Proya’s Hou Yameng on growth beyond 10 billion RMB

After becoming the first Chinese beauty company to surpass RMB 10 billion ($1.49 billion) in annual revenue in 2024, Proya Cosmetics now faces a new challenge: turning domestic success into a multi-brand business with global reach. Over the years, the company has expanded beyond its flagship Proya brand to include Timage and Off&Relax while stepping up its M&A strategy. In June 2026, the C-beauty giant increased its stake in Flower Knows to 51%, taking control of the fast-growing Chinese makeup brand. The move aligns with Proya Cosmetics’ broader “Double Ten” strategy, which includes an ambition to rank among the world’s top 10 beauty companies within the next decade. Early holiday sales suggest Proya Cosmetics is well positioned to sustain its growth. During the opening four hours of Tmall Beauty’s Double 11 sales on October 20, Proya ranked No. 1 on the platform’s transaction leaderboard, ahead of SkinCeuticals and Lancôme. For general manager Hou Yameng, however, the next phase of growth is less about chasing sales milestones and more about changing how the company operates. In an interview with Jing Daily, he discusses organizational inertia, the acquisition of Flower Knows, Proya’s US expansion through Ulta Beauty, and what Chinese beauty still needs to build to compete globally. JD: You joined Proya through its e-commerce business in 2014 and are now leading the company into a very different era. Which of the principles that drove Proya’s success over its first two decades will need to evolve as the company looks to its next decade? Hou Yameng: Over more than 20 years, Proya has accumulated a great deal of experience that has proven effective, and the capabilities built from that experience remain valuable. Since joining the company more than 10 years ago, I have seen firsthand how rapidly China’s beauty market, channels, and consumer behavior have changed, and I have realized that simply holding on to past experience and methods will no longer be enough to support the company’s next decade. A company’s leap to its next stage is fundamentally a reconstruction of its underlying business logic. Chinese beauty has moved from the dividends of offline distribution to the e-commerce and hero-product boom of the past decade, which we participated in deeply and benefited from. Each stage has a different market environment and competitive logic. Looking ahead, I think there are several shifts we need to make. First, we need to move from pursuing growth opportunities to building long-term growth capabilities. Traffic growth is not the same as brand growth. We also need to look at profitability, efficiency, and sustainability and build long-term brand assets driven by fundamental research and brand values. Second, we need to move from individual decision-making and agile responses toward a platform-based organization that can empower multiple brands. Proya has entered a stage of development across multiple brands and categories, so we need shared capabilities in R&D, supply chain, digitalization, and governance that can support the independent growth of each brand. Finally, I believe we need to move from domestic experience toward a genuinely global mindset and operating system. We cannot assume that the logic behind our success in China will apply overseas. We need to build capabilities across talent, global R&D collaboration, localized partnerships, and cross-cultural brand operations and take a longer-term approach to understanding consumers in different markets. JD: Proya has described its next growth stage as a period of “second entrepreneurship.” As a C-beauty company scales, what becomes harder: finding new growth opportunities, maintaining entrepreneurial speed, building brands, or changing the organization itself? Hou: I have always believed that the organization is very important. It is the “soil” in which every strategy and innovation takes root. If the soil hardens, it becomes difficult for any new seed to grow. Proya’s rapid development in the past was largely driven by our ability to read the market quickly, make decisions quickly, and execute efficiently. But once a company exceeds RMB 10 billion in scale, the business becomes more diverse and the brand portfolio more complex, so a model that relies on the judgment of a small number of people needs to evolve into one driven by organizational and systemic capabilities. My understanding of “second entrepreneurship” is preserving the entrepreneurial spirit while building the systematic capabilities of a mature company. Moving toward a multi-brand, multi-category platform is not simply about adding more brands. Different brands have different positioning, consumers, and development rhythms, so the group needs strong R&D, supply chain, and talent systems while giving each brand enough independence to preserve its creativity and sensitivity to the market. Similarly, as we expand globally, what I value is not simply selling products overseas but building genuinely international R&D, talent, and operating systems. The larger a company becomes, the more vigilant it needs to be about organizational inertia. The experience that made us successful can easily become the path we are most accustomed to following, but future competition requires us to keep breaking that inertia and building new capabilities. JD: Proya will enter around 400 Ulta Beauty stores in the US this November. Beyond sales, what would convince you that the US expansion is genuinely working? Hou: Entering Ulta Beauty is an important step in Proya’s global expansion. My expectation is that the partnership should be effective and sustainable, so I will pay more attention to the structural health behind the sales numbers. When Asian brands first enter European and American markets, they often benefit from a natural affinity among local Chinese and broader Asian communities. Relatively speaking, that is a comfort zone. Through our presence in 400 Ulta Beauty stores, I hope we can see whether Proya can reach beyond that community and attract non-Asian American consumers to our shelves and whether they ultimately repurchase because they genuinely experience the efficacy of our products. Penetration among local consumers and organic repeat purchases are very important indicators. Retailer confidence also matters because retailers are among the most sensitive observers of the market. Building a long-term, stable relationship with a professional retail partner like Ulta Beauty can also reflect the genuine commercial value of Proya’s products. Overall, I will look at consumer acceptance, genuine repeat purchases, organic professional word-of-mouth and whether retailers increase their commitment to the brand. Building long-term consumer trust and sustainable brand equity matters more than short-term performance. For the US market, we will be patient. JD: C-beauty brands have become exceptionally sophisticated at serving Chinese consumers, but globalization requires competing without that home-market advantage. What do you believe can become Proya's strongest competitive advantage internationally? Hou: China is one of the world’s most competitive beauty markets and one in which consumer needs change particularly quickly. Chinese beauty brands have grown up in this environment and learned how to understand consumers more sensitively, respond quickly, and build