Differentiation and Winter: Stores Have "No One Left"—What Exactly Happened to the Beauty Industry?

Beauty Industry Investigation in the Age of Involution · Part One (of Four)

This year, the most tacitly understood phrase among beauty industry professionals is: there are still people on the street, but no customers in the store.

I. A Simple Truth: It's Not That You're Not Working Hard—The Table Has Changed

In the evening, the restaurant next door is calling out queue numbers, your own beauty salon's lights are on as usual, yet the appointment book is mostly empty—evenings like this, many owners have lost count of how many times they've experienced this year.

Rent doesn't get discounted because customer flow decreases, employee salaries don't get delayed because business is slow; online advertising, product updates, member maintenance—every expense is rigid. What's more alarming is often not losing money, but "not knowing where the customers actually went."

People who have run stores for years haven't seen their skills decline, they're more dedicated to service than when they first entered the industry, yet customer flow is quietly decreasing. So they can't help but doubt themselves: Is it me who's no longer good enough?

This investigation series wants to put the conclusion upfront: It's not that you're not working hard—the table has changed. This round of sluggishness is not a cyclical off-season, but a structural change brought about by consumption habits, channel structures, and the regulatory environment shifting gears simultaneously. The following sets of public data will illustrate how this change is actually happening.

II. Three Sets of Contrasting Data: Why Are Growth and Closures Happening Simultaneously?

Contrast One: Medical Aesthetics Is Still Growing, Yet Institutions Are Crying Cold

The 2025 China medical aesthetics service market size is approximately 370.1 billion yuan (iiMedia Research "2025 China Medical Aesthetics Industry Development Status and Consumer Behavior Survey," 2026-01), the overall pie is still expanding.

But the "2025 Medical Aesthetics First-Half Institution Operations Research Report" (cited by Jiemian News, 2026-02) shows: in the first half of 2025, over 63% of medical aesthetics institutions saw revenue decline, only about 14% achieved growth; average customer spend dropped to approximately 6,500 yuan, a year-over-year decrease of about 10 percentage points; 43% of consumers actively reduced their budgets.

In other words: the track is growing, but that doesn't mean everyone on the track is making money.

Contrast Two: A Million Life Beauty Stores, Nearly 90% of Brands Have Only One Location

Meituan estimates show that there are approximately one million life beauty and body care merchants nationwide; the industry's store opening rate is about 25%, closure rate about 20%, in a long-term state of continuous replacement—"opening on one side, exiting on the other."

A Guohai Securities report provides a clearer structure: 88.9% of life beauty brands have only 1 store, 9% have 2–4, 2% have 5–20, and only 0.1% have more than 20.

Extreme fragmentation means the vast majority of small stores must shoulder all the risks of rent, customer flow, and compliance alone, with almost no buffer.

Contrast Three: More and More Companies, Faster and Faster "Blood Transfusion"

Tianyancha data shows that as of September 2025, there are over 182,000 existing medical aesthetics-related enterprises; and according to Tianyancha/Meituan metrics, the "blood transfusion rate" of medical aesthetics institutions over the past three years is about 126%.

A 126% blood transfusion rate means: the speed at which old stores exit and new stores enter has already exceeded the size of the existing pie itself. This is a market with high-speed metabolism, not a market where everyone gets a share equally.

III. Where Did Customer Flow Go: Online, Light Medical Aesthetics, and Self-Pleasing Daily Consumption

Customer flow hasn't disappeared—it just changed entrances. Three destinations are most obvious.

Direction One: Decision-Making Moved Online

In the past, customers entered the store first, then compared; now, customers first compare prices on group buying platforms, check reputation and real reviews on short video and social platforms, do their homework, and only then decide which door to push open. What stores have lost is not customer flow, but the opportunity for "customer flow to pass through them first."

Direction Two: Results-Oriented Customers Flowed to Light Medical Aesthetics

The 2025 light medical aesthetics user scale is approximately 31.05 million (iiMedia Research); light medical aesthetics accounts for about 53%–57% of overall medical aesthetics ("2025 China Medical Aesthetics Industry Research Report" states 53.3%, 2026 white paper states about 57%).

The average repurchase rate for light medical aesthetics is about 60%–70%, with basic maintenance treatments like water light and photon typically performed every 1–3 months (2026 white paper). High frequency, transparency, and clear results have enabled it to capture a large number of customers who originally sought "change" at life beauty stores.

Direction Three: Consumption Shifted from "Big Occasions" to "Self-Pleasing Daily"

iiMedia Research and the 2026 white paper show that the average age of medical aesthetics users is about 32.8 years old, over 60% of consumption motivation is "pleasing oneself"; the top three factors considered in decision-making are doctor qualifications, product authenticity, and actual results.

Customers aren't spending less—they're unwilling to pay for information asymmetry and large annual cards anymore, instead splitting their money into small, high-frequency purchases that provide immediate certainty. Rationality has become the common底色 of this generation of consumers.

