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Zhongxin. com, July 11th Title: Beauty giants will raise prices again! Your beauty is more expensive.

Zhongxin Financial Reporter Zuo Yukun

"Estee Lauder has increased the price of cosmetics across the board, and a bottle of cream has increased by tens of yuan overnight." "The price of skin care products in duty-free shops is as low as the foot, and I am embarrassed to start with more than 30% off."

In the recent beauty circle, these two diametrically opposite sounds overlap. What is the wind blowing in the "beautiful industry"?

Data Map: Customers buy cosmetics at the duty-free shop in Haikou Riyue Plaza of Zhongmian Group. China News Service reporter Luo Yunfei photo

Price increase again! This year’s "Score Two"

In July, the brands of cosmetics giant Estee Lauder quietly started a new round of price increases.

A salesperson of Hailan Mystery, a high-end skin care brand owned by Estee Lauder, told the China-Singapore financial reporter that the price adjustment of the counter began around July 2. "Not all of them have gone up. The main price increases are creams, eye creams, refined milk, etc., but they are really popular and not to be sold."

"This is the second price increase this year, with an average increase of 50-100 yuan." The salesperson said.

Xiao Chen, a long-term consumer of Estee Lauder brand skin care products, recently found that the price of a set of "eye cream+face cream" she often bought recently increased in 140 yuan in official website. "I just bought a set of 618, and suddenly I saw the price increase in official website. I am happy that I bought the goods before the price increase, but I am sad that it will be expensive to buy them later."

The price changes of the same product in Estee Lauder flagship store in June (above) and July (below).

An Estee Lauder brand salesperson in Beijing also confirmed the price increase to reporters: "The price increase of a single bottle is basically tens of yuan, but it is not only rising in China, but also the overall price adjustment of the group. We received the notice in early June."

According to the salesperson, Estee Lauder basically raises its price twice a year, and the last price adjustment was in January this year.

The reporter combed social platforms and media information and found that besides Estee Lauder, other brands of L ‘Oré al Group, such as helena rubinstein and Guerlain of LVMH (Moet Hennessy-louis vuitton Group), also adjusted their prices in July. Even the make-up lines of luxury brands such as GUCCI and Burberry also showed a trend of rising prices, and the increase of skin care products was mostly around 5%.

Big dive! Duty-free and purchasing have "broken prices"

But it is also the Estee Lauder brand, which is another scene among the consumer groups who buy through duty-free shops and purchasing.

"Two bottles of Estee Lauder 15ml eye cream suit, the flagship store should be around 1000 yuan. I spent more than 400 yuan at the beginning of the year to buy it in a duty-free shop, thinking I had made a big profit. As a result, since the end of June, the price of duty-free shops has directly’ dived’ to 297 yuan, 238 yuan or even 218 yuan. The one I bought at the beginning of the year has not been opened yet, and I feel a big loss. " Consumer Ms. Liu told reporters.

Price difference between flagship store (left) and duty-free shop (right).

"The activities of Hainan Duty Free Shop are very strong and the channels are assured. Sometimes the date is not very good, and some may only have a shelf life of more than half a year. " Ms. Liu said, however, large discounts of duty-free shops can only be purchased with information about outlying islands, and some that don’t need information about outlying islands may cost about 50 yuan.

In addition to tax-free channels, the situation of "fracture price" also appears in the purchasing world. Meng Ming (pseudonym), an employee in the beauty industry, is also a makeup agent. The sharp price drop is not good news for her.

"For example, an eye shadow of TF brand, the price of the official flagship store is 750 yuan, and the previous purchasing price is basically stable around 450 yuan. In May of this year, foreign shopping malls were discounted to more than 300 yuan, so I started with a batch of goods. As a result, the goods have not been sent to China yet, and they have dropped by more than 100 yuan, which makes me and my customers very embarrassed. " Meng Ming said.

As for the reasons for the continuous downward adjustment of prices, she mentioned that in recent years, due to the epidemic, tourists have decreased and international freight rates have increased, and many goods in foreign shopping malls cannot be sold, so they will choose to reduce prices. Especially if there is a new version, the shopping mall will clear the old version.

In addition, a new low-cost channel is quietly emerging in the beauty industry recently, that is, bonded warehouse sources that also enjoy policy dividends. In addition to the conspicuous "bonded warehouse" label on the shopping platform, such products also appear in the live broadcast of many anchors, and the price can even be as low as 2-3 fold of the flagship store.

