Out of the top 10 Singapore brands purchased by Chinese shoppers in last month’s Double 11 shopping festival, six are into the dietary supplement or TCM business.
They are 1) beauty salon Expressions which also sells skincare and dietary supplements, 2) VitaRealm, 3) GreenLife, 4) TCM firm Eu Yan Sang, known for its Lingzhi Cracked Spores Powder Capsules Plus, 5) US Clinicals, and 6) VitaHealth – the brand which is part of ASX-listed Vita Life Sciences.
These were the top 10 purchased brands from Singapore based on gross merchandise value (GMV).
Aside from food and OTC supplements, other products that Chinese consumers had commonly bought from Singapore brands were skincare, baby bottles and related products, infant and toddler nutrition, and aromatherapy items.
According to Expressions, its bestselling dietary supplements in the recent Double 11 sales in China were mostly beauty-from-within products.
They are 1) Expressions Increase Collagen Synthesis Beauty Jelly Stick, 2) Expressions Collagen Powder, and 3) Expressions Rose E’jel - a liquid gel sachet containing rose and jujube, longan pulp, mulberry, and activated gelatin. This product is meant for individuals with irregular period cycle, recovery after pregnancy, rough skin, and individuals suffering from insomnia.
“We started to sell health supplements products in China in 2014. While our primary focus remains on our beauty and skin care product lines, we do have a line of dietary supplements, which recorded about RMB$30,000 (US$4,725) in total sales over the 11.11 period,” Kaibin Wang, operations supervisor of China market, Expressions, told us.
The company’s other dietary supplements are slimming related products.
One of the products Super Fat Burner is a capsule containing kelp, spirulina algae, psyllium husk, uva ursi leaf, juniper berry, cranberry fruit, grapefruit.
The other product, Fat Blocker, contains chickweed herb, burdock root, fennel seed, hawthorn, licorice root, dandelion root, kelp, bladderwrack, and gotu kola (Centella asiatica).
The Made-in-Singapore brand has been seen as a mark of quality assurance and reliability, especially when it comes to food and supplements, William Zhao, senior director of Asia business development at Tmall Global said previously.
Alibaba, which runs Tmall Global, added that for this year’s event, more than 45 per cent of their consumers were born in the ‘90s and ‘00s.
In fact, the number of consumers born in the ‘00s had increased by 25 per cent yoy.