敖瑞鹏代言宋朝香氛 解锁好香新"鹏"友

This article covers the announcement that domestic Chinese fragrance brand Songchao has named Aoruipeng its first global brand ambassador, and breaks down the brand's growth logic, offering guidance for general consumers shopping for fragrances.

1. Songchao Fragrance boasts clear core strengths. It has disrupted the industry's widespread inflated pricing and rejected the easy shortcut of asset-light OEM production. Instead, the brand has built an end-to-end in-house R&D and production system, controlling quality entirely on its own. It uses the same raw material suppliers as luxury brands, focuses on elegant Oriental scents such as Longjing tea and osmanthus, and has built strong product recognition—consumers can identify its products even without packaging.

2. The brand maintains transparent, reasonable pricing, directing budget to raw materials and scent formulation rather than marketing, with a far lower marketing expense ratio than peer brands. It has stated it will not raise prices following the ambassador announcement. Today, Songchao holds top rankings in multiple industry metrics, offering general consumers high-quality, cost-effective authentic domestic fragrances.

This article shares the operational experience of domestic Chinese fragrance brand Songchao Fragrance in breaking through the industry's homogenization trap, offering a reference for peer brands.

1. On the product R&D side: Contrary to the industry's common asset-light OEM model built for quick profits, Songchao has invested in building an independent perfumery and production base, handling all R&D, production and quality control in-house. Drawing deep inspiration from Song Dynasty incense culture, it has created differentiated local Oriental scent profiles and built unique product recognition, successfully standing out from homogenized competition.

2. On the marketing and pricing side: Adopting a long-term growth approach, the brand prioritizes alignment of brand and spokesperson identity and rhythm when selecting ambassadors, choosing rising, capable artists whose audience overlaps with the brand's target consumers. It refuses to pass marketing costs on to consumers, keeps prices tightly aligned with product value, and avoids inflated markup. It has broken through communication bottlenecks via a combined strategy of IP collaborations, brand ambassador partnerships and platform new product IP programs, reinforcing its differentiated positioning as an ethical domestic brand focused on quality and value—an positioning that aligns perfectly with today's trend of rational consumption of domestic goods.

This article analyzes the current landscape of the fragrance track and Songchao Fragrance's success strategy, offering growth guidance and opportunity insights for fragrance sellers.

1. The fragrance industry today is plagued by severe homogenization, over-emphasis on marketing over product quality, and widespread inflated pricing. Consumers are no longer satisfied with story-driven overpriced products, and have strong demand for cost-effective products with distinctive local cultural characteristics, creating new growth opportunities in the fragrance space.

2. Key takeaways for sellers: By avoiding the red sea of homogenized OEM production and pursuing differentiation through investment in core product strength, building product recognition via local Oriental scent profiles, and committing to long-term investment in R&D and quality control, sellers are far more likely to build loyal consumer word-of-mouth.

3. Opportunity insights: Domestic Chinese fragrances are currently in a period of rapid growth. Sellers can build products around local Oriental culture, achieve mass outreach via Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) platform resources, IP collaborations and ambassador partnerships, while maintaining reasonable pricing and refraining from passing marketing costs to consumers, to build long-term customer retention.

This article draws development insights and identifies new business opportunities for fragrance-related production factories through Songchao Fragrance's growth path.

1. On product development and design demand: The market is no longer satisfied with homogenized fragrances from OEM production. Consumers now prefer elegant, uniquely Oriental scents and demand increasingly higher product quality. Factories that improve their independent R&D and quality control capabilities will be able to meet brand demand and secure more cooperation opportunities.

2. New business opportunities: More and more fragrance brands are rejecting the asset-light OEM model and are willing to invest in in-house R&D and production. This creates new growth opportunities for production facilities with core R&D capabilities and stable quality control. Unlike the traditional pure OEM model, factories that can engage in deep collaborative R&D with brands now hold a distinct competitive advantage.

3. Insights for e-commerce development: The fragrance category is seeing strong growth on e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu. Factories can proactively partner with domestic fragrance brands that focus on online channels, adjust their production capacity and R&D direction to match online demand, and capitalize on the booming growth of domestic Chinese fragrances.

This article outlines the current state of the fragrance industry and core brand pain points, offering a reference for fragrance-related service providers to understand customer demand and develop targeted solutions.

1. Industry development trend: The fragrance industry is evolving from its early focus on marketing over product to a new phase centered on product quality and cost-effectiveness, with domestic Chinese fragrance brands rising rapidly. More brands are pursuing long-term development to break the industry's homogenization and inflated markup practices.

2. Core customer pain points: Most small and medium-sized fragrance brands lack in-house R&D and production capabilities, and struggle to build differentiated products through OEM alone. Brands aiming for mass market outreach need marketing resources that match their brand identity, as well as platform traffic support to break through communication bottlenecks.

3. Targeted solutions for service providers: Service providers can offer brands support connecting with R&D and production resources to help build differentiated products; on the marketing side, they can help brands match with identity-aligned ambassadors and IP resources, access platform traffic promotion resources, and control marketing costs to avoid inflated pricing that erodes consumer acceptance.

The case study of Songchao Fragrance offers insights on merchant recruitment and operations for beauty and fragrance e-commerce platforms.

1. High-quality brands have clear demand for platform traffic support. Songchao Fragrance achieved strong exposure growth through its partnership with Xiaohongshu's Treasure New Product IP, demonstrating that launching dedicated promotion IPs for high-quality new products can attract more product-driven brands to partner with the platform and enrich the platform's brand portfolio.

2. Merchant recruitment direction: Many product-driven domestic fragrance brands like Songchao, which have grown quietly with strong product strength, are now looking to expand their influence and need platform traffic support. Platforms can prioritize these brands for recruitment to optimize merchant structure and raise the overall quality and cost-effectiveness of products on the platform.

3. Operations management: Platforms can prioritize supporting differentiated local domestic fragrance brands, as these brands align with current consumer trends and drive category growth. Platforms can also guide these brands to maintain reasonable pricing, mitigate the industry risk of inflated pricing, and improve the overall consumer shopping experience.

This article introduces emerging trends in the domestic Chinese fragrance industry, providing a representative case study for research on fragrance industry development with high research reference value.

1. New industry trends: A new development model has emerged in China's domestic fragrance industry. Unlike the popular early industry model of asset-light OEM, heavy marketing and inflated markup, a new type of practical brand represented by Songchao Fragrance has emerged that embraces long-term thinking, in-house R&D and production, and prioritizes quality and cost-effectiveness. This is a new industry upgrading trend driven by broader consumer upgrading in the fragrance sector.

2. Outstanding industry problems: The overall industry suffers from severe homogenization, with 90% of brands relying on OEM production and lacking core competitiveness. Excessive marketing has pushed up product prices, moving brands further away from the daily demand of ordinary consumers. Songchao's breakthrough path provides a valuable reference for solving these widespread industry problems.

3. Research value of the new business model: This model centers on core product strength, using IP collaborations and ambassador partnerships solely as exposure channels rather than justifications for price hikes, and sticks to its positioning of making high-quality fragrances accessible to the mass public. Aligning perfectly with current trends of rational consumption and domestic brand preference, it is a new business model worthy of in-depth academic and industry research.