The "Alibaba" of beauty raw materials has arrived: How does the Oriental Beauty Valley reconstruct the industry's underlying capabilities with the factor trading platform?

In the cosmetics industry, raw materials are the lifeblood. However, for a long time, the circulation mode of this lifeblood has been rather primitive - information asymmetry, long trading chains, and lack of application support. Good raw materials can't find good buyers, and good brands can't find good raw materials. This is a common understanding in the industry, but few people can truly break the situation.

In the process of long - term tracking of consumption and industrial Internet, 36Kr found that the pain points in the supply chain of the beauty industry are particularly prominent: For a medium - sized brand, the time and labor costs spent on raw material screening, verification, and communication each year far exceed many people's imaginations. On the other hand, a large number of raw material manufacturers with characteristic plant resources or technological breakthroughs have been kept out of the market for a long time due to the lack of display and docking channels.

Oriental Beauty Valley keenly captured this problem and gave its own answer.

As the most concentrated area of the Chinese cosmetics industry, Oriental Beauty Valley has a complete beauty and health industry cluster and profound industrial accumulation. Based on this accumulation, Oriental Beauty Valley made a strategic decision: to build the "Oriental Beauty Valley Cosmetics Element Trading Platform" to systematically solve the fundamental problems of raw material circulation at the level of industrial infrastructure.

The positioning of this platform is very clear - the "Alibaba" in the raw material field. It is not simply an information display page, but a full - chain service system covering trading, R & D, application, and incubation.

The industrial accumulation of Oriental Beauty Valley is the most solid foundation of the platform

The rapid implementation and value generation of the element trading platform are the results of Oriental Beauty Valley's years of in - depth cultivation in the industry.

Oriental Beauty Valley has gathered hundreds of enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the cosmetics industry, covering various links such as raw materials, R & D, production, testing, and brands. This agglomeration effect provides a natural trading scenario and user base for the platform. At the same time, Oriental Beauty Valley has established long - term cooperative relationships with top - notch institutions such as the China Flavor and Fragrance Association, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Shanghai Botanical Garden, forming a powerful industry - university - research resource network.

More importantly, as the core bearing area of the beauty and health industry key - built by Fengxian District, Shanghai, Oriental Beauty Valley has the advantages of government endorsement and policy support. This "government guidance + market - oriented operation" model enables the platform to have unique coordination capabilities in promoting industry standard setting, quality supervision, and the construction of origin alliances.

In other words, the element trading platform is a natural extension and strategic upgrade of Oriental Beauty Valley's years of industrial operation capabilities.

Three core functions, directly hitting industry pain points

Based on profound industrial accumulation, Oriental Beauty Valley designed three core functions for the element trading platform, each directly hitting industry pain points.

First, an efficient information interaction function.

The platform has built a full - element search engine for the industry's R & D chain and supply chain. Users can conduct multi - dimensional searches and visual comparisons according to ingredients, efficacy, price, and technical parameters. Both supply and demand sides can achieve end - to - end direct interaction, eliminating the lengthy intermediate links, making information circulation smoother and the promotion speed of raw materials higher.

Second, a complete set of supporting value - added services.

Trading is just the starting point. The listing of new raw materials involves a series of compliance work such as filing, registration, and safety assessment, as well as efficacy verification and formula adaptation. Oriental Beauty Valley has equipped the platform with a raw material evaluation laboratory and an application laboratory (formula laboratory), providing a complete solution from 360 - degree compliance services for new raw material listing to application technology support. At the same time, the platform strengthens the supervision and management of raw material quality, effectively preventing inferior, risky, and non - compliant raw materials from entering the market.

Third, strict control of the high - quality raw material procurement source.

In 2023, Oriental Beauty Valley joined hands with the China Flavor and Fragrance Association to jointly initiate the "Oriental Beauty Valley Alliance of Chinese Characteristic Cosmetic Raw Material Bases", and jointly built Chinese characteristic cosmetic raw material bases with Yunnan, Shandong, Anhui, Xinjiang, Gansu, Sichuan, Ningxia and other places. This layout, through raw material innovation and industry - university - research empowerment, has significantly increased the technical added value of domestic raw materials and solved the long - standing problem of weak market competitiveness.

Implementation of industry - university - research: Value transformation from scientific research to industry

The powerful industry - university - research integration ability of Oriental Beauty Valley is fully reflected in the element trading platform.

The iris essential oil project is a typical case. Shanghai Botanical Garden has been collecting and introducing iris plants since 1980, and has systematically carried out germplasm protection, evaluation, and innovation research since 2005. Currently, it has the richest iris germplasm resources in the country. The essential oil extracted from iris rhizomes is one of the most precious natural spices in the world. Oriental Beauty Valley and Shanghai Botanical Garden jointly carried out the project of "Research on Iris Essential Oil Extraction and Efficacy", transforming the top - notch botanical research results into cosmetic raw materials. Taking this cooperation as an opportunity, both sides gave full play to their respective resource, technology, and professional advantages, and jointly created a brand for the innovative utilization of Shanghai plants and a leading domestic industry - university - research cooperation community for plant resources in the beauty and health industry.

