Main Points of the Article
1. Overview of the story of the five female doctors:Founded in July 2019, they launched their first collagen peptide vitamin C drink that July, and by 2021, they secured the top three spots on the Tmall Double 11 nourishment category’s dark horse list; with the help of the Douyin platform’s live e-commerce, the Five Doctors quickly became popular;
2. The reasons why the Five Doctors were able to become rapidly popular include accurate marketing, and their growth path is inseparable from the following factors:Retention of existing customers facilitating new customer acquisition, large traffic exposure through Douyin live streaming, and promotion on other social media platforms such as Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu);
3. Controversies and challenges during the explosive growth phase:The oral beauty market is in the early stages of the product life cycle boom, and the Five Doctors are clearly capitalizing on the market heat and related branding marketing benefits. Along with the “race” of the entire track, both the market and the brand itself have also fallen into controversy.
4. Summary of Reasons for Success:
1) Professional background and scientific product development
2) Highly competitive brand positioning
3) Accurate grasp of market demands and promotional models
4) High-quality products and services
In recent years, an influx of new products has emerged in the concept of “edible beauty,” according to Moojing Market Intelligence. In addition to well-known overseas conglomerate brands such as Shiseido and L'Oréal increasing their layout in the oral beauty track, renowned domestic pharmaceutical enterprises like Baiyunshan and Huaxi Biological have also launched products featuring collagen, sodium hyaluronate, and other major functional effects like whitening, hydration, and anti-aging.
Riding the rapid rise of the oral beauty trend, the domestic newcomer brand “Five Doctors,” with its unique and professional scientific research background endorsements, combined with the backing of a super platform (Douyin) for live broadcasting, quickly became popular.“Rapid Growth”.¶
According to Moojing, the Five Doctors were established in 2019 and launched their first collagen peptide vitamin C drink that July. In 2021, they were ranked among the top three on the Tmall Double 11 nourishment category dark horse list; bolstered by the Douyin platform’s live e-commerce, the Five Doctors quickly rose to fame.
From a marketing strategy perspective, the Five Doctors, like other rapidly popular categories in recent years, focus on establishing an online channel presence (Douyin in particular), closely collaborating with celebrity live broadcasts such as Ye Yiqian and Jin Xing, as well as top influencer couples such as Big Wolf Dog. Accompanying the rise of "self-pleasuring" consumption, more females are willing to invest in enhancing their appearance. Leveraging this trend, Douyin e-commerce has created the Douyin March 8 Good Product Festival to leverage the market heat of "she-economy." As an emerging oral beauty brand, the Five Doctors also actively participated in the festival, creating a buzz with Douyin for the Douyin March 8 Good Product Festival.
Meanwhile, with the flourishing development of self-media in recent years, more and more consumers can receive information about skincare product ingredients through various channels. Therefore, as a brand that focuses on functional skincare products, the Five Doctors naturally face challenges from “picky” consumers questioning the actual effects and constituent ratios of the main functions. From the brand's naming (in fact, when the brand was first established, it was named Youthful Doctors, but due to the deep-rooted marketing concept of being founded by Five Female Doctors, the name was later changed to Five Doctors), it is evident that they aim to communicate their professional scientific research background to consumers.
With the push of the Douyin live e-commerce online channel and the natural advantage of founders with professional scientific research backgrounds, the Five Doctors quickly became popular.
According to Moojing Market Intelligence data, the monthly sales of the Five Doctors on the Douyin channel have already exceeded 20 million yuan/ per month.
Apart from the previously mentioned marketing success, the rapid rise of the Five Doctors as a phenomenal brand in the beauty oral liquid market is inextricably linked with the iteration of beauty oral product raw materials in recent years.
The logic behind collagen's anti-aging is that severe protein loss from the skin will lead to premature aging, dryness, wrinkles, and then muscle loss and facial tissue collapse. Therefore, it is necessary to supplement collagen proteins in a timely manner. One of the founders of the Five Doctors, Jiang Jun, stated that she conducted a comprehensive study on collagen peptides during her college years and the Five Doctors have always insisted on cultivating a research and development team.
The official annotation of the Five Doctors for establishing a joint laboratory is: the future will leverage dual research and development strengths to expand the technological boundaries of the large health industry and enhance the scientific and technological quality of health products. Founder Jiang Jun said, "So if you want to develop better products, you have to start from basic research; after the basic research, we need to select raw materials; after selecting the raw materials, we have to do compatibility experiments; after the compatibility experiments, we need to do product application development." Jiang Jun explained that keeping a research and development team of over 30 people with a team of less than 300 is because users' needs are becoming increasingly high. Neither the domestic nor the international level of related research has iterated to the point of meeting the needs of today's changing consumers.