"This kind of goods are basically delivered directly from bonded warehouses around the country, and they also enjoy preferential policies such as taxation. A more remarkable feature is that there is often an’ import tax’ when paying." Meng Ming said that bonded goods also have their own channels and policies, but the price drop is also related to the epidemic.

"First of all, most of China’s bonded warehouse cosmetics come from duty-free shops in South Korea and Japan, and outbound travel has dropped sharply, and a large amount of inventory will flow into China with strong consumption power; Secondly, Shanghai and Shenzhen, the key areas of bonded warehouses in China, have seen outbreaks this year, which is estimated to have also led to a backlog of some goods. Merchants will also ship at reduced prices in order to turn over funds and prevent expiration. " Meng Ming explained.

Data map: cdf Haikou Duty Free Shop. Photo by Wang Ziqian

Is the price increase for "price reduction"?

"Brand price adjustment is normal, especially for international brands, which basically only go up or down. Because the price reduction will have a serious negative impact on the main consumers of the brand, it will make them think that the product is’ not worth the money’. " Mr. Cheng, who has been engaged in the beauty industry for many years, told reporters that the price increase of this round of beauty giants may be precisely because they are "anxious".

In the first quarter of this year, the performance of major beauty giants in China or the Asia-Pacific market was generally not very good. In the first quarter, Shiseido Group’s sales in China decreased by 20.6% year-on-year, Amore Pacific’s sales in China decreased by 10%, and Estee Lauder Group’s sales in Asia Pacific decreased by 3.91% year-on-year.

“On the one hand, the price of raw materials has risen, and the goods can’t be sold. On the other hand, it is necessary to maintain the posture of’ can’t reduce prices’. Under the contradiction, the price must be raised first, because there is room for’ price reduction’ when the price is raised."Mr. Cheng said.

In the past 618 shopping festival, many beauty brands began to "shop" for discounts: brands that have always been stingy with gifts launched the promotion of "buy a bottle of formal clothes and send a bottle of formal clothes" for the first time in the live broadcast room; The prices of liquid foundation, moisturizing cream and other products that have never been discounted are almost halved. This price reduction or "disguised price reduction" is actually a compromise of beauty giants.

At the beginning of this year, Procter & Gamble brand announced that due to the rising transportation, materials, labor and other costs during the epidemic and the rising prices of raw materials brought about by global inflation, all its top ten products had raised prices. Subsequently, in its third-quarter financial report released in April, Bao’s clean sales increased by 7% year-on-year, which was directly related to the price increase.

"Overall, as an important starting point for stimulating the performance of international beauty companies, how to grasp the common goal of China consumers or international beauty companies." It is generally believed in the industry. (End)

A large group of researchers found that machine learning can be used to help metallurgists find the best metal mixture to make the required alloys. In this way, they found an alloy with a thermal coefficient lower than that currently recorded.

The research was carried out by scientists from Max Planck Institute for Iron Research, who cooperated with colleagues from darmstadt University of Technology, Delft University of Technology and Royal Institute of Technology.

For thousands of years, people have been mixing metals according to their own needs and learned a lot about alloy manufacturing. But finding the right combination always requires some inspiration, patience and luck.

Therefore, most alloys are made from a single base metal (such as iron), and the obtained characteristics are observed by adding a small amount of other metals.

However, in the past few decades, the situation has begun to change-some researchers have begun to make alloys containing several metals in equal parts.

Of course, it is much more difficult to make this alloy with specified characteristics. In this new work, researchers apply machine learning to help this process. They first reduced the test space to only one application-making alloys that will not expand and contract too much when exposed to temperature changes.

In order to create a machine learning application, researchers searched and found metal features that can be used for comparison purposes, and then trained their systems using the information in the currently available databases. In the process, they developed a process to find an alloy suitable for the required goal.

The team’s process was reduced to three main steps: First, they created a new mixture using a model based on information stored in a database describing metal characteristics. Then, they use the second model to help predict the properties of some alloys they created in the first step. The last step is to study the candidate alloys produced by the system and select some of them for practical testing.

Using this system, the researchers obtained 1000 candidates, which were narrowed down to three alloys. Then, they made three kinds of alloys using the mixture described in the system and tested their physical properties.

The team used data from real alloys to train the system and repeated the whole process. They chased it for seven times and found an alloy with a thermal coefficient lower than the current record.

In their paper published in the journal Science, the team described their three-step process and its performance in the test. Scientists from the Institute of Metals, Chinese Academy of Sciences published an article on the prospect in the same issue, describing the work done by the team on this new project.

Reference: https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-machine-optimal-mixture-metals-desired.html.