The purslane extracellular vesicle project demonstrates Oriental Beauty Valley's layout in the field of cutting - edge biotechnology. The Oriental Beauty Valley Research Center for Efficacious Plant Raw Materials in Fengxian District, Shanghai, in cooperation with Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, successfully completed the research project of "Development of Purslane Extracellular Vesicle Microneedles". The project extracted and purified extracellular vesicles from purslane, found that they have significant anti - inflammatory effects, and combined with microneedle technology to develop a new anti - inflammatory and soothing product. This project has applied for two invention patents, filling the domestic technological gap. At the same time, it has broken through the bottleneck of large - scale production and met the conditions for industrialization.

Open innovation: Big Bang creates a beauty technology ecosystem

The vision of Oriental Beauty Valley is not limited to raw material trading. In 2020, Oriental Beauty Valley Group and L'Oréal Group officially signed the "Cooperation Agreement on Jointly Building the 'Big Bang Beauty Technology Creation Camp'" at the Oriental Beauty Valley International Cosmetics Conference. The "Big Bang Beauty Technology Creation Camp" project jointly initiated by both sides came into being.

This project takes "open innovation" as the core, gives full play to the power of the "beauty technology ecosystem", and jointly incubates forward - looking innovation results and promotes their commercial implementation. Over the past five years, the Big Bang project has expanded from the initial 3 competition tracks to the current 5 innovation tracks, focusing on new R & D, new operations, and new experiences, and setting up cross - field green sustainability and artificial intelligence tracks. The core technologies of the project cover global cutting - edge fields such as artificial intelligence, intelligent manufacturing, synthetic biology, biotechnology, and green science.

As the first state - owned joint - stock company in Fengxian District, Shanghai, Oriental Beauty Valley takes the beauty and health industry as the core bearing area and is committed to becoming a bright business card and an innovation hub for the Chinese cosmetics industry. L'Oréal China and Oriental Beauty Valley jointly established a special fund to track, serve, and incubate excellent beauty technology projects selected in the competition. Both sides made full use of their advantageous resources, playing a role of "1 + 1 > 2" and creating a Chinese beauty technology ecosystem. In this joint project, Oriental Beauty Valley provides value - chain resources such as upstream and downstream suppliers and distributors for incubated enterprises, assists enterprises in accelerating growth, and provides multi - dimensional policy support including industrial agglomeration center policies, fiscal and tax policies, and talent policies.

CTIBIOTECH™ is a representative enterprise incubated by the Big Bang project. This French company focuses on the development and production of biological tests based on human tissues, using 3D bioprinting technology to produce artificial human tissues. As the first award - winning enterprise born from the French track of the Big Bang project, CTIBIOTECH™ relied on the Oriental Beauty Valley Cosmetics Element Service Platform and the industry - university - research transformation platform - Oriental Beauty Valley Enterprise Group Meichuang (Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd., and successfully entered the Chinese market. Oriental Beauty Valley supported its promotion of industry - leading tissue and cell model solutions in China, and successfully completed the delivery of the first order for 3D skin tissue and cell models in November 2024. The two sides signed a comprehensive R & D strategic cooperation agreement during the Oriental Beauty Valley International Cosmetics Conference, which became an important milestone for CTIBIOTECH™ to accelerate its entry into the Chinese market.

36Kr noticed that Oriental Beauty Valley's combined model of "trading platform + technology middle - platform + open innovation" is the first of its kind in the domestic beauty industry. It is not simply moving offline transactions online, but using a complete set of infrastructure to turn raw materials from "tradable commodities" into "verifiable, applicable, and iterable technological assets". This ability is precisely the underlying support that the Chinese cosmetics industry needs most to move from "big" to "strong".

An industrial infrastructure worthy of industry attention

The value of the Oriental Beauty Valley Cosmetics Element Trading Platform can be summarized in three sentences:

First, it changes raw material trading from "people looking for goods" to "goods looking for people", greatly improving industry efficiency. Digital search, visual comparison, and end - to - end interaction enable both buyers and sellers to find suitable partners more quickly.

Second, it uses the "trading + technology middle - platform" model to solve the "last mile" from the laboratory to industrialization of raw materials. Compliance services, application verification, and quality supervision, the platform integrates services scattered in multiple links in the past.

Third, through industry - university - research cooperation and open innovation, it promotes the technological upgrading and domestic substitution of Chinese cosmetic raw materials. From iris essential oil to purslane extracellular vesicles, from Big Bang to CTIBIOTECH™, Oriental Beauty Valley is building a complete innovation ecosystem from the source to the application, from the local to the international.

This is not a simple B2B website, but a set of underlying infrastructure built by Oriental Beauty Valley for the Chinese beauty industry with years of industrial accumulation and policy resources. It turns the concept of "Chinese raw materials" into a complete ecosystem with trading, standards, R & D, incubation, and an international perspective.