Indeed, Moojing found that in researching the consumption habits of the past two years, the consumption mindset of consumers is also gradually evolving, impelled by the emotional anxiety brought on by the pandemic,rational consumptionis prevailing, and industries that could rely on branding or ingredients to produce high-priced blockbuster health products are facing reshaping. It is precisely because of the impact of such a large environment that the overall industry is facing a wide range of reshaping that it provides a good opportunity for emerging domestic brands like the Five Doctors.
Founder Jiang Jun said that she chose entrepreneurship because it seemed very good and simple. However, the journey from consumer to entrepreneur is not smooth sailing.
As mentioned earlier, the scientific research persona of the Five Doctors brand is an important factor to persuade consumers in the era of rational consumption to make purchases, but a bright scientific research background is obviously not enough to gain a foothold in the oral beauty market, which is poised to become the third largest category after skincare and makeup. Moojing believes the reason why the Five Doctors were able to quickly become a phenomenon is mainly accurate marketing, and their growth path cannot be separated from the following factors: Operation of existing customers fostering the new customer acquisition, large traffic exposure through Douyin live broadcasting, and promotion on other social media such as Little Red Book.
According to the brand founder Jiang Jun, the Five Doctors had already established an existing customer community in the early stage of their creation, where the brand interacts and answers questions with consumers.
“I’ve recommended your products to 50 users already, why did you only become popular now?”
“Why are you so popular now? So many people have started using your products, depriving me of the exclusive sense of superiority I once had.”
The accumulated "existing customers" of the Five Doctors from the early stages of its establishment have always been outspoken. This group mainly consists of sophisticated moms and experienced middle-class consumers, who treasure this “good and affordable” domestic product like a cherished find, following it for the long term, sharing it far and wide. Some even dip into their own pockets to invest in “Douyin+” for the brand’s short videos to help promote and advertise.
It is because of these supporters that the Five Doctors, established in 2019, launched their first product in July, the collagen peptide vitamin C drink, and only took two months to achieve a sales revenue of one million yuan. The following year, they climbed onto the Douyin 618 nourishment dietary supplement category’s star brand list and subsequently secured a top three spot on the 2021 Tmall "Double 11" nourishment category dark horse list. During the Douyin 618 event in 2022, they ranked second in the nourishment category in terms of sales and first in merchant self-broadcast sales.Image Source: The official flagship store of The Five Female PhDs
Moojing has learned that The Five Female PhDs offer one-on-one WeChat business consultants for loyal customers, strictly controlling the qualifications for group entry, which indicates that The Five Female PhDs implement a layered management operational model in their brand consumer strategy. On the surface, this model's layering criteria is based on the consumer's order amount; however, at a deeper level, the criteria is the consumer's degree of brand recognition . When consumers are deemed important enough to enter the dedicated customer ranks, elevating them within the brand's exclusive rights upgrade path, they contribute to the brand through stocking up on their own orders or recommending potential users around them. This 'old brings new' tactic brings more new users and cash flow to the brand.
Phase One : At the beginning of their settlement in early 2020, the founding team personally engaged in live broadcasts, leveraging their professional expertise and doctoral titles to create substantial initial buzz. During this phase, the brand did not collaborate with top streamers or promoters for sales assistance and achieved monthly sales of one million.
Phase Two : Starting from June 2021, the brand began collaborating with Douyin platform influencers, categorizing according to Douyin's official e-commerce eight major consumer groups. Centered around user groups like the 'sophisticated mothers' and 'experienced middle class' , The Five Female PhDs identified target KOLs among these user groups, leading to the first sales surge, with monthly sales reaching tens of millions.
Phase Three : From November 2021, The Five Female PhDs started collaborations with more top streamers, appearing in live broadcast rooms of Zhu Zixiao, the Big Wolf Dog couple, and others. The brand's own shop also explored its own live-streaming model, pairing differentiated products with content promotion. Meanwhile, the brand cooperated with "Douyin In-Life Style" and Douyin e-commerce's tonic category theme activities, achieving sales explosions during various e-commerce events.
In addition to private traffic and Douyin e-commerce, The Five Female PhDs also conduct seeding and reputation maintenance on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu to supplement traffic. Moojing found that on Xiaohongshu, The Five Female PhDs continued the early seeding methods of Douyin, partnering with waist-level bloggers like nutritionists, physique experts, and health gurus to create content mainly focused on brand product reviews and education.
