In October last year, HARMAY Beijing Sanlitun store opened, which is the first time that it has pushed itself to a wider market and has attracted more capital attention. Shortly after the Sanlitun store opened, HARMAY completed a new round of financing, led by Hillhouse Capital, with a post-investment valuation of nearly RMB 500 million.

Recently, HARMAY reached a cooperation with fashion designer Masha Ma and began to enter the fashion industry. As its slogan-“About Beauty and a Good Life” said, in addition to beauty makeup, HARMAY is exploring more about beauty.

Jason Ju, co-founder, general manager and HARMAY partner, said the partnership with Masha Ma will focus on co-branded T-shirts, trousers, fashion satchels and shopping bags, and all items will be sold in HARMAY’s offline stores. But this will not be HARMAY’s main business. “Beauty makeup will remain be the biggest business focus in the coming years,” Says Ju.

One of HARMAY’s previous doubts was about the “origin of the goods”, which Ju explained in an interview with 36Kr. At present, HARMAY’s goods mainly come from counters and traders, and there is no big brand among the 200+ authorized brands, almost all of which are medium and small brands.

As for why it can be cheaper than counters, Ju Chunmao said, “For some limited editions or hot items that are out of stock at the counter, we have zero gross profit or even lose money to consumers.” Relying on big brands to attract traffic and relying on small and medium brands to increase profit margins is the most important brand strategy of HARMAY at this stage.

Since last year, the beauty collection store suddenly became a hot topic. In addition to HARMAY, the local beauty collection brand THE COLORIST opened 50 stores at the end of last year. Immediately afterwards, WOW COLOUR, a subsidiary of MINISO, also opened 5 offline stores, all of which were located in the core business districts and CBD areas of first- and second-tier cities. Unlike HARMAY, the above two beauty collection brands tend to prefer local brands in their selection.

Ju Chunmao is inconvenient to comment on the menacing opponent. But he said that in the future, HARMAY will not rule out cooperating with some of the leading Chinese beauty brands but will still focus on foreign beauty brands. “This is the biggest difference of HARMAY. We have confidence in our own aesthetic and product selection standards.”

Today, HARMAY’s three stores in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong have achieved profitability. Among them, the Beijing store achieved this goal in the first month of opening. It is reported that Chengdu will become HARMAY’s fourth city, and the second store in Shanghai will also open in mid-October, more than a month earlier than expected.

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