Top Beauty Brands on XHS: What Makes Them Successful

1. Why Beauty Brands Can't Afford to Ignore XHS

2. Florasis: Winning With Cultural Identity

3. Perfect Diary: The Power of the KOL Pyramid

4. Proya: Ingredient Literacy as a Growth Engine

5. Sulwhasoo & K-Beauty: Riding Cultural Affinity

7. The 5 Success Pillars Every Beauty Brand Shares on XHS

8. What International Brands Can Take Away

On Xiaohongshu (XHS), a single skincare post from a trusted creator can spark a nationwide sellout within hours. A before-and-after photo, a morning routine breakdown, an honest ingredient review — these are the moments that move product. And the beauty brands that understand this are pulling ahead of those that don't.

XHS (also known as Little Red Book or RedNote) now reaches over 300 million monthly active users, the vast majority of them female, affluent, and between 18 and 35. Beauty and skincare consistently rank as the platform's top content category. With over 600 million searches conducted on the platform every day, and a purchase conversion rate from reviews that outperforms Tmall by more than three times, XHS has become the single most important platform for beauty brand discovery in China.

But presence alone doesn't guarantee success. The brands winning on XHS — whether domestic giants, K-beauty stalwarts, or international incumbents — have each found a distinct formula. This article breaks down what they're doing, why it works, and what any beauty brand can learn from them.

Why Beauty Brands Can't Afford to Ignore XHS {#why-beauty-brands-cant-afford-to-ignore-xhs}

Beauty has always been one of XHS's defining categories, but the platform's influence over purchase decisions has deepened significantly in recent years. Over 90% of beauty-related content on XHS now comes from everyday users rather than official brand accounts, which means the platform functions more like a peer review network than a traditional advertising channel. Consumers aren't just scrolling — they're searching, comparing, and making purchase decisions based on what real users say.

The numbers tell the same story. Beauty queries reached 162 million in the first half of 2025 alone, accounting for 44% of all platform searches. Seventy-seven percent of those searches are product-focused, meaning users arrive with clear intent. For brands, that translates directly into a discovery funnel that is cheaper, more trusted, and more durable than paid ads on most other channels.

What this also means is that the old playbook — a celebrity endorsement, a glossy campaign image, a hard call-to-action — consistently underperforms on XHS. The brands succeeding here have rebuilt their content strategy from the ground up around authenticity, specificity, and community.

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Florasis: Winning With Cultural Identity {#florasis-winning-with-cultural-identity}

Florasis (花西子) is perhaps the clearest proof that brand identity, not marketing spend, is what drives long-term success on XHS. The brand built its entire visual and narrative world around traditional Chinese aesthetics: compacts engraved with floral motifs, packaging inspired by imperial design traditions, and product names drawn from classical Chinese poetry. Every item was designed to feel like a collectible as much as a cosmetic. That was a deliberate strategic choice, not an aesthetic accident.

The target demographic — Chinese women aged 20 to 35 — had grown up in a culture simultaneously shaped by global social media and a renewed pride in Chinese heritage. Florasis gave this group something to feel proud of buying. On XHS specifically, the brand worked with KOLs who presented its products as lifestyle objects embedded in Chinese cultural identity, not simply as makeup to be tested or reviewed. The content felt editorial rather than promotional, and that distinction mattered enormously on a platform where users are quick to dismiss anything that feels like an ad.

Florasis was an early adopter of XHS for product seeding, building community momentum long before most domestic brands recognized the platform's power. Its XHS presence fed organic storytelling that generated international press attention — when Florasis became the first C-beauty brand to open at Samaritaine Paris Pont-Neuf in September 2025, the global coverage followed a wave of community-driven XHS content that had been building for months before the launch. The lesson is important: XHS community momentum can precede and shape offline and global milestones, not just react to them.

Key takeaway: A clearly defined cultural identity — one that resonates emotionally with your target XHS user — creates content that users want to share. The product is the vehicle; the story is the engine.

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Perfect Diary: The Power of the KOL Pyramid {#perfect-diary-the-power-of-the-kol-pyramid}

Perfect Diary's rise on XHS is a masterclass in scaled influencer architecture. Rather than betting its growth on a handful of celebrity names, the brand built a wide network of mid-tier and micro KOLs who produced everyday usage posts, tutorials, honest comparisons, and side-by-side swatches — content that spoke directly to young women choosing between international prestige brands and newer domestic alternatives.

For one product launch, Perfect Diary coordinated over 150 KOLs spanning follower counts from a few hundred to over 100,000. The majority posted in the week leading up to the launch, creating a cascade of organic-looking discovery across feeds. Because the content came from many different voices at many different scales, it didn't read as a coordinated campaign — it read as a genuine cultural moment. Posts tagged with Perfect Diary products climbed XHS trending lists, and user-generated content spiked after each KOL activation, suggesting that influencer posts seeded authentic consumer conversation rather than simply broadcasting to passive audiences.

