Chinese Skincare Brands: The Plant at Home, the Lab in Paris
Water drops on the bare shoulder of a woman in black and white, an image of skin care for an article on Chinese skincare brands.
Chinese skincare brands have reversed the route of the Western beauty groups. They already hold their plants and their ingredient science at home, and they are now taking their laboratories to Paris. Proya, Botanee and Mao Geping show where the shift leads, and why an ingredient alone no longer sells.
Eva Winterer
This article is part of the dossier on the luxury beauty market, The Nature of Beauty.
Chinese skincare brands such as Proya and Winona are building, from the other end, the business the Western beauty groups are still assembling. The Western groups built their laboratories at home and went abroad to buy nature. Estée Lauder bought Forest Essentials in India, and Puig holds Kama Ayurveda in India and Loto del Sur in Colombia. China’s leading houses grew up with their plants and their ingredient science on their own soil, from the botanicals of Yunnan to the hyaluronic acid of Shandong. Now they are taking their laboratories to Paris.
Proya, the country’s largest beauty group, opened a laboratory in Suresnes, west of Paris, in October. Botanee, whose Winona brand is built on plants from Yunnan, has worked in Paris with the skin research center of Hôpital Saint-Louis since 2023. At home, the market already belongs to them. Chinese brands took 57.4 percent of cosmetics sales in China in 2025, according to the China Association of Fragrance, Flavor and Cosmetic Industries.
The Luxury Skincare Market After Q3 2026 found the Western groups building their science and buying their nature. In China the route runs the other way, and it is less forgiving than it looks. The companies that sell an ingredient on its own are shrinking. The houses that pair a place with proof are the ones going abroad.
Chinese Brands Now Sell Most of the Cosmetics Bought in China
They overtook the international names in 2022. Three years later, more than half of every yuan spent on cosmetics goes to a Chinese brand.
57.4%
of cosmetics sales in China in 2025 went to Chinese brands
Chinese brands 57.4%International brands 42.6%
Share of cosmetics retail sales in China, 2025. Source: China Association of Fragrance, Flavor and Cosmetic Industries, via Eastmoney.
Six Thousand Plants From Yunnan: Winona and Chinese Skincare Brands
Winona shows how a Chinese skincare brand turns a province into a formula. Botanee, the Yunnan group behind it, says its researchers have explored more than 6,500 plant species from the region and kept the few with real promise as active ingredients. Its best-known cream for sensitive skin rests on a patented extract of Prinsepia utilis, a Himalayan shrub. The plant gives the cream its origin. The clinical language gives it authority.
That pairing built Winona, which sells online and through pharmacies. It is now harder to defend. Winona’s sales rose 2.5 percent in the first half of 2026, to 2 billion yuan. In the third quarter, group revenue fell 4.3 percent and Botanee posted a recurring loss, after it booked marketing for Singles’ Day early. Chinese analysts point to newer brands on short-video platforms that compete on price and pull customers away.
The younger lines tell a different story. Winona Baby grew 54 percent in the first half, and Aoxmed, Botanee’s anti-aging brand, 46 percent. Over nine months the group still grew 5 percent. The plant from Yunnan opens the door. Keeping the customer now takes new proof, and a new reason to pay.
A Laboratory Near Paris: Proya Takes Chinese Skincare Brands West
Proya went to Paris for ingredients and science, and it brings both back to Chinese customers first. Its laboratory in Suresnes, opened on 13 October, has seven scientists on 450 square meters. Its founder, Hou Juncheng, told Premium Beauty News that the Chinese market comes first for now. Europe, in his words, is a source of ingredients and technologies that answer what Chinese consumers want. The new site works alongside Proya’s research centers in Hangzhou and Shanghai.
The West gets its first look this month. Proya’s skincare goes on sale in 400 Ulta Beauty stores in the United States, and Hou names Southeast Asia and Europe as his next regions. He wants Proya among the world’s ten largest beauty companies within a decade. On luxury he is careful. Entering it takes substantial investment and specific expertise, he said, and buying an established brand may work better than building one.