IV. Who Is Exiting, Who Is Going Against the Tide

The profile of those exiting is relatively clear: single stores that rely on information asymmetry, sell large annual cards through aggressive salesmanship, and haven't updated their expertise and service offerings for years are the first to feel the chill—the 88.9% single-store ratio means they have almost no room for trial and error.

Meanwhile, another group of players is accelerating concentration:

Beauty Farm acquired Siyanli for 1.25 billion yuan in 2025, bringing total stores to approximately 734 (Yicai/Securities Times, 2025); Kidswant acquired scalp care brand Siyu for 1.65 billion yuan; Langzi continues to advance a series of medical aesthetics acquisitions. On the life beauty side, Fan Wenhua stores exceeded 6,000, and single-product chains like Xilian Mao and Xilian Xiong are expanding rapidly (third-party industry reports).

There's another noteworthy signal: third-party research estimates that there are about 4,800+ "medical aesthetics + life beauty" integrated institutions, with average customer spend approximately 2.4 times that of traditional beauty salons (this data comes from third-party estimates by industry research institutions). The specific numbers may not be precise, but the direction is clear—professional, chain-based, and integrated operators are getting the tickets to the redistributed customer flow and profits.

V. This Is Not an Off-Season—It's a Track Change

For a long time in the past, the success formula for the beauty industry was roughly: good location + information asymmetry + sales ability + prepaid annual cards, earning money from "nearby choices and customers not knowing better."

The new formula is becoming: professional trust + online content + transparent pricing + emotional value + high-frequency repurchase. Regulation is also driving this process: in June 2025, the National Healthcare Security Administration issued the "Guidelines for Pricing Items of Medical Services in Beauty and Plastic Surgery" for the first time, unifying the naming of treatments like photon rejuvenation and Thermage—prices and services are both becoming more transparent.

Off-seasons can be endured and will eventually pass, but track changes won't revert. Acknowledging this is not admitting defeat—it's the beginning of directing your energy in the right direction.

VI. To Those Still Persevering

Please first believe one thing: what the winter eliminates has never been the beauty industry—it's the old playbook.

Every treatment you've carefully performed for customers, every preference you've remembered, those trusts you've built into friendships—these are scarce commodities in any era. They are not relics of the last round; they are precisely your most valuable foundation as you move toward the next round.

What's changing isn't just street-level stores: upstream factories are also turning around together, rethinking how products should be developed and how cosmetics and devices should work together. In the next article, we'll answer a more fundamental question—why medical aesthetics and life beauty are converging.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: Is the entire beauty industry doing badly now?
No. The 2025 China medical aesthetics service market size is approximately 370.1 billion yuan, still growing (iiMedia Research); life beauty also has a massive base of approximately one million merchants. What's actually happening is "differentiation"—the total is still there, but profits and customer flow are being redistributed among different formats and different players.

Q2: How high is the closure rate for beauty salons?
According to Meituan estimates, the store opening rate for life beauty stores is about 25%, closure rate about 20%, and the industry has long been in a state of "opening on one side, closing on the other"; a Guohai Securities report shows 88.9% of life beauty brands have only 1 store, and single stores generally have weak risk resistance.

Q3: Where have all the customers in the store gone?
Mainly three directions: First, online group buying and content platforms, where decision-making and price comparison are completed online; second, light medical aesthetics, with approximately 31.05 million light medical aesthetics users in 2025, capturing a large number of "results-oriented" customers through high frequency and high repurchase; third, self-pleasing daily consumption, where customers are more willing to pay for small, high-frequency, certain experiences rather than one-time large annual cards.

Q4: Are medical aesthetics institutions also closing stores?
Yes. In the first half of 2025, over 63% of medical aesthetics institutions saw revenue decline, only about 14% achieved growth; the "blood transfusion rate" of medical aesthetics institutions over the past three years is about 126% (Tianyancha/Meituan metrics). Even on a growing track, institutions without professional and cost advantages will also be eliminated.

Q5: Is it still too late to open a store or enter the industry now?
The industry will always lack good service—what it lacks is the old playbook. Rather than "whether to enter the industry," the more worthwhile question is: can you provide professional, transparent, emotionally valuable services, can you acquire customers through online content and drive repurchases through private domain management. A craftsman's skills and trust are still valuable in this round.

Q6: Can life beauty salons add light medical aesthetics treatments like water light and photon to retain customers?
No. Injections, skin-breaking procedures, and photoelectric treatments requiring medical qualifications belong to medical aesthetics and must be performed at licensed medical institutions by licensed physicians; life beauty stores performing them without authorization is suspected of being illegal, and there have already been court cases and administrative penalties in multiple locations. Compliantly "approaching" light medical aesthetics (such as home care and cosmetics-device combination offerings) is the feasible direction, which will be specifically elaborated in subsequent articles in this series.

Disclaimer: This article is an industry science investigation. All cited data comes from public research reports and media reports with sources noted. It does not constitute medical advice or investment advice. The boundary between life beauty and medical aesthetics projects is subject to current laws and regulations and licensed medical institutions. Please make business decisions cautiously based on your own actual situation.