China's Personal Care Market Surges +22.8% in H1 2025

Introduction

China's online personal care market delivered one of its strongest growth readings in years, reaching CN¥ 117.0 billion in MAT2025 (the 12-month period through April 2025), a +22.8% year-on-year increase that reversed the near-stagnation of MAT2024 (-0.4% YoY). The recovery was not simply a volume story: it signals a structural realignment in how Chinese consumers think about personal care, what they buy, and where they buy it.

The headline number obscures several deeper shifts. Body care now commands 56% of the total market, growing +27.0% YoY to CN¥ 65.1 billion, while hair care grew at a comparatively modest +17.9% to CN¥ 51.9 billion. Fragrance has emerged as the single most powerful purchase driver across both segments, with fragrance-retaining body care products surging +61.8% YoY. And Douyin (抖音) — China's content-commerce platform — has captured 38.9% of body care sales, up from 32.6% a year earlier, rapidly eroding the dominance of traditional platforms like Taobao & Tmall (天猫).

For brand strategists and category managers, the data points to a market in active transformation: price compression at the volume end, premiumization at the occasion end, and a channel landscape that rewards content-native brands with compelling sensory stories to tell.

Key Finding 1: V-Shaped Market Recovery Masks Structural Price Compression

The CN¥ 21.7 billion increase in annual sales — from CN¥ 95.3 billion in MAT2024 to CN¥ 117.0 billion in MAT2025 — is remarkable given how abruptly it follows a flat year. The rebound was fueled by three concurrent forces: the rise of cost-effective domestic brands lowering entry barriers, intensified promotional activity during events like the 6.18 mid-year festival and Double 11, and Douyin's content-driven model expanding the addressable market by reaching consumers who were not previously active online personal care shoppers.

The important caveat is that this growth was primarily volume-led. Average selling prices fell from CN¥ 62.1 in MAT2023 to CN¥ 51.0 in MAT2025 — a -17.8% decline over two years. Platform-driven price wars and the influx of competitively priced domestic brands compressed margins across the category. Brands competing on price alone face a deteriorating unit economics environment; differentiation through efficacy, fragrance, and occasion-specific positioning has become a commercial necessity.

Key Finding 2: Body Care Outpaces Hair Care as "Skinification" Takes Hold

Body care's rise from 53.8% of the personal care market in MAT2024 to 55.6% in MAT2025 reflects more than incremental share gains — it represents a fundamental consumer mindset shift. The "skinification" trend, whereby facial skincare-grade ingredients, formulations, and efficacy expectations extend to body care, is now well established in China.

Evidence of this shift is visible across multiple data dimensions. Social media buzz for body care reached 3.69 million posts, up +131.9% YoY — more than double the prior year — while hair care buzz declined marginally at -1.2%. Premium active ingredients originally popularized in facial skincare are now mainstream in body care: niacinamide grew +150.3% in whitening body care, hyaluronic acid in firming body care grew +440.5%, and collagen grew +423.6%. These are not incremental additions to existing formulations; they represent a wholesale upgrade of the body care value proposition.

The fastest-growing body cleansing efficacies tell the same story: anti-acne cleansers grew +115.6%, whitening cleansers grew +105.9%, and hydrating cleansers grew +83.1%. Consumers are applying the same multi-step, results-oriented logic to their body routines that they have long applied to their facial skincare.

Key Finding 3: Fragrance Is Now a Functional Benefit, Not a Marketing Accent

The most strategically consequential finding in Moojing's data is the elevation of fragrance from a secondary attribute to the primary purchase driver across both body care and hair care. In body care, scent accounts for 50.2% of all product evaluation buzz — more than five times the second-ranked dimension (hydrating/moisturizing at 10.0%). In hair care, scent rivals efficacy as the top consumer concern, commanding 36.8% of e-commerce evaluation focus versus 38.4% for efficacy.

Fragrance-retaining products are the fastest-growing sub-segment in both categories. In hair care, fragrance-retaining products reached CN¥ 9.37 billion (+38.5% YoY), growing at twice the rate of the overall hair care market. In body care, fragrance-retaining products grew from CN¥ 7.81 billion to CN¥ 12.64 billion (+61.8% YoY).

