Herborist: How a Chinese brand sold cosmetics to French women

Tessa Thorniley

This report describes the difficult launch and subsequent domestic and international success of the Chinese skincare range, Herborist.

Herborist: How a Chinese brand sold cosmetics to French women

Tessa Thorniley

When Chinese skincare brand Herborist launched at an event in Shanghai in 1998, the Chairman, Ge Wenyao, was the only person who bought a product.

For the next seven years, although Herborist grew in size, it never made a profit.

Today, the brand, which uses traditional Chinese herbs in its products, is sold via 1,200 stores and counters in 250 cities, and has retail sales approaching RMB 2.5 billion.

Wang Zhuo, the brand's current Chairman, told the Market to Watch: Building Brands Beyond Tier One...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands