400 Ulta Stores Are About to Carry a Chinese Brand

What is the signal?

According to Reuters, Proya will sell two skincare lines, Advanced Firming and Original Repair, in 400 Ulta stores and online in the United States from November. Founder Hou Juncheng said brand awareness in Europe and the US is "currently zero", and the company is reported to be targeting a place among the global top ten and exploring acquisitions of smaller foreign brands. It has also opened an R&D centre in Paris.

This is not Proya alone. The same report notes that Flower Knows, a colour cosmetics brand 51%-owned by Proya, launched with Boots in the UK in March and began a limited run in Ulta stores in September. Florasis opened its first overseas flagship in Tokyo's Ginza district last year, and Joy Group's Joocyee and Judydoll, after opening shops in Singapore last year, are now stocked at the British Asian-beauty retailer Skin Cupid.

The retail signal is more direct. Seoul Economic Daily reports that A.S. Watson operates about 17,000 drugstore outlets in 31 countries, including Superdrug in the UK and Kruidvat in the Netherlands and Belgium. BrandLab, the incubation platform it recently opened, includes C-beauty and J-beauty alongside K-beauty. In the same report, Ulta's CEO said K-beauty sales rose by a double-digit percentage year on year while stressing that C-beauty is also very important to the company. SHEGLAM, the beauty brand of Chinese platform Shein, entered Boots stores and online in August last year and the German drugstore chain dm in October of the same year, while Japan's Curel moved from pharmacies in Germany and France last year to five more European countries this year.

The background numbers came with it. Data from the China Association of Fragrance, Flavor and Cosmetic Industries shows Chinese brands overtook international names in 2022 and held 57.4% of China's $159 billion cosmetics market last year. Reuters cites a years-long slump in domestic consumer spending as the reason for the push abroad, and points to mid-market pricing as an advantage, quoting an industry view that consumers worldwide have grown tired of paying premium prices for topical skincare.

A note on scope. The 400 stores, and the planned expansion to Target and Nordstrom, are plans rather than sales. The 57.4% is a domestic share in China, not an overseas shelf share, so the two figures cannot be joined into a claim that the same share will follow abroad. BrandLab's funding and selection criteria are unconfirmed, and the two reports name the same New York store differently, so that detail is left out. The figures here were confirmed in search coverage; network policy prevented opening the original pages directly.

Still, it translates into development as one sentence. The product standing next to yours on the shelf has changed, and that changed comparison resets your price point, your specification and your data.

1. The product you are compared with has changed

Until now, a Korean product on an Asian beauty shelf in an overseas drugstore was mostly compared with other Korean products. Once Watson puts C-beauty and J-beauty into BrandLab, and Ulta calls K-beauty and C-beauty both important, Chinese colour cosmetics and Japanese low-irritation skincare sit on the same shelf. When the two products a shopper picks up to compare change, where the difference in your product has to show changes with them.

The first thing to move in planning is fill size and price. On a shelf, price per millilitre is compared before anything is read, and when a mid-market product arrives beside you, matching the price at the same fill or holding the price and adjusting the fill becomes a decision. That decision attaches to the container and the fill volume rather than the formula, so changing it after the formula is locked means rebuilding stability data.

The same holds for format. Japanese brands expanding through pharmacy channels signal more comparison on low-irritation, simple formulas; Chinese colour cosmetics arriving signal more comparison on shade range and packaging finish. Writing into the brief which of the two your product will sit next to settles, up front, whether you strip out fragrance and colourants or spend the cost on sensory feel and container finish.

Keep one thing separate. What is confirmed here is that retailers have begun treating Asian beauty as three countries rather than one — not that Chinese or Japanese products are better than Korean ones. It is safer used as a change in shelf composition than as a quality comparison.

• Whether the brief names the product group that will sit next to yours on the target shelf
• Whether price per unit volume was calculated on the same basis as the comparison set
• Whether matching price or adjusting fill was decided before the formula was locked
• Whether the comparison axis — low irritation, or sensory feel and finish — is written in one line

2. If mid-market pricing is the axis, cost is fixed before the formula

In the industry view Reuters relayed, the strength credited to Chinese brands was neither ingredients nor technology but mid-market pricing. When price becomes the competitive axis, the development order changes. Build the formula first and attach a price later, and the moment a cost negotiation starts it becomes a question of what to cut — contents, container or components — and that adjustment invalidates test results.

Reversing the order costs less. Fix the shelf price at the target retailer first, subtract retailer fees, logistics, duties and local marketing, settle fill volume and container specification inside what remains, and design the formula within that envelope. Cost adjustment then does not spill into redesigning the formula.

Fill volume is the item that most needs settling early. For the same formula, 30 ml and 50 ml differ in container tooling, secondary packaging, units per carton and sea freight unit. Change the volume late and the tooling schedule drags the whole lead time again, and stability testing has to be repeated under a changed container material and headspace.

Volume planning is tied to price as well. The projects we quote on also start at an MOQ of 1,000 units, and what is actually feasible depends on the formula, container, raw materials, process and specification. The lower the price point, the larger the initial quantity has to be for the economics to work, so deciding price and quantity separately means getting quoted twice.