Within scent preferences, the market is bifurcating. Traditional floral scents — cherry blossom, rose, camellia — remain dominant in absolute sales. But emerging fragrance families are growing far faster: oriental fragrances grew +137.1% in body care, gourmand grew +109.9%, and woody grew +63.9%. In hair care, emerging notes including fig, lime, and green tea are growing at rates exceeding +300%. These figures reflect consumer aspiration toward more sophisticated, fine-fragrance-influenced scent profiles in everyday personal care.

Key Finding 4: Douyin's Channel Capture Accelerates Across Both Segments

Douyin's rise as a personal care sales channel is not new, but the pace of share capture accelerated sharply in MAT2025. In body care, Douyin's share rose from 32.6% to 38.9% — a +6.3 percentage point gain in a single year — while Taobao & Tmall fell from 52.1% to 43.1%. In hair care, the shift is even more dramatic: Taobao & Tmall lost -12.4 percentage points of share, with Douyin reaching 38.8%.

Douyin's advantages are structural. Its short-video and live commerce model aligns naturally with the experiential nature of personal care products: a fragrance story is more compellingly told through a 60-second video than a product listing page. The platform also reaches consumers who were not actively searching for personal care products — creating demand rather than fulfilling it. For brands whose value proposition centers on sensory experience, Douyin is increasingly the primary arena for growth.

Key Finding 5: Occasion-Led Purchasing Creates a Distinct Premium Tier

Body care has acquired social currency. Gift-giving discussion surged +123.2% YoY, and dating-occasion discussion grew +172.8% YoY on social media — signals that body care products are being purchased as expressions of taste, care, and identity rather than mere personal hygiene. Gift-giving now commands CN¥ 2.30 billion in body care sales (+51.4% YoY), with an average purchase price of CN¥ 92.

The holiday-by-holiday breakdown reveals sharply differentiated consumer behavior. Valentine's Day sees 39.4% of body care gift set sales fall in the CN¥ 500+ price tier; Mother's Day similarly shows 34.4% in the premium segment. These are not mass-market purchases — they are considered investments in emotional occasions. Brands that invest in gift-ready presentation, curated product sets, and occasion-specific fragrance positioning can access a premium tier that is structurally insulated from the price compression visible at the mass market level.

Market Implications

China's personal care market in H1 2025 presents a dual challenge: volume growth is abundant but margin expansion requires deliberate positioning. Three strategic implications stand out.

First, fragrance is no longer optional. Brands across both hair and body care must invest in fragrance development as a core competency, not a finishing detail. The data shows that consumers evaluate, discuss, and purchase based on scent at a level that equals or exceeds functional efficacy. Brands that cannot articulate a compelling fragrance story — and back it with genuine product performance — will cede ground to those that can.

Second, the channel mix has irrevocably shifted. Douyin approaching near-parity with Taobao & Tmall in both body care (38.9% vs. 43.1%) and hair care (38.8% vs. 39.7%) means that brands cannot treat it as a supplementary channel. Content strategy, live commerce execution, and KOL partnerships on Douyin must receive the same investment priority as search optimization and promotional planning on traditional platforms.

Third, occasion-based segmentation unlocks premiumization. The CN¥ 500+ gift set segment growing fastest on Valentine's Day and Mother's Day demonstrates that Chinese consumers are willing to pay luxury prices for personal care when the purchase is imbued with social and emotional meaning. This is a durable premium tier that operates by different rules than the mass market — and brands should develop distinct product lines, packaging, and marketing for it.

Conclusion

China's personal care market has moved from recovery to transformation. The +22.8% growth in MAT2025 reflects genuine demand acceleration across both body care and hair care, but the categories that are growing fastest — fragrance-retaining products, occasion-specific gift sets, skinification-driven body treatments — share a common thread: they deliver experiences, not just functions. As Douyin reshapes discovery and purchase behavior, and as domestic brands continue to raise the competitive bar, the personal care brands that will capture disproportionate value in H2 2025 and beyond are those that can credibly deliver emotional resonance alongside clinical efficacy.