East Buy has made its first self-operated color cosmetic.
7 month 28 day, East Buy official account pushed an article titled: "Tried more than 400 sticks, took 8 months to dare to bring it out, East Buy's first self-operated color cosmetic 'Matte Lip Glaze' is here!"
This is not a spur-of-the-moment crossover. Before this, East Buy, under the brand name EASTBUY, had already launched skincare and personal care products such as facial masks and hydrosol sprays. Lip glaze is just the first piece EASTBUY has placed on the color cosmetics track.
▍EASTBUY lip glaze image
The financial report released five days ago gives this move greater weight. 7 month 23 day, East Buy issued a positive profit forecast: total revenue for fiscal year 2026 is expected to reach 56 hundred million to 58 hundred million yuan, net profit approximately 5.2 hundred million to 5.5 hundred million yuan, a significant jump from the previous fiscal year's 600 ten thousand yuan. The core engine driving growth is self-operated products, with GMV accounting for 52.8%, and SKUs approaching one thousand.
But extending self-operated products to color cosmetics is still a qualitative change. Skincare talks about efficacy and ingredients, and users believe in science; color cosmetics talk about aesthetics and style, and users believe in taste. These are two different language systems. Can a brand associated with agricultural products, health, and quality make users feel at ease applying lip glaze to their lips?
The answer to this question lies in a profound transformation East Buy has undergone over the past two years.
2024 year 7 month, Dong Yuhui officially resigned. 2026 year 4 month, core anchors such as Shi Ming, Tian Quan, Zhong Can, and Lin Lin also left one after another. East Buy, which once quickly broke through with knowledge-based live commerce and super anchor personal IP, was forced to face a harsh reality: relying on people ultimately proves unreliable.
Yu Minhong set the direction as early as 2024 year: "What we want to do is products, not to cultivate more top anchors." This statement was later repeatedly quoted and became the general guideline for East Buy's strategic transformation.
Just on 7 month 23 day, East Buy issued a positive profit forecast. For fiscal year 2026 (from 2025 year 6 month 1 day to 2026 year 5 month 31 day), total revenue is expected to reach 56 hundred million to 58 hundred million yuan, a year-on-year increase of approximately 27.3% to 31.8%. Net profit is expected to be 5.2 hundred million to 5.5 hundred million yuan, compared to only 600 ten thousand yuan in the previous fiscal year, a year-on-year increase of as high as 8566.7% to 9066.7%, equivalent to a profit surge of 85 times to 90 times in one year.
What deserves more attention is the structure of growth. In the second half of fiscal year 2026, total revenue is expected to reach 33 hundred million to 35 hundred million yuan, a year-on-year increase of approximately 50% to 59.1%; net profit is expected to be 2.81 hundred million to 3.11 hundred million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 172.8% to 201.9%. The revenue growth rate in the second half of the fiscal year is significantly higher than the average growth rate for the full fiscal year, indicating that after the departure of super anchors, East Buy's performance not only did not collapse but actually accelerated in the second half of the fiscal year.
The core engine driving this growth is self-operated products. As of the first half of fiscal year 2026, East Buy's self-operated products have cumulatively launched 801 SPUs, contributing 52.8% of total GMV, for the first time clearly accounting for more than half of transaction volume. In the same period last year, this proportion was only 37%. Entering 2026 year 7 month, 67 new products were launched in a single month, and the total number of self-operated products is approaching one thousand.
At the same time, the number of quality control personnel has increased by 70% to 80% in the past six months, and the number of product managers has doubled, with continuous recruitment still ongoing. This level of investment in quality control is rare among live-streaming e-commerce companies.
When a company that rose by relying on people sees its profits surge after those people leave, it shows that East Buy has found a growth model that does not depend on any anchor. That model is self-operation.
The reason the self-operated model works lies in a replicable methodology: choose first-tier OEM factories, obsess over formulas and ingredients, emphasize safety and transparency, and set prices in the quality-price ratio range. This methodology has been proven with Wuchang rice, black pork sausage, and goat milk powder. Now, it's the lip glaze's turn.
Therefore, East Buy's foray into color cosmetics is not a spur-of-the-moment crossover, but a natural extension after the self-operated methodology has been fully validated. The real question to answer is no longer "why do it," but: can this methodology, which has repeatedly worked in food, still be effective in the beauty sector?
