Summer Palace Lipsticks Disputed on Unclear Authorization

Summer Palace Lipsticks

After the Forbidden City released its serial branding cosmetics, the Summer Palace also followed this trend and hit the public with its Summer Palace serial lipsticks. Up to the morning of March 24, the Summer Palace lipsticks has attracted 70 million people’s views and aroused around 79,000 topics. It’s known by the reporters that this series of lipsticks are jointly released by the Summer Palace and China’s famous cosmetics brand Catkin. However, on the official Summer Palace Tmall online store, there’s no result for the popular Summer Palace lipsticks and it’s told by the customer service clerk that they never cooperated with Catkin Cosmetics, where the lipsticks are on sale. Catkin clerks also felt confused about the replies given by the Summer Palace.

Here comes the question that how come the famous cultural sightseeing spots prefer to sell lipsticks when crossing over in co-brands.

Lai Yang, special expert of Beijing Business Research Institute and executive vice president of Beijing Business and Economics Institute, pointed that the cosmetics trade, represented by lipsticks, is the hot spot of present fashion consumption, in thus, no matter fast fashion, luxury brands or cultural and creative industries all take cosmetics as a breakthrough to gain more young customers. This kind of co-branded cosmetics are fixed high prices, but it exactly cater to young customers’ consumption attitude of chasing qualities and unique personalities with the special brand or cultural factors. However, the life span of such goods is comparatively shorter, in this sense, the IP owners mostly prefer to authorize manufacturing in which way they can bestow the added cultural value to the products rather than research, develop, design and manufacture, and in this sense they can just enjoy the profit shares. However, there still exist risks in this process. The brand will be damaged greatly if there are problems in the product quality control process or the designed styles of products are not consistent with the IP owners’ self images.

Not long before, the lipsticks released by the Forbidden City were criticized and ordered to stop manufacturing a month after the release, just because their qualities were so much behind their images.

Lai Yang highlighted that, crossovers should be a measure to add values to the brand cultures rather than attach products to brands to win profits, only in combining the both will benefit each other. Apart from this, every culture and creative IP resource should find its own way and develop products of its unique value instead of following and imitating. He stated that the Summer Palace lipstick is the second imitator after the Forbidden City lipsticks, the aesthetic fatigue has not already formed among the customers. But if any other following IP resource start its crossover business in the area of lipsticks, the promising market will be definitely deteriorated to a situation of cutthroat competition.

Source: Beijing Business Today

Time: April 26, 2019

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