The move comes as the flagship slows. Sales of the Proya brand fell 7 percent in the first half and declined again in the third quarter, when it slipped below half of group revenue. Group revenue still rose 29.8 percent in the quarter, helped by Flower Knows, the makeup brand it took control of in June, and by younger brands such as OR and Insbaha. Recurring profit fell 65 percent as margins narrowed and selling costs rose. Proya is spending to find the next growth before the first one runs out.
Science Without a Story: Bloomage, Giant Biogene and Chinese Skincare
The companies that built China’s ingredient science are the ones losing ground. Bloomage, the largest producer of hyaluronic acid, saw revenue fall 17.9 percent in the first nine months of 2026. Its own skincare business lost half its sales in the first half. Giant Biogene grew out of the recombinant collagen that Fan Daidi began developing in Xi’an in 2000. It reported first-half revenue down 6 percent and profit down a fifth.
Both companies own real science. Bloomage makes hyaluronic acid, the moisture-binding molecule in countless serums. Giant Biogene carries its collagen to shoppers through its brands Comfy and Collgene. Their success has turned against them. A molecule travels easily from one jar to the next, and many brands now promise the same one.
The results draw a line through the market. Any brand can source a molecule. A place, a founder and a body of evidence belong to one house, and the houses that hold them are the ones still growing over the year.
Who Grew and Who Shrank in the First Half of 2026
The brands built on a place, a founder or new proof grew. The companies that sell a molecule shrank, and so did Proya’s flagship.
Change in sales against the first half of 2025, as each company reports it. Winona, Winona Baby and Aoxmed: brand sales at Botanee. Proya: the Proya brand within Proya Cosmetics. Mao Geping, Giant Biogene and Bloomage: group revenue. Sources: company interim reports, August 2026.
Prestige Made at Home: Mao Geping and Chinese Beauty Brands
Mao Geping shows that prestige no longer has to come from Paris. The makeup artist began as a performer with the Zhejiang Yue Opera Troupe in 1983. He became famous for making up the actress Liu Xiaoqing as China’s only female emperor in a television drama of the 1990s. In 2000 he founded his brand and a makeup school in Hangzhou.
His counters work the way the great Western houses built theirs. More than 400 of them in department stores offer a makeup session along with the product. When the company listed in Hong Kong in December 2024, its best-selling pressed powder cost 380 yuan, against 390 yuan for a comparable Nars powder. Most local brands sold theirs for under 200. Revenue rose 26 percent in the first half of 2026.
The home market has turned the same way. Chinese brands overtook the international names in China in 2022, and the Western houses now fight for their share. L’Oréal says it grew nearly three times as fast as the Chinese beauty market in the first half of 2026.
Mao Geping has grown almost entirely at home, where shoppers now pay Western prices to a Chinese name. It sells in Hong Kong through Sephora and has tested Vietnam through influencers. The model travels. The question is whether the name does.
What Comes Next: The Future of Chinese Skincare Brands
The next test for Chinese skincare brands is whether a Western shopper will believe the story a Chinese shopper already buys. Korea has shown that the route can work. Its cosmetics exports rose 33.6 percent from January to October, and in 2024 Korea overtook France as the largest source of cosmetics imported into the United States. Proya starts with Ulta this month, under a name few Americans know. Botanee has research centers in Paris and Japan. Mao Geping has its counters, its school and its founder. Each starts from a home market it already leads and a founder who stands behind the name.
The two routes now mirror each other. The Western groups buy nature far from home and run it from their headquarters. China’s leading houses grow it near home and take only the laboratory abroad. Both arrive at the same counter, where the buyer asks what has been proven about a cream and where it grew. Whoever can answer both sells a cream people trust, in Kunming as in Paris.
For anyone who wonders where the next great cream will come from.
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Beauty and personal care M&A reached a record 384 deals in 2025, Kearney reports, but the median price fell to $22 million and brands worth $100 million to $1 billion are struggling to find buyers.
Puig fragrance brands such as Carolina Herrera, Rabanne and Byredo are at the center of Vision 2032, the plan the Barcelona beauty group presented at its Capital Markets Day in Madrid on 28 October 2026.
