLAN, this is the core reason why they chose Japan as their starting point for going overseas. In this market, products need to withstand long-term use, and companies must establish complete and high-standard systems in R&D, quality control, and compliance. Market feedback will not directly translate into short-term sales peaks, but it will inversely promote the systematic building of internal capabilities - from product definition, structural design, to electronic engineering, test verification and manufacturing management, every link needs to be polished against the industry's top standards.

Here, ANLAN initially targeted the female beauty care market. This group of people has stable needs and is highly sensitive to product professionalism and safety. As the operation progressed, the team also observed a change that was easily overlooked. Young men's interest in skin care, beauty and even grooming continued to rise. The team realized that women have the right to love beauty, and men also deserve to be respected. Based on this, ANLAN has incubated the men's brand Kensen - focusing on men's grooming needs and creating a simple and efficient daily care experience.

The positioning of the two brands is different but complementary to each other: the main brand ANLAN emphasizes all-round care and long-term companionship, while Kensen pursues immediate and convenient results and is more in line with men's fast-paced care habits. The two form a dual-brand matrix covering different genders and needs, and also allow professional care to cover a wider range of family scenarios.

"Japan is more like a training ground." In ANLAN's view, only by polishing professional capabilities in high-standard markets first and then entering more complex multi-regional markets can we have the foundation for large-scale expansion. Facts also confirm this judgment: the technical standards, quality control system and compliance experience accumulated in the Japanese market have become the core confidence for ANLAN to subsequently explore other markets, and also constituted a differentiated competitive barrier with its peers.

In 2020, as its capabilities in the Japanese market gradually take shape, ANLAN will set its sights on Southeast Asia. This market is in the "cognitive formation period" of beauty device consumption: the young population accounts for a high proportion, the popularity of consumer electronics continues to increase, and the awareness of beauty care has awakened, but users' acceptance of professional beauty devices is still gradually being established. For brands, this is both a "touchstone" for capability verification and a "new arena" for scale growth - can these capabilities established in a single high-standard market be applied on a large scale in a complex environment with multiple languages, cultures, and multiple consumption levels?

The first thing ANLAN has to face is to choose the right “first door” to enter the market. At that time, although ANLAN had established an official website sales system, the market diversity in Southeast Asia - the consumption habits, cultural differences and language distribution of various countries made the brand realize that it needed to rely on the mature ecosystem of third-party e-commerce platforms to open up the market more efficiently.

Shopee has become an important pivot for ANLAN to enter Southeast Asia. With its huge user base and complete operating ecosystem, Shopee not only provides full-link support from market testing, user communication, marketing and promotion to contract fulfillment services, but also helps brands avoid many "pitfall" risks during the exploration phase, allowing the team to focus more on product development and brand building.

As Mandy, head of marketing at ANLAN, summed up, "We have always believed that 'professional people do professional things.' Shopee's mature operating ecosystem has become an important help for brands to amplify their capabilities and quickly land in the Southeast Asian market."

Deeply cultivate in Southeast Asia: Let professional capabilities be implemented into market adaptability

Unlike a highly mature single market like Japan, Southeast Asia has never been a region that can be simply summarized. Consumers in Singapore pay more attention to quality and brand trust and are less sensitive to price; users in markets such as Thailand and Vietnam pay more attention to cost performance, and price fluctuations have a significant impact on purchase decisions; at the same time, differences in skin type, skin tolerance, and religious culture in different markets also directly affect product design and marketing expression.

This means that brands cannot rely on one set of products and one set of narratives to cover all countries, and their capabilities begin to really come down to the details - from product structure, to user experience, to communication methods, almost every link needs to be disassembled.

After entering Southeast Asia, ANLAN did not simply copy the product logic of the Japanese market, but rebuilt its product matrix with "adaptation" as its core. In Singapore, mid-to-high-end optoelectronic instruments have become the main focus, and the R&D team focuses on technology upgrades and patented research and development to ensure that the products remain leading in professionalism and reliability. In markets such as Thailand and Vietnam, ANLAN covers daily care needs with basic models and covers a wider user group.

This differentiation is also reflected in the understanding of usage habits. While Japanese users are more receptive to medium and high-energy products, Southeast Asian users are mostly new to such instruments. In order to lower the threshold for use, ANLAN has designed low-energy models that are more suitable for entry-level models for the local market, and guides users to transition to mid-to-high-end energy through a gradual product gradient. At the same time, for people with sensitive skin, the brand continues to optimize material selection and tactile design to ensure safety and comfort for long-term use.