• Whether the first line of the brief is the target shelf price rather than the formula
• Whether the specification was built from what remains after fees, logistics, duties and local marketing
• Whether fill volume was fixed with tooling, units per carton and freight unit in view
• Whether price point and initial quantity were calculated together for one quotation

3. "Made in Korea" is a description, not a differentiator

Once three countries' products share a shelf, country of origin stops being a reason to choose and becomes a classification. What a shopper compares is not where it was made but what it does and how much, and that answer travels through the data left in the packaging and the product detail. The differentiator is therefore built in the test protocol, not in the copy.

In practice, the simplest method is one piece of evidence per claim. Phrases like "soothing", "low irritation" or "lasting hydration" are not positioning on their own; what has to remain is which test was run, under what conditions, on how many people, for how long. Domestic labelling and advertising require substantiation data, and a claim that falls under functional cosmetics needs its own route reviewed. That judgement has to come before the formula is built if the cost is to be paid once.

For export, the same sentence catches differently in each country. The range of permitted claims, the required format of the data and the ingredient labelling convention all vary by market, so writing target countries narrowly at the planning stage is what lets the test design be finished once. Write several markets broadly and you build data to the loosest condition, and loose data gets asked for again in a specific country.

Proya opening an R&D centre in Paris is worth reading in this context. It signals that the side moving onto overseas shelves is equipping itself with data it can explain locally first, which for a brand targeting the same shelf means the data preparation date moves forward.

• Whether each claim is paired with a test protocol, conditions and panel size
• Whether substantiation data and functional-claim status were reviewed before the formula
• Whether target countries were written narrowly and the testing designed to those conditions
• Whether each sentence on the product page can be linked to its supporting data

4. A listing is assessed as a specification set, not a product

Numbers like 400 stores or 17,000 outlets assume a whole set of supply conditions, not a single product. An offline chain looks beyond how one item feels to packaging declarations, barcodes and unit packs, display units, replenishment cycles, and how many times those conditions can be met. These are not accessories bolted on after the formula is finished; they belong in the specification from the start.

Secondary packaging and display units catch most often. Shelf dimensions and pack units differ by chain, and carton dimensions and internal retention structures follow from them. Receive the display unit after the product is finished and the secondary packaging has to be rebuilt, pushing the first delivery back by that much.

Labelling has to be split by country in advance too. When the same product goes to several markets, label language, mandatory declarations and responsible-person details differ, and splitting labels by country raises the item count so that the minimum production quantity applies per label. Checking first how many countries can share one label settles the volume plan in one pass.

Replenishment terms connect straight to volume. If production lead time runs longer than the replenishment cycle the chain requires, the shelf goes empty, and an empty slot is taken by another brand next season. Before committing the whole initial volume at once, confirm the lead time and set the first quantity at what will sell within that period.

• Whether the target chain's display unit and carton dimensions are in the specification
• Whether labels were decided as split or shared by country, and reflected in the volume
• Whether production lead time is shorter than the required replenishment cycle
• Whether the first quantity equals what will sell within that lead time

5. Defending against copies starts with the trademark and the container

When a competing brand joins the same shelf, the odds of names and designs converging rise with it. What is protected here is not the formula. Beyond the ingredient list that is published, a formula is held as a trade secret; what gets contested on a shelf is mostly the name, the logo, the container shape and the package graphics.

So the order is clear. Finish trademark filings in the target markets before the product is shown, and if the container shape has anything distinctive, confirm whether it can be registered as a design before the tooling is ordered. Get the answer that registration is difficult after the mould is cut and there is nothing left to undo.

The container choice itself is bound to that judgement. Stock containers carry low tooling cost and short lead times but anyone can use the same one; a dedicated mould distinguishes you by form but raises cost, schedule and minimum quantity. Which one to take depends on how much weight you give design protection, so writing that premise into the brief is what gets the container quoted in one pass.

Names are best settled at the same point. Checking whether the product and line names can be registered in the target countries, and whether they read without problems in the local language, before the label design is finished avoids reprinting labels and delaying delivery.

• Whether trademark filings in target markets were completed before the product was shown
• Whether design registrability of the container shape was confirmed before ordering tooling
• Whether the brief states a stock container or a dedicated mould as the premise
• Whether local registrability and pronunciation of product and line names were checked before the label

The first question for the brief

Instead of writing "a product for overseas markets", change one line: which shelf is this product on, and what sits next to it? Once the premise is that a mid-market product stands beside you, the order becomes fixing the price first and settling fill volume and container inside it; and if the comparison axis is low irritation, the premise of stripping out fragrance and colourants is set before the formula.

The second thing to write is your claims and their evidence. When three countries' products share a shelf, country of origin is only a classification, and the difference that remains is built in the test protocol. Pair one test with each claim, and write target countries narrowly so the testing can be designed to those conditions — that is the path to building the data once.

The last is two dates: the replenishment cycle the chain requires, and your production lead time. If the first is shorter than the second the shelf goes empty, and the empty slot is taken immediately by another brand. Set the first quantity at what will sell within that period, and put the trademark filing and tooling order dates in the same table.