Consumer products expo primed to meet rising demand for domestic products

AI-powered massage chairs and chess-playing robots amazed thousands of visitors at the 4th China International Consumer Products Expo, which runs from April 13 to 18 in Haikou City, south China's Hainan Province.

These novel products belong to exhibitors in the Domestic Brands Zone, which takes up three of the eight exhibition halls at the expo and features domestic fashion products, time-honored brands and intelligent manufacturing.

Traditional Chinese medicine brand Pien Tze Huang, which is participating in the expo for the fourth time, is showcasing its health food products, as well as skin care products that it says help reduce the appearance of wrinkles and freckles.

"Pien Tze Huang is a time-honored brand, which makes me feel assured," a visitor surnamed Wang said while browsing the company's items. Pien Tze Huang is known for using modern technologies to process traditional Chinese herbs, producing skin care and health food products, as well as making medicines effective in the treatment of liver disease. The company recorded a revenue of over 10 billion yuan (around $1.4 billion) in 2023.

Bloomage Biotech is one of China's biggest pharmaceutical products manufacturers. Established in 2000, it specializes in hyaluronic acid-based products. Like Pien Tze Huang, it is exhibiting at the expo for the fourth time.

This time, Bloomage unveiled for the first time its latest version of a facial treatment essence that it says provides eight hours of oil control and four weeks of long-term antioxidants for people with oily skin.

"By adjusting the product formula, Bloomage provides consumers with a better skin care experience," Yan Huan, who is in charge of research and development (R&D) for the facial treatment essence, was quoted by China Securities Journalas saying.

Intelligent Chinese manufacturing is another highlight of the expo as new energy vehicles and high-end robots, such as chess-playing robots and AI-powered products, attract visitors' attention.

A floor-sweeping robot attracted the attention of a visitor surnamed Peng, who lives with her husband and her baby, at the booth of iFLYTEK, one of the well-known Chinese software enterprises, Xinhua reported.

Praising the robot's ability to take commands, go back and sweep the messes it missed and mop the floor before sweeping, Peng said, "I hope to buy more smart home products for my family of three and free my hands."

"AI products are no longer luxury products created by cutting-edge technologies; instead, they have become indispensable tools in people's daily lives," Zhan Wenyu, vice president of the consumer business group at iFLYTEK, told Xinhua. He said the demand for new consumption growth is mainly concentrated in highly efficient, intelligent and personalized scientific and technological products.

Domestically made products are becoming more and more popular among Chinese consumers nowadays. As many as 58.3 percent of internet users have purchased homegrown products online over the past six months, according to data from the 53rd Statistical Report on China's Internet Development released by the China Internet Network Information Center in March, which added that the new generation of consumers are in their 20s and 30s and have become the main driving force for consumption.

Pien Tze Huang's popularity coincides with the revival of age-old techniques, such as moxibustion and acupuncture, commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine, among young Chinese, who are emerging as key players in wellness spending.

Data from the "Generation Z Nutritional Consumption Trend Report" shows that each urban resident spends over 1,000 yuan annually on health and wellness, with the 18 to 35 age group contributing a significant 83.7 percent of that spending.

These developments indicate that Chinese youth are increasingly health conscious and seek to embrace traditional heritage through time-honored methods and brands.

With the steady improvement in national disposable income, consumption has increased. Bolstered by this, the "beauty economy" has developed rapidly.

As the world's second-largest consumer market for cosmetics, China offers immense growth potential for domestic beauty brands.

China's retail sales of cosmetics reached 414.2 billion yuan in 2023, up 5.1 percent year on year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Domestic Chinese beauty brands have stood out in recent years, especially on e-commerce platforms. Data from industrial analyzer chanmofang.com shows that from January 2024 to date, the sales volume of domestic cosmetics products on short-video platform Douyin has increased by more than 50 percent year-on-year, and 90 percent of the top 10 cosmetics brands are domestic products.

Industry experts attribute some of the surging growth in domestic beauty brands to an increased investment in R&D for new cosmetic products.

A laboratory specializing in the quality control of cosmetic ingredients, a collaborative effort between Bloomage Biotech and Shandong University, has gained recognition from the National Medical Products Administration.

Zhao Gang, head of CIO Manage, a Beijing-based digital economy market consultancy, told China Economic Network that the rise of homegrown brands is due to the dramatic improvement in the quality of consumer goods in the past decade.

According to Zhao, quality domestic products are cost-effective compared with foreign brands. He said homegrown brands also pay attention to Chinese consumers' desires and have improved the consumption experience by providing personalized and intelligent products, resulting in homegrown brands leading the change in the consumer industry.