"AromeManpo, a brand known for its rich and fragrant products, has successfully completed both the Pre-A and A rounds of financing. This year, the company plans to focus on developing offline channels. | This is an exclusive report from 36Kr."
Local skincare brands are constantly emerging.
36Kr has learned that the aromatherapy and emotional skincare brand "AromeManpo" has recently completed Pre-A and A rounds of financing totaling tens of millions of yuan. The Pre-A round investors are Introverted Fund and Cathay Innovation, and the A round investor is Challenger Venture Capital. MMCapital serves as the long-term exclusive financial advisor and continues to provide strategic and capitalization support to AromeManpo.
AromeManpo is a domestic skincare brand that focuses on "aromatherapy". The predecessor of the brand was a small shop opened by the founder on the banks of the Grand Canal in Hangzhou. Based on the European aromatherapy system, AromeManpo selects global natural aromatic plants, combines them with biopatent fermentation technology, and compounds them with hardcore functional ingredients to launch a series of functional aromatherapy skincare products, as well as home fragrances, body care and other multi-series products.
These two rounds of financing show the market's continued optimism towards the AromeManpo brand. Previously in April 2023, AromeManpo received an angel round investment from the Cathay Consumption Co-Creation Fund. This fund was jointly established by Cathay Innovation, Kering Group, L'Oréal Group and Pernod Ricard Group. AromeManpo is the first skincare brand they invested in.
Focusing on the Development of Tuberose Raw Materials, the Oriental Narrative in Aromatherapy Skincare
Aromatic plants are "gifts from nature". Through natural extraction of essential oils or other aromatic plant compounds with aromatic components, they can not only improve the skin condition but also reach the nervous system to regulate emotions. China is a big country of aromatic plant resources. According to incomplete statistics, there are hundreds of aromatic plants that can be used for spices. Among these plants, AromeManpo finally chose tuberose as their first aromatic plant.
Jiang Teng, the founder of the AromeManpo brand, told 36Kr that the choice of tuberose is, on the one hand, due to its uniqueness. The flower is beautiful, has a pleasant smell, and becomes more fragrant as the night progresses. The raw material has sufficient space for development, and the impression of tuberose among Chinese people is mostly noble. Some high-end and niche salon fragrances use it as the main note, but no international or domestic skincare brand has deeply cultivated this raw material.
In addition, it is also a long-term optimism for the emotional healing market. Jiang Teng found that in recent years, domestic skincare brands have been highly competitive, mostly in terms of price and concentration. However, for new brands to achieve better growth in a difficult environment, they must find alternative paths. For AromeManpo, it hopes to jump out of the low-price involution by focusing on the development of aromatic raw materials, make more diverse expressions in the product innovation of domestic skincare products, so that the points that users remember about it are not only that the products are good-looking, have a pleasant smell, but also have particularly good effects.
Based on this, AromeManpo pioneered the functional aromatherapy skincare series with tuberose plant essence, selected rare tuberose essential oil, and its own "Fuyu Star" fermentation group, and launched a series of tuberose light-sensing fermentation products including essence water, essence oil/cream, cleansing honey, mask, eye oil, etc. Jiang Teng said that AromeManpo hopes to strongly bind the brand with the tuberose raw material, "making the relationship between AromeManpo and tuberose like that between orchid and Guerlain, and eternal rose and Lancôme."
Image of AromeManpo's Tuberose series products, provided by the interviewee
The modern aromatherapy was born in the early 20th century and was discovered and proposed by the French chemist René-Maurice Gattefosse. It became popular in the European market. However, the application of aromatherapy has a long history in ancient civilizations including China, Egypt, Greece, and India. In the historical literature of traditional Chinese medicine, there are also records of using the aromatic smell of Chinese medicinal materials for direct treatment.
From the very beginning, AromeManpo has been trying to make an innovative combination of the systematic European aromatherapy system and the long-standing Oriental culture in product development. As early as the second half of 2023, AromeManpo invited Guo Bin, the representative inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage skill of Fuzhou Jasmine Paste, to use the thousand-year-old Oriental intangible cultural heritage skill of "cold absorption method" to make tuberose paste in the ancient way, restoring the pure aroma of the flowers without damaging the plants themselves.
In the past 2024, AromeManpo also continuously launched the Chinese Festival-themed series, making targeted product innovations by combining traditional cultural folk customs and intangible cultural heritage techniques, including the limited series for the Dragon Year Spring Festival, the joint incense series for the Dragon Boat Festival with Xixi Wetland, and the Mid-Autumn Festival series jointly launched with the Chenshan Incense Dragon in Guangdong, China. As the Year of the Snake arrives, AromeManpo also invited Huang Xiaojian, a national-level intangible cultural heritage inheritor, to create a late-fragrant snake woodblock New Year painting and launch a special gift box for the Snake Year Spring Festival.
The product attitude of paying tribute to the Oriental ingenuity is reflected in many details of AromeManpo's products. For example, the product bottles they use are high-quality glass with a low yield rate of only 24.5%, and they adopt a perfume bottle-level polishing process to ensure the quality experience of each bottle.