The content itself was informative rather than promotional. KOLs contextualized products — showing how a single eyeshadow palette worked across day-to-night looks, or comparing Perfect Diary's shades to well-known Western alternatives on price and pigmentation. This approach built trust at scale because it respected the intelligence of XHS users, who arrive with research intent and high skepticism toward anything that feels like a scripted endorsement.

Key takeaway: The most effective KOL strategies on XHS don't rely on a single big voice. A pyramid of voices — from macro KOLs for reach to micro KOCs for peer-level trust — creates the impression of organic discovery, which is exactly what the platform rewards.

For a deeper look at structuring KOL and KOC campaigns by industry, the industry-specific XHS marketing strategies at AllXHS are built around this kind of tiered influencer logic.

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Proya: Ingredient Literacy as a Growth Engine {#proya-ingredient-literacy-as-a-growth-engine}

Proya's story on XHS is defined by a strategic bet that paid off: Chinese skincare consumers were shifting from brand prestige to ingredient literacy, and Proya built its product messaging entirely around that shift while international incumbents were still optimizing for the brand-led model that had worked in China for decades.

In 2024, Proya became the first domestic beauty brand in China to record RMB 10.778 billion in annual revenue. That same year, its Tmall store overtook L'Oréal to top the beauty rankings for the first time. On Douyin, Proya's GMV grew by more than 110% year-over-year. The brand's success across platforms was anchored by a content strategy that led with ingredient stories — explaining how specific actives like peptides and antioxidants worked, and why Proya's formulations differed from competitors. On XHS, where users actively research skincare before purchasing and long-form educational content consistently outperforms short promotional posts, this approach was close to ideal.

Proya also partnered with XHS for a Women's Day live-streaming campaign in 2025 that generated over 130 million impressions across platforms. Rather than positioning the stream as a sales event, the brand used it as a conversation between the brand and its community — discussing values, skin concerns, and product rationale. That distinction between selling and connecting is one of the sharpest dividing lines between brands that thrive on XHS and those that plateau.

Over 95% of Proya's revenue comes from online channels, and its gross margin rose to 73.26% in 2025 — evidence that ingredient-led positioning supports premium pricing even in a competitive market.

Key takeaway: On XHS, education is a purchase driver. Brands that explain the science behind their products — clearly, credibly, and in formats designed for the platform — build the kind of trust that converts researchers into buyers.

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Sulwhasoo & K-Beauty: Riding Cultural Affinity {#sulwhasoo--k-beauty-riding-cultural-affinity}

K-beauty brands occupy a distinct position on XHS, and Sulwhasoo's ranking as the most influential cosmetic brand on the platform illustrates how much cultural tailwinds matter in China's beauty market. The Hallyu wave — built across K-dramas, K-pop, and decades of cultural export — has created organic demand for Korean products among Chinese consumers that no amount of advertising spend could manufacture from scratch.

On XHS specifically, Korean brands like Sulwhasoo, Laneige, and The Ordinary have cultivated large, engaged followings by consistently publishing educational content that empowers users to make informed purchase decisions rather than simply showcasing products. Popular content formats include before-and-after transformation posts, detailed reviews addressing specific skin concerns, and seasonal skincare routines that evolve with the platform's keyword cycles. When a new Korean skincare ingredient or trend emerges, XHS users turn to the platform for authentic reviews and tutorials, creating a self-sustaining discovery loop.

Chinese consumers perceive K-beauty products as offering superior quality-to-price value compared to Western luxury brands. That perception, combined with the credibility built through years of consistent content performance and culturally resonant aesthetics, gives K-beauty brands a structural advantage that international brands without a similar cultural bridge need to compensate for through content strategy and localization.

Key takeaway: Cultural proximity accelerates trust on XHS. Brands that lack an inherent cultural connection to Chinese consumers need to invest more deliberately in localization — not just translation, but the emotional and aesthetic adaptation of content to fit what XHS users find relatable and credible.

This is exactly where resources like the AllXHS free resource library can help international brands close the localization gap faster.

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L'Oréal: Platform-Native IP at Scale {#loréal-platform-native-ip-at-scale}

L'Oréal's XHS strategy represents a different model from the domestic and K-beauty brands above — one shaped by the reality of being a global incumbent trying to stay relevant in a market where domestic challengers are gaining ground rapidly. Rather than running traditional ad campaigns, L'Oréal has pivoted to IP marketing: building content around platform-native moments, community events, and XHS-specific creative programs rather than adapting global assets for Chinese audiences.