long-term competitiveness through continuous R&D and product iteration. So I think that when Chinese beauty brands move beyond their advantages in domestic distribution, supply chains, and cultural familiarity and enter mature European and American markets, the capability most likely to translate internationally is putting consumer insight at the center and quickly converting it into scientific and product innovation. This is an area Proya has continued to invest in. We have deepened the links between fundamental research, ingredient innovation, formulation development, and efficacy validation while building a global R&D network anchored by centers in Longwu, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Europe. At this year’s International Federation of Societies of Cosmetic Chemists (IFSCC) Congress, Proya presented 20 research projects, and our research into mitochondrial anti-aging won the conference’s Best Basic Research Award. Four technologies presented through oral papers have already been applied across several Proya product lines. I hope scientific research can not only respond to existing needs but help us identify needs that have not yet been fully addressed and create genuinely differentiated product value. JD: Proya is evolving from a company dominated by one flagship brand into a portfolio that includes Timage, Off&Relax, and now a controlling stake in Flower Knows. How do you decide whether the next growth opportunity should be built internally, acquired, or invested in — and how much independence should those brands retain? Hou: In areas where we already have strong capabilities and accumulated expertise, particularly where we can fully leverage the group’s strengths in R&D, product development, and operations, I would be more inclined to incubate brands internally. For high-quality brands that have already established distinctive identities, strong founding teams, and mature business models, we would carefully consider acquisitions. Flower Knows is one example. It has a very distinctive romantic, feminine visual identity, a strong ability to continuously develop hit products, significant organic traffic, and highly engaged fan communities in markets including Japan, Europe, and the US. What I value is its distinctive brand soul, its understanding of specific consumer communities, and its ability to cross cultural and category boundaries internationally. These are not capabilities that can simply be replicated by investing more resources, and they are precisely what we want to preserve and support. For financial investments, we look primarily at a brand’s development potential and investment value. Not every investment is intended to lead to an acquisition. As for independence, our principle is to preserve each brand’s identity while empowering it through the group’s central capabilities. Proya can provide support in R&D, supply chain, digitalization, talent, and organizational management, allowing each brand to focus on product innovation, brand expression, and consumer experience. JD: As China’s beauty market matures, how are evolving consumer expectations challenging the playbook that drove Proya’s success? Hou: The biggest change I have felt is that Chinese consumers have become much more rational and mature. Over the past decade, China’s beauty market developed rapidly on the back of e-commerce, social media, and consumption upgrading. We captured those changes through consumer insight, rapid product innovation, and a hero-product strategy. Those capabilities remain important, but what consumers expect from brands has changed significantly. Consumers are moving from being primarily ingredient-focused toward what I would describe as “efficacy rationalists” and experience-driven consumers. They do not only look at ingredients but at how those ingredients work together, delivery technologies, barrier repair, and long-term stability. At the same time, their expectations around texture, scent, and how gentle a product feels on the skin have become extremely high. Spending attitudes have also diverged. For basic everyday skincare, consumers are increasingly sensitive to whether price matches efficacy. At the same time, they are looking for brands that provide emotional value, distinctive aesthetics, or alignment with a particular lifestyle and can show very high loyalty when they find them. These increasingly sophisticated and diverse needs are an important reason why Proya is pursuing a multi-brand, multi-category strategy. We have expanded from skincare into hair care, makeup, and personal care, with hair-care revenue growing nearly 75% in the first half of 2026. We are also continuing to invest in fundamental research directly related to the characteristics of Chinese consumers’ skin. The more mature the market becomes, the more it tests the depth of a company’s understanding of its consumers. That is a capability we have built over the past decade and one we need to deepen over the next 10 years. JD: Much has been written about you as a next-generation leader. How do you establish your own leadership philosophy while inheriting both the strengths and institutional memory of a company built by the generation before you? Hou: For me, leadership is not something you prove through status or authority but something built through trust, little by little, in the process of solving real problems. The previous generation of entrepreneurs drove Proya’s rapid growth through sharp market instincts, a willingness to take risks and experiment, and strong execution. That spirit deserves to be respected and carried forward. While respecting the past, I want to make sure the organization always has the ability to adapt to the future. I am still learning and adjusting, and I want to push the company toward being more driven by data and systems, creating mechanisms that allow talented people to keep growing and the company to keep evolving. I prefer to let the work speak for itself and to build capability into the organization. JD: By 2035, what would you like “Designed and Developed in China” to signify in global beauty? And what does the Chinese industry still need to build before it can get there? Hou: By then, I hope “Designed in China” and “Developed in China” will no longer simply indicate where a product comes from but represent distinctive aesthetic expression, original scientific research, and trustworthy product quality. I hope global consumers will trust a brand because its products were developed in China and that Chinese technology and aesthetics can become a natural part of their everyday lives. Chinese companies have already built strong capabilities in market insight, efficiency, and execution. Looking ahead, I believe we still need to make sustained investments in fundamental skin biology and proprietary patented ingredients, strengthen our scientific and technological barriers, and build long-term brand equity through continued research and deeper articulation of brand values. Proya’s “Double Ten” strategy will require continued exploration, and I hope it can drive a broader strengthening of our capabilities. As one of China’s leading beauty companies, I also hope our continued investment in scientific research and product innovation can help Chinese beauty gain greater recognition globally.

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Proya’s Hou Yameng on growth beyond 10 billion RMB