From the laboratory to Pinduoduo: the business know-how of a bottle of face cream

It's been 5 years, is the "Morning Vitamin C, Night Vitamin A" skincare trend still going strong?

Five years ago, the concept of "Morning Vitamin C, Night Vitamin A" was still a brand-new term. Today, when you open social platforms, discussions around it remain extremely lively. In this skincare trend, Proya's Double Anti Essence and Ruby Cream are two iconic domestic best-selling products that cannot be ignored.

On Pinduoduo, the official flagship store of Proya shows that its cumulative sales on the platform have exceeded 20 million orders. Beyond sales figures, consumers are more concerned about several direct questions: Are the stores on the platform official authorized stores? Do products sold through different e-commerce channels come from the same supply source? How can the platform offer products with price advantages?

With these questions, we came to Proya's headquarters in Hangzhou, trying to find answers from the R&D, production and supply chain behind a bottle of face cream.

01

Visit the R&D Laboratory

Stepping into Proya's R&D center, more than ten laboratories are distributed across the space, covering human efficacy evaluation, spectral analysis, microbial detection and other fields. All product lines including Double Anti, Ruby, Origin Force and others have to go through raw material screening, formula development, safety assessment and efficacy testing before being launched to the market.

The "Morning Vitamin C, Night Vitamin A" trend and its star products have helped Proya gain higher consumer awareness, but for a cosmetics company pursuing long-term development, hit products alone are far from enough to form its full competitiveness. At present, Proya has built an R&D system featuring "independent R&D, industry-university-research-medical cooperation, and international collaboration". It has set up R&D centers in Longwu of Hangzhou, Shanghai and Europe, and carries out joint research with universities and hospitals.

Statistics show that Proya has been continuously increasing its R&D investment, which rose from 77 million yuan in 2021 to 217 million yuan in 2025. R&D investment is the underlying support for product strength — it builds a complete capability chain covering raw material research, efficacy evaluation and product iteration, providing systematic guarantee for the continuous improvement of product competitiveness.

In October 2026, at the 36th IFSCC International Congress of Cosmetic Science, Proya won the "2026 IFSCC Best Basic Research Award" and the "2026 IFSCC Top 10 Basic Research Award", becoming the Chinese cosmetics enterprise that obtained two "Basic Research Awards" at this session. At this conference, a total of 20 scientific research achievements of Proya were selected, including the research on peptides.

02

Dedicate to Cyclic Peptide Research

The Ruby Cream 4.0 is a productized presentation of this R&D path. It still targets anti-wrinkle and skin firming, but its core ingredient has been upgraded from the monocyclic peptide of the previous generation to "Bicyclic Peptide Pro".

Peptides can be understood as small molecular chains composed of amino acids, and some peptide ingredients can participate in skin-related signal transmission. Traditional linear peptides are in an open chain structure, which may face stability problems in formula and usage environment. The Ruby Cream 3.0 closes the linear structure into a single ring, while the 4.0 version further connects two peptides into a ring, forming a more stable rigid spatial configuration.

Dr. Liao Feng, an expert from Proya Longwu R&D Center, shared with us: "Traditional polypeptides usually only transmit signals outside the cells, with limited efficacy. Relying on the rigid spatial configuration of the bicyclic structure and stronger anti-enzymatic hydrolysis stability, the active molecules of Bicyclic Peptide Pro can penetrate and reach the dermis layer, amplify biological efficacy, and its action efficiency is significantly better than monocyclic peptide at the same addition amount. Version 3.0 solves the problem of 'fading wrinkles and plumping skin', while version 4.0 is upgraded to the dual-dimensional anti-wrinkle effect of 'fast firming + wrinkle fading and skin plumping'. The core difference lies in the evolution from 'only replenishing collagen' to 'tightening from the inside + supporting from the outside'."

For ordinary consumers, the complex structure ultimately returns to the usage experience. Ruby Cream 4.0 provides three textures: light, slightly moisturizing and rich moisturizing, corresponding to different skin types and seasonal needs. According to the brand's professional measured data, after 28 days of continuous use, multiple indicators related to wrinkle reduction and skin firmness have been improved.

03

The Secret of Cost-effectiveness

According to the 2026 semi-annual report disclosed by Proya, the revenue of the Proya brand in the first half of the year was nearly 4 billion yuan, and Pinduoduo has also become one of its important online channels.

At present, Proya has opened 7 stores on Pinduoduo in total. Consumers can choose the official flagship store, where the supply of products is consistent with that of other channels, and there is no so-called "Pinduoduo exclusive version". After nearly 8 years of settlement, Proya has long been ranked among the top cosmetics brands on the platform; the intensive moisturizing series retained for the needs of platform users has also become one of the best-selling product lines of the brand on Pinduoduo.

Since the supply sources are the same, where does the price advantage come from? An important variable comes from platform subsidies. In 2025, Pinduoduo launched the "Hundreds of Billions Support" plan, proposing to invest more than 100 billion yuan in funds, traffic and other resources within three years. Specifically for consumers, the platform can bear part of the discounts in the form of consumption coupons; for merchants, traffic support and logistics support for remote areas can also reduce customer acquisition and performance costs.

This means that the price difference on the page does not necessarily come from the difference in product versions, but may also come from the platform's redistribution of transaction costs. Consumers get discounts, brands get new traffic, and the platform undertakes part of the subsidies and logistics investment, forming a new price mechanism among the three parties.

Price is only the starting point for trust building. Data shows that Proya has accumulated more than 30 million reviews on Pinduoduo, with high-frequency words including "authentic", "good effect" and "cost-effective". There are also consumers who have repurchased the products 8 times, 15 times or even more than 20 times. Reviews and repurchases may not replace independent judgment of products, but they reflect a simple consumption logic: with the same supply source, credible stores and appropriate prices, consumers will naturally vote with their orders.

From the popularity of "Morning Vitamin C, Night Vitamin A", to the ingredient iteration in the laboratory, and then to the price advantage brought by platform subsidies, the cooperation between Proya and Pinduoduo has formed a new path for domestic cosmetics brands. The brand is responsible for making products more solid, and the platform is responsible for delivering them to more consumers at a lower price. Hit products will change with the trend, and what can last is still the long-term relationship jointly constructed by products, price and trust.