The skin care demands of different age groups also drive ANLAN's product segmentation strategy: for white-collar groups over 30 years old who are concerned about anti-aging and firming needs, radio frequency and lifting instruments have become the focus; while for young people, product functions place more emphasis on high-frequency usage scenarios such as basic cleansing and introduction of beauty serum, allowing professional care to be integrated into daily life.

More importantly, ANLAN regards every feedback from users as the driving force for product optimization, and strives to make professional capabilities closer to real needs. With the help of user reviews and consultation data from Shopee's backend, ANLAN has captured various segmented demands: consumers want to complete care in a humid environment such as the bathroom, so they upgrade the product's waterproof level; in addition, users will also make suggestions on details such as packaging and unboxing experience, ease of functional operation, and diversity of accessories. These feedbacks are incorporated into subsequent product iterations.

Supporting all these rapid adjustments is the flexible response capability of China's supply chain. Relying on the resources of mature industrial belts such as Guangdong and Zhejiang, ANLAN transforms scattered market demands into a set of "high standards and quick response" implementation mechanisms. Compared with the generally longer R&D and iteration cycles of overseas brands, its efficiency advantages in functional optimization and cost control have been continuously amplified, making localization no longer a strategic level but a sustainable implementation capability.

Platform is an amplifier: leveraging the scaled growth of brands

The complexity of the Southeast Asian market also makes the test of product operation more three-dimensional. ANLAN knows very well that only by relying on an executable system can professional capabilities truly reach users and be transformed into sustainable growth. Here, the platform ecology becomes an amplifier - allowing the brand's professionalism to be more efficiently transformed into user-perceivable value.

During religious festivals such as Ramadan, ANLAN will coordinate with the Shopee platform's big promotion rhythm and resource layout, adjust marketing strategies and product language to ensure that expressions are in line with local culture; in the face of multi-lingual environments such as Thai and Vietnamese, the brand gradually establishes a professional customer service team, while using the platform's automated translation tools to optimize product introductions and consultation responses. This allows ANLAN to quickly close the distance with consumers and better accumulate market awareness of the brand.

Precise empowerment on the marketing side is another support point for the implementation of professional product capabilities. ANLAN combines Shopee's in-site advertising, live broadcasts, short videos and off-site social media promotion to build a system of "accurate reach + in-depth planting"; at the same time, it uses Shopee to connect with local expert resources to quickly create a hit in the local market - a massage photoelectric product. With its novel product form and differentiated functions, the expert shared real-life experience and comparison of before and after effects through short videos. It quickly exploded in the Singapore market, and there was a stock-out boom, which proved the superimposed effect of the combination of professional capabilities and platform marketing ecology.

The fulfillment capabilities of the logistics link provide solid experience support for this "heat". As Southeast Asian users’ online shopping habits mature, their expectations for delivery time continue to increase, and they are pursuing a “timely experience” for products such as beauty equipment. This has also gradually highlighted the challenges in the logistics process: the cross-border direct mail model is affected by customs clearance processes, geographical distance and other factors, and the timeliness fluctuates to a certain extent, making it difficult to match user experience expectations.

Shopee’s localized fulfillment has become a key lever. ANLAN will store core SKUs in overseas warehouses in the Philippines and Singapore, achieving a complementary upgrade from "cross-border direct mail" to "local delivery". The stability of localized fulfillment not only allows hot-selling products to be delivered quickly, but also releases higher profit margins, which in turn feeds back into investment in R&D and localization. Mandy revealed that the brand is currently only piloting localized fulfillment services in some markets, and data shows that the conversion rate and repurchase rate have significantly improved. In the future, the brand plans to gradually expand localized fulfillment to sites in Malaysia and Thailand, and coordinate with the layout of after-sales service points to establish a full-link system from "order placement to delivery to repurchase" to support long-term business growth.

These efforts are being transformed into continuous breakthroughs in performance: Today, Southeast Asia has become one of the fastest-growing markets in ANLAN's overseas business, with performance increasing by more than 50% year-on-year in 2024, and by more than 60% in 2025. During the Shopee 12.12 promotion, order volume increased more than 4 times on normal days. The core of this achievement is the deep fit between professional capabilities and local needs.

From Japan to Southeast Asia, and even the global market, ANLAN's overseas path is not radical, but it is clear enough: build a solid professional foundation with high-standard markets, use the platform ecology to amplify capabilities in complex markets, and ultimately let professional precipitation lead to scale growth.

This reflects the upgrade of the logic of Chinese brands going overseas - no longer relying on traffic dividends and price advantages, but the in-depth integration of "China's intelligent manufacturing + overseas efficiency", honing product strength with long-termism, and taking root in the market with local adaptation. And Southeast Asia, a still-growing market, may be where this capability comes into play.