Lip glaze is the last piece placed in East Buy's beauty territory. Before this, EASTBUY's beauty and personal care product line had already been quietly laid out for over half a year.
This year 3 month 25 day, East Buy held a spring new product launch event. Yu Minhong and product managers stood on stage and explained more than 20 self-operated new products in one go. Among them, intensive moisturizing soothing masks, hand creams, and other beauty and personal care products made their debut. That evening, over 50 ten thousand masks were sold, and over 3 ten thousand hand creams were sold. This was the first time EASTBUY beauty products faced market testing, and the data proved that users are willing to pay for East Buy's beauty products.
In the following six months, EASTBUY's beauty territory expanded rapidly. According to information from East Buy's WeChat mini program and the cosmetics regulatory APP filing records, a complete matrix covering six major categories—skincare, body care, hair care, hand care, oral care, lip care, and color cosmetics—has now been formed.
Reviewing the list of OEM factories in this table reveals a clear pattern: for each category, they chose the strongest player in that field to do the OEM. For the color cosmetics line, Cosmax is a long-term partner of Lancôme and YSL; for the skincare line, Nox Bellcow is a leading enterprise in China's facial mask ODM; for the hair care line, Opal has served multiple well-known domestic and international brands.
East Buy did not hand over all categories to one large OEM for one-stop procurement, but instead chose the most knowledgeable player in each category. The logic is consistent with the food line: not making products in their own factories, but cooperating with the best factories.
From the pace of product launches, East Buy's approach to beauty is not to launch all categories at once, but to validate in stages and advance gradually.
Phase one (from the end of 2024 year to -2026 year 3 month): test the waters with low-decision-threshold categories. Lip balm, toothpaste, and facial masks were launched first, with low unit prices and low decision costs, making it easiest for users to try. Facial masks sold over 3 ten thousand pieces at the 50 month launch event, validating user acceptance of EASTBUY beauty products.
Phase two (2026 year 7 month): Breakthrough with the color cosmetics category. Lip glaze is the category with the highest brand premium and the highest user loyalty in beauty. Choose lip glaze as the first color cosmetics debut, not eyeshadow or foundation. Because lip glaze has the lowest usage threshold and the smallest trial-and-error cost.
Phase three (second half of 2026 and beyond): Build a complete matrix. Crystal clear lip glaze, slim blade eyebrow pencil and other filed products will be launched successively. Skincare toner, lotion, and cream are expected to go online in autumn. Sunscreen and other special cosmetics are also in planning.
East Buy Executive President Sun Jin summarized this strategy as "small steps, quick run", not going all in from the start, but using individual products to validate the market, accumulate experience, and gradually scale up. The launch of lip glaze is just the latest step on this small-step, quick-run path.
Having understood why East Buy is determined to do self-operated well, and having seen how far EASTBUY beauty has already laid out, the core question that needs to be answered next is: How exactly does East Buy do beauty?
● Positioning: Not doing color cosmetics, but doing self-operated
East Buy's entry into beauty is essentially a category extension of the self-operated model, rather than creating a traditional beauty brand. Its strategic positioning can be summarized by a sentence from a Founder Securities research report: building an "online Sam's Club".
Sam's Club has never only sold food; its private brand Member's Mark also covers various categories from tissues to skincare products. East Buy's logic is the same: use the quality and cost-effectiveness of self-operated products to build user trust, rely on repurchase to drive growth, and not depend on the personal charm of streamers or platform traffic dividends.
Specifically for the beauty business, the implementation of this logic is manifested in three interlocking labels: high safety, high taste, and high quality-price ratio. This is the "three highs" principle that Yu Minhong set for East Buy products.
▍Yu Minhong Image source: East Buy
In beauty, this means finding first-tier OEM factories, obsessing over ingredients and formulas, emphasizing the sense of safety for sensitive skin, and migrating the ingredient transparency concept from the food sector to beauty. From "safe to eat" to "safe to apply", East Buy attempts to transfer the user trust accumulated over four years from one category to another.
● Pricing: The mid-range route of "quality-price ratio"
East Buy's beauty pricing strategy is consistent with its food category logic: not pursuing the lowest price, nor positioning as high-end, but using "first-tier OEM factory + transparent ingredients = trustworthy quality" to persuade users.
