36Kr’s debut ｜ ＂Seed Manifesto＂ won tens of millions of yuan Pre.
Authors: Wang Jessie, Song Yu,
36Kr learned that the functional skin care brand "Seed Manifesto" recently announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan of Pre-A financing. This round of financing is led by Shunwei Capital. Previously, the Seed Manifesto had received the first round of financing led by Lightspeed Venture Capital. The two rounds of funds are mainly used for product line expansion and brand building.
Seed declaration products were launched in 2021, with bionic low-temperature fermentation technology as the core, and functional skin care products were created based on Chinese skin problems. The seed declaration is aimed at young users in second-and third-tier cities. The first product is fermented amino acid gentle cleansing liquid, and then products such as fermented water emulsion and puree mask are launched one after another, and it is planned to maintain the innovation speed of 3-4 products every year. At present, the seed manifesto is sold in Tmall, Tik Tok and other channels, and the single product is priced at around 100 yuan.The monthly sales growth rate in June exceeded 290%.
Skin care products track has been ridiculed by entrepreneurs as one of the "most consumer goods tracks". Earlier, the domestic skin care brands represented by Appropriate Materia Medica and Baique Ling started with natural and herbal concepts. In recent years, The Ordinary has brought fire to the "barrel of raw materials for fierce drugs"-style ingredient party skin care. In order to hit the user’s mind, skin care brands have different tricks.
According to the interviewee
Filipp, the founder of Seed Manifesto, has 15 years’ experience as a trader in world-renowned cosmetics groups. Before that, he served as a group executive in well-known FMCG and cosmetics companies such as Amore Pacific, Unilever, L ‘Oreal, Estee Lauder and Yuxi. As the CEO of China, he formed a team to bring Yueshi Fengyin to the China market, and also managed the brand combing and new product planning after Yuxi was acquired by L ‘Oreal Group.
Filipp observed that, on the one hand, the underlyminig logic in the field of skin care products, such as safety, effectiveness and skin care, has not changed; on the other hand, the trends of functional demand, DIY by users and mini-size are on the rise.
Under such a market background,The seed manifesto starts with a low decision-making cost, high frequency and high permeability single product-cleansing, and establishes the brand awareness of "biological fermentation skin care" with key components such as 25.68% amino acid surface activity and 97% purity rice fermentation filtrate.According to Filipp, the seed declaration amino acid cleansing can gently nourish the skin, and its cleaning power can also remove daily commuting makeup.
After completing the traffic acquisition with cleansing products, Seed Manifesto launched a number of products such as masks, water creams, essences and creams to increase users’ retention. Seed declaration water emulsion products adopt a single bottle of 100ml light packaging to meet the needs of consumers for quick trial and portability. Its "freeze-dried black technology" mask product adopts the design of separating membrane cloth and essence, and is equipped with a tray, which gives users a sense of ritual of DIY small SPA while locking fresh.
According to the interviewee
In the long-distance running of skincare brand, research and development is the key to the sustainable operation of the new brand.The idea of the seed declaration is to polish the formula for a long time in the form of "intensive cultivation".
Different from most skin care brands that rely on OEM or ODM to provide formulas, Seed Manifesto has established a research and development team including former Bayer medical scientists and scientists in the field of small molecule fermentation technology, and has carried out original formula research and development in conjunction with external laboratories such as Biofermentation Laboratory of Beijing Technology and Business University and Tsinghua University Skin Care Research Center, and has obtained many patents. In addition, Seed Manifesto also cooperates with the head fermentation factory in the industry, and will analyze, test and selectively adopt mature formulas according to the product system. The Seed Manifesto is still preparing to build its own "seed laboratory", hoping to support long-term innovation ability with independent research and development.
Filipp told 36Kr that the raw materials of the seed declaration came from the national organic certified planting base, and the pure natural pollution-free cultivation method was adopted, plus the full link control of raw materials, so as to achieve green safety at the raw material end.
With the rising cost of online traffic,The seed declaration chooses two ways to break through: planting grass outside the station and building a private domain.Outside the station, the seed declaration focuses on content planting and consumer transformation on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Tik Tok; For the construction of private domain, the seed declaration aims at loyal users to exert their strength in community operation and gradually transform them into private domain customers. Filipp told 36Kr that the ROI of the seed declaration has been basically straightened out by combining this strategy.
Besides being sold in channels such as Tmall and Tik Tok, the Seed Manifesto also plans to lay out offline channels after reaching a certain volume online. The Seed Manifesto considers setting up a counter to show the brand tonality and interact with consumers as much as possible. In addition, the seed declaration also plans to enter CS (cosmetics franchise store) according to the future explosion products to quickly improve penetration.
The Seed Manifesto is expected to launch 2-3 new products in October this year and continue to build explosive products, so as to keep the sales proportion of various products in a relatively healthy structure, and hope to achieve the goal of monthly sales of 30 million within the year.