Based on the brand concept of being natural and healthy, as early as 2022, AromeManpo launched an empty bottle recycling program, successively recycling thousands of "recycled bottles" packages for the secondary use of empty bottles. In addition, they have also upgraded the environmentally friendly materials, selected PCR-PET packaging, used bagasse pulp instead of wood pulp, and used FSC-certified environmentally friendly recycled paper to protect the environment to the greatest extent. In July 2024, AromeManpo also launched the "Tuberose Bulb Plan", exploring the spiritual healing of plants in the form of aromatic gardening.
AromeManpo's "Tuberose Bulb Plan", according to the interviewee
A series of construction investments in the brand are aimed at making the brand image more plump. Jiang Teng said that from the beginning, AromeManpo did not just want to make a profit by selling goods at a price difference, nor did it want to set an aggressive growth target for the brand. "Going too fast may lead to a faster failure." Jiang Teng said that AromeManpo hopes to explore a sustainable development route.
Launching the "Plant Illustrated Book" Brand Plan, Planning to Focus on Offline Development Next Year
In the past one or two years, while continuously obtaining financing and developing products, AromeManpo's business has also achieved rapid growth. Initially, AromeManpo opened up sales channels on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, and started promoting on Xiaohongshu and Douyin through live-streaming with influencers and self-broadcasting. Currently, the monthly sales of self-broadcasting on Douyin have exceeded 10 million yuan, and the sales volume of the brand's official flagship store on Xiaohongshu has exceeded 110,000 pieces. In addition to the "Big Gold Brick" essence water, AromeManpo has also launched popular products such as eye oil and essence oil.
However, the development of products and channels is only the tip of the iceberg of AromeManpo's business actions in the past year or so. They are also continuously creating brand content. Jiang Teng said that a brand not only needs to launch new products but also needs to continuously update content that meets the current social media and user needs.
Among them, the form of content creation that AromeManpo has put a lot of effort into is "publishing a book". Jiang Teng had the idea of making a plant illustrated book many years ago, and finally, they implemented it in 2023, officially releasing the "Plant Illustrated Book" concept plan, and officially launching it in March 2024 as the brand's internal magazine. Each chapter sets a core theme and selects the corresponding representative aromatic plant.
For example, the prologue is divided into two parts, with the themes of "Everything Begins" and "Day and Night Alternation", and the associated aromatic plant is precisely tuberose. Jiang Teng said that the smell of tuberose is fresh and elegant during the day and becomes stronger at night. The change in the smell of the plant from day to night is not only the beginning of the alternation of day and night but also the starting point for users to get to know AromeManpo.
The first chapter of the "Plant Illustrated Book" launched in March 2024 is themed "The Need for Seduction". They introduce the origin, aroma source, essential oil chemical composition/egg diagram, and human emotions of the four most representative aphrodisiac plants in aromatic plants - narcissus, ylang-ylang, Damascus rose, and red frangipani, and only then will they incidentally mention the related products of AromeManpo.
AromeManpo's "Plant Illustrated Book" series, according to the interviewee
After that, the Plant Illustrated Book will continue to update new chapters such as "Dream Tour", "Sealed Memories", and "Different Dimensions". Jiang Teng said that the update of these contents is not over after publication, but each chapter will be revised regularly, "but the theme will not change".
The "Plant Illustrated Book" is not only to introduce aromatherapy and aromatic plants but also to communicate with users in a more vivid way. This is related to Jiang Teng's personal experience. Since graduating from university in 2009, he has begun to systematically learn aromatherapy. However, during the learning process, he found that the professional books on aromatherapy are dull and users do not like to read them. Instead, they need more interesting content forms. The "Plant Illustrated Book" is the bond that connects them with users.
AromeManpo's raw material development of tuberose is continuing to deepen. In October 2024, AromeManpo jointly established the Aromatherapy Research Center with the well-known Jiangnan University in China to jointly set up the topics of "Scientific Innovation 'Tuberose Raw Material' Extraction/Fermentation Technology" and "Research on the Impact of Essential Oils on Emotions and the Improvement of Skin".
Jiang Teng told us that This laboratory will focus on the development of tuberose raw materials, including the development of water/oil-soluble raw materials of tuberose, which will be applied to the future product innovation of AromeManpo. In addition, it will also focus on investing in emotional healing research to scientifically demonstrate the impact of aromatic raw materials on emotions through precision instruments.
In addition, in 2024, AromeManpo also upgraded and launched the "Fuyu" space, with the brand's amber color as the main tone, creating a new product experience area, essential oil blending room, and formula research and development room. The Fuyu space will also be open to the public from time to time, selling AromeManpo's full range of facial care, bath care, and fragrance series products, and holding member activities from time to time.
Beyond this, in the next 2025, AromeManpo plans to focus on the development of offline channels and has already formulated a specific store expansion plan. According to Jiang Teng, in March this year, AromeManpo will open a pop-up store in Tianmuli, Hangzhou, as the brand's first official store for retail and display.
The aforementioned two financings will also be mainly used for the research and development of aromatic functional products and the construction of offline stores. Jiang Teng said that the offline focus in 2025 is to open official stores in Hangzhou and Shanghai, and in addition to the aforementioned two cities, to open pop-up stores in Chengdu, Shenzhen, Beijing and other places for more dimensional product experiences and sharing.