Foreign Brands Lead Chinese Cosmetics Market, Baidu Said

BEIJING, Nov 22, 2007 (SinoCast via COMTEX) -- China's high and middle-end cosmetics market has been dominated by foreign brands, according the data center of Baidu.com Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU), the global largest Chinese Internet search service provider, on November 20, 2007.

According to Baidu's list, foreign brands took all the seats of the top ten luxury cosmetics brands and top ten consumer cosmetics brands that attracted most attentions from the Chinese netizens in the third quarter of 2007.

Among the luxury cosmetics brands, Dior of France-based Christian Dior SA, Shiseido of Japan-based Shiseido Company, Ltd., and Chanel of France-based Chanel SA are the top three. L'Oreal of France-based L'Oreal Co. (Nasdaq: LRLCY) and Olay of US-based Olay Company, Inc. are the top two ones among consumer cosmetics brands.

In addition, 40 million cosmetics products valued at CNY 1.04 billion were sold on Taobao.com, Asia's largest customer-to-customer trade Website in 2006, making cosmetics products the second most popular goods on the site after mobile communications equipment.