The previous text has detailed the online growth path of The Five Female PhDs, who not only rapidly gained popularity online through their layered operations and incisive marketing but also sped up building their brand image. Last August, The First Female PhDs opened their first offline physical store in Beijing, indicating that in the future they plan to accelerate the expansion of their brand by complementing strong online marketing with in-person promotion and enhanced consumer experience in brick-and-mortar locations.
Moojing compares concept activity levels (sales revenue/concept social index) over time to analyze the lifecycle model of products/concepts. This model integrates market sales indicators with trends in social media interaction volume to assess the evolution of a concept/product, assisting brand owners in making decisions regarding brand strategy and product deployment.
explosion phase . The Five Female PhDs, a player within this field, has clearly capitalized on the overall social discussion heat and brand promotion intensity in the oral beauty market, with significant social discussion volume across multiple social platforms. Yet, with the "rampage" of the entire track, the track as a whole and the brand itself have also fallen into controversy.
As early as 2013, industry slumps caused by media questioning from CCTV and Consumer Reports, aside from problems with product quality and compliance, also included doubts about the beauty benefits of oral collagen for the skin. A common point of skepticism lies in the fact that collagen, as a protein, must be processed by the human digestive system and broken down into amino acids before being absorbed by the body and thus cannot directly replenish skin collagen to offer beauty benefits.
Against the backdrop of rapid development, consumer anxiety about their appearance has increased, leading oral beauty products, which often require lengthy cycles of use and effect, to be suspected of actual efficacy. Taking The Five Female PhDs as an example, criticism about them being a "tax on intelligence " is not uncommon. In this context, brands need to continue refined operations, minimizing aggressive, exaggerated, and fantastic promotions, and strengthen ties to consumers. This can be done through regular presentations by loyal customers and offline events, comparing the actual effects of related products to increase user stickiness.
Taking The Five Female PhDs as an example, the effects of their refined operations are clearly visible. By leveraging internet celebrity culture and social platforms, the brand successfully promotes the oral beauty brand to the market, connecting with more consumers. Furthermore, the brand offers an online subscription service, constantly meeting the oral beauty needs of consumers, increasing their loyalty and stickiness to The Five Female PhDs brand, and enhancing the brand's voice and competitive advantage. The connection with consumers also enables collection of firsthand consumer feedback, which can be applied to the brand's product innovation and marketing moves. This is what we often refer to as C2B . At the same time, oral collagen-related products are not suitable for all consumers. According to the customer service of The Five Female PhDs Tmall flagship store, groups not suited for these products include:
Therefore, Moojing believes that for the fast-developing oral beauty track, brand owners can take advantage of the fact that products are not suitable for everyone to pre-emptively deploy new SKUs to meet rapidly changing consumer demands.
1. Professional background and scientific product development : The founders come from the medical field with profound professional knowledge, providing a solid foundation in the oral beauty field, allowing them to apply the logic of pharmaceutical development to skincare product research. Additionally, with their relentless pursuit and innovation in developing oral beauty products, they ensure the scientific and professional nature of their products.
2. Highly competitive brand positioning : The Five Female PhDs identified a highly specialized niche within the oral beauty market through research, which means they have ample opportunities to get their brand recognized and accepted. Today, The Five Female PhDs have become one of China's top oral beauty brands with a significant market share. This exceptional brand positioning also solidifies the brand's continual development.
3. Accurate grasp of market demand and promotion models : At the inception of their brand, The Five Female PhDs fully took into account the changing needs of contemporary consumers. They utilized internet celebrity culture and social platforms to propel the oral beauty brand into the market. This innovative promotion model not only generated traffic growth for the brand but also increased brand reputation.
4. High-quality products and services : The Five Female PhDs are mindful of the product development and manufacturing process, using high-quality materials and advanced technology to ensure the quality and safety of their products. They also prioritize pre-sale and post-sale services, providing a comfortable and pleasant purchasing experience for consumers, which in turn earns greater trust and favor for the brand.
Personally, I was initially resistant to brands often talking about their so-called stories and missions, but The Five Female PhDs showed me the spirit and vision instilled by the founders into the brand, which is the transformation from consumers to entrepreneurs, giving The Five Female PhDs the spirit of excellence and the desire...Making Beauty More Scientific, More Professional, and More Universal . The gales of brand strategic change that have been stirred up in the new era are still roaring. Moojing is here to wish that more Chinese brands can achieve their own transformation and realize their value in the new era.
