Meng Yingqi, General Manager of La Roche-Posay China, Transferred to L'Oréal Paris | Exclusive

Text by | He Zhexin

Edited by | Qiao Qian

36Kr has exclusively learned that L'Oréal has announced that Meng Yingqi, the former General Manager of La Roche-Posay in China, will become the General Manager of L'Oréal Paris in China. This appointment will officially take effect on April 1, 2025.

Public information shows that Meng Yingqi graduated from the Department of Advertising at the School of Journalism of Fudan University. She joined L'Oréal China as a management trainee in 2009 and initially was responsible for customer management, online promotion, and sales of the Shu Uemura brand. Later, Meng Yingqi transferred to the hair dye team of L'Oréal Paris and then was in charge of the marketing promotion of the brand's skincare and makeup categories.

In March 2022, Meng Yingqi left her position as the Brand Business Director of L'Oréal Paris and became the Brand Director of La Roche-Posay in China. In 2023, L'Oréal renamed its Active Cosmetics Division to the Dermatological Beauty Division. La Roche-Posay is the main revenue-generating brand of this division, with an annual revenue of over 1 billion euros.

L'Oréal stated in the above statement that under the complex market environment in the past three years, Meng Yingqi led the La Roche-Posay team to continuously increase the market share and strengthen the iconic B5 repair product line, making the B5 repair cream and mask one of the company's best-selling new products.

In the past year, La Roche-Posay developed multiple products including facial cleansers, creams, and serums around the B5 line. Source: La Roche-Posay official website

After double-digit growth in 2023, the growth rate of L'Oréal's Dermatological Beauty Division has slowed down significantly. A person close to L'Oréal told 36Kr that the domestic market has strict regulations on the promotion of "dermatological-grade skincare products," especially regarding sensitive terms such as doctor recommendations. L'Oréal prioritizes compliance in the marketing process of relevant products, which has restricted its development to a certain extent.

According to the official website of L'Oréal China, the business model of the Dermatological Beauty Division is mainly based on "doctor recommendations," and expanding cooperation with experts in the health field is crucial for the development of the division's brands. The above-mentioned person believes that compared with some domestic skincare brands focusing on dermatological-grade products, L'Oréal's penetration in channels such as hospitals and clinics is not deep enough.

The Consumer Products division, where L'Oréal Paris belongs, had a revenue of nearly 16 billion euros last year, making it the largest revenue-generating division of the group. However, the business of this division in China has shrunk significantly. In 2022, Maybelline withdrew from department stores and supermarkets. Last year, the makeup brand NYX officially exited the Chinese market, and the mask brand May&Up also closed all its online stores.