Take lip glaze as an example: priced from 55 yuan, after promotions the actual transaction price is about 39-47 yuan. Horizontal comparison: Perfect Diary lip glaze is about 59-79 yuan, Florasis about 99-129 yuan, international brands about 200-300 yuan. The same for facial masks: a box of 5 pieces, new customer first-order price 36.9 yuan, about 7.3 yuan per piece, in the mid-range price range of domestic facial masks.
▍EASTBUY beauty prices Image source: East Buy Member Store mini program
The key to this pricing strategy is: users are willing to pay a premium for "trust", but this premium cannot be too high. East Buy users accept higher prices than white-label products because they believe that what East Buy selects will not be bad. And this trust is what East Buy has exchanged with four years of time, over 800 self-operated products, and an investment of 70%--80% increase in quality control personnel.
The membership system further strengthens the differentiation of pricing. East Buy membership annual fee is 199 yuan, valid online and offline. In offline experience stores, all products have dual labels of member price and non-member price, and members enjoy discounts starting at 85 off. The promotional information for lip glaze also clearly states "members are expected to receive 50 Zhenguo back". This member-exclusive price design both raises the psychological price anchor for non-members and enhances members' repurchase stickiness.
● Channels: Private domain accumulation, live streaming amplification, offline trust building
East Buy's beauty channel layout follows a clear logic: private domain accumulates users, live streaming expands voice, offline builds trust.
Private domain is the basic base. The lip glaze debut chose the East Buy Member Store WeChat mini program, not Douyin. This shows that East Buy intends to prioritize high-repurchase categories such as beauty in the private domain.
As of the first half of fiscal year 2026, East Buy App's GMV share has reached 18.5%. Although this proportion is still far lower than Douyin, the repurchase rate and profit contribution of private domain users are much higher than public domain traffic. For beauty categories such as lip glaze and facial masks that require continuous repurchase, private domain is the best transaction scenario.
Live streaming is the amplifier. On 7 month 29 day, lip glaze entered East Buy's Douyin live streaming room for official sale. At the same time, East Buy has added multiple vertical live streaming rooms on the Douyin platform, including "East Buy Beauty Hall".
According to third-party data, "East Buy Beauty Hall" achieved a single-day GMV exceeding ten million yuan during the Douyin 618 promotion. This shows that the explosive power of the beauty category on Douyin cannot be underestimated, and live streaming remains an important sales and seeding channel.
Offline is trust endorsement. On 2026 year 5 month 21 day, East Buy's first offline experience store nationwide officially opened in Zhongguancun, Beijing. This store of about 400 square meters has about 1500 SKUs on shelves, with self-operated products accounting for more than 50%. The store has a beauty experience area where consumers can try products on-site before ordering.
▍Yu Minhong appears at the opening of East Buy's first store
For a category like beauty that requires "trying", offline experience stores assume the function of trust building and brand perception. Only after users touch, try, and are satisfied can they confidently apply lip glaze to their lips.
The three channels do not operate independently, but form a closed loop of public domain traffic attraction—private domain accumulation—member repurchase. Douyin is responsible for attracting new customers and seeding, mini programs and App are responsible for transactions and repurchase, offline stores are responsible for experience and trust, and the three cooperate to support the growth of the beauty business.
A user who has bought Wuchang rice from East Buy clicks into the live streaming room of East Buy Beauty Hall and sees the host pick up a lip glaze called "Human Rose". She knows this brand does not sell fakes, has transparent ingredients, and uses the same OEM factory as Lancôme, but she does not know whether this color suits her skin tone.
This is the real scenario East Buy faces in doing beauty: trust can be transferred, but aesthetics cannot.
In the food era, East Buy solved the problem of what is safe to eat. In the beauty era, it has to solve the problem of what looks good to use, and the latter is much more complex than the former because it involves subjective judgment, fashion trends, and personal preferences.
From the field to the dressing table, what is crossed is not a product line, but users' expectations for the brand. Yu Minhong said "we want to make products", but in the end, what users buy is never just the product itself, but a brand's understanding of beauty.
East Buy can clearly explain which black soil the rice comes from, but can it clearly explain what kind of lips "Human Rose" suits? The answer to this question will determine how far EASTBUY's beauty territory can go.