In 2025, XHS recorded over 600 brand collaborations across its IP programs, with more than 50% of those brands running repeat campaigns. For L'Oréal, this approach means co-creating content around seasonal skin concerns and trend-led routines — building narratives that feel indigenous to XHS culture rather than imported from a global marketing calendar. The practical effect is that L'Oréal content on XHS looks and feels more like native discovery content than sponsored material, which is precisely what the platform's algorithm rewards.

This shift also reflects a broader truth about how consumer behavior on XHS has evolved. Users increasingly research skincare using AI-assisted tools before they even open XHS. Brands that publish clear, factual, ingredient-forward content on the platform are the ones that survive this pre-screening stage. For L'Oréal, the move toward IP and community-native content is partly a response to this more sophisticated, skeptical consumer — one who responds to relevance and cultural fluency rather than brand prestige alone.

Key takeaway: Global brand equity doesn't automatically translate to XHS engagement. International brands need to invest in platform-native content creation — building around XHS's own cultural moments and community rhythms, not repurposing what worked elsewhere.

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The 5 Success Pillars Every Beauty Brand Shares on XHS {#the-5-success-pillars-every-beauty-brand-shares-on-xhs}

Across every brand studied, five common pillars appear regardless of origin, price point, or category:

1. A clear identity that travels well on XHS. Whether it's Florasis's Chinese cultural pride, Proya's ingredient science, or Sulwhasoo's heritage positioning, successful brands know exactly what they stand for and translate that identity into content that XHS users find worth saving and sharing.

2. A tiered influencer architecture. The highest-performing beauty campaigns on XHS combine KOLs for awareness and aspirational reach with KOCs for peer-level trust and search visibility. Beauty and skincare brands in particular benefit from a 40/60 KOL-to-KOC ratio, as consumers in this category actively seek multiple authentic reviews before committing to a purchase.

3. Search-first content optimization. XHS is not just a social platform — it functions as a product discovery engine. Beauty-related queries exceeded 162 million in the first half of 2025 alone. Brands that optimize their notes, hashtags, and keywords for in-app search capture high-intent users at the moment they're most ready to buy. Search visibility has become a form of brand equity.

4. Educational, long-form content that respects the reader. A detailed 500-word experience post consistently outperforms a banner-style ad on XHS. Brands like Proya and Sulwhasoo have built their credibility on the platform by explaining ingredients, routines, and formulations in depth — content that treats users as intelligent adults rather than passive consumers.

5. Sustained community engagement, not campaign bursts. The brands with the strongest XHS presence treat the platform as a two-way channel. Responding to comments, resharing strong UGC, and building around XHS's cultural calendar — not just global shopping events — creates a community presence that outlasts any single campaign.

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What International Brands Can Take Away {#what-international-brands-can-take-away}

For international brands looking to enter or scale on XHS, the clearest lesson from these case studies is that the platform rewards depth over polish. Users are sophisticated, skeptical, and highly search-literate. They will find your brand through keyword queries long before they encounter your paid ads, and they will form their opinion based on what real voices — not your official account — say about your products.

This means the work of building on XHS begins before your first campaign post. It begins with understanding who your XHS user actually is, what language they use to describe their skin concerns, what content formats they save, and which creators they trust. It means localization that goes beyond translation — adapting your brand story, your visual identity, and your content rhythm to fit a platform culture that values authenticity above all else.

The good news is that XHS is genuinely democratic in how it distributes content. Its algorithm prioritizes quality and relevance over follower count, meaning even newly established brand accounts can achieve significant reach if their content resonates. Brands don't need celebrity budgets or years of equity in China to build a presence — they need the right strategy, the right partners, and the right content.

That's precisely the gap that AllXHS is built to close, with over 378 data-driven industry reports, a 21-module training academy, and 25+ ready-to-use tools spanning beauty and 20+ other verticals. Whether you're mapping your first XHS entry or optimizing an existing presence, the resources and expert support are there.

Ready to Build Your Brand on XHS?

The beauty brands succeeding on Xiaohongshu aren't winning because they have bigger budgets or better products than their competitors. They're winning because they understand the platform — its users, its algorithm, its culture, and its unique role in the Chinese consumer journey. Florasis owns a cultural identity. Perfect Diary built a trust architecture. Proya bet on ingredient literacy. Sulwhasoo rode a cultural tailwind. L'Oréal rebuilt its content model from the inside out.

Each of these playbooks contains something transferable. The question for any brand entering XHS is which elements apply to your category, your audience, and your starting point — and how to execute them with the speed and specificity the platform demands.

AllXHS exists to answer exactly that question, with the deepest English-language resource base available for brands marketing on Xiaohongshu.

[Talk to an XHS Expert Today →](https://www.allxhs.com/contact)

Get personalized guidance on your beauty brand's XHS strategy — from account setup and content planning to KOL selection and campaign execution. Our team works with international brands across every stage of XHS growth.

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