狂卖10亿片“小星星” 大品牌抢着入局 年轻人带火一个新品类

This article discusses how acne patches, a long-standing functional product category, has been revitalized by young consumers and emerged as a hot new consumer product. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core trend: Young people’s attitudes toward acne have shifted. Rather than feeling embarrassed and hiding breakouts, they now treat colored, shaped acne patches as a makeup accessory, embracing their imperfections. China’s overall acne care market already exceeds ¥26 billion and continues growing steadily. The acne patch category has expanded dramatically: it posted triple-digit growth in 2025 and is projected to maintain double-digit growth this year, attracting entry from multiple major brands.

2. Buying guide: Efficacy remains consumers’ top priority. General buyers prefer affordable, invisible nude-colored patches that don’t interfere with subsequent makeup application. For consumers who pursue individuality and follow new trends, decorative patches in shapes like stars, hearts, and flowers work well as a makeup add-on to express personal style.

The revitalization of the acne patch category has opened up substantial room for growth, making it an attractive new track for brands to enter today. Key insights are as follows:

1. Consumer trend: Gen Z has redefined aesthetic standards and embraced the idea of accepting imperfection, driving the transformation of acne patches from functional tools for covering breakouts to emotional consumer goods and public decorative accessories. The category maintains double-digit high growth, while China’s overall acne care market exceeds ¥26 billion and continues expanding steadily, offering abundant market space.

2. Product R&D direction: The current industry competes fiercely on both efficacy and aesthetic appeal. Brands need to nail core functionality first, leveraging hydrocolloid technology to deliver the basic performance of absorbing exudate and promoting healing. They also need to cover diverse demand: offering affordable invisible patches for mass consumers, as well as shaped decorative designs tailored for Gen Z. It is also critical to balance quality and pricing to compete against low-cost products.

3. Marketing guidance: Brands can partner with celebrities and influencers, leverage social media dissemination, and launch IP collaborations to enter fashion scenarios, aligning with user values by promoting the idea of not hiding imperfections.

The acne patch track is a clear incremental market that brings new growth opportunities for sellers. Key insights are as follows:

1. Market opportunity: As a revitalized mature category, acne patches have seen strong growth in recent years, posting triple-digit growth in 2025 and projected to maintain double-digit growth going forward. China’s overall acne care market exceeds ¥26 billion and continues expanding, giving this once-stagnant category new room for growth and abundant opportunities.

2. Product portfolio recommendation: Sellers can stock two product lines to cover different consumer groups. The first is affordable invisible nude patches for the mass market, which have stable demand and large volume potential. For example, a Chinese domestic brand’s invisible patch priced at around ¥0.4 per piece has sold more than 1 million units annually. The second line is shaped decorative patches for Gen Z, which align with current trends and have strong potential to become viral hits.

3. Risk and marketing notes: As many new players have entered the market, sellers must pay attention to balancing quality and pricing to compete with low-cost offerings. For marketing, sellers can work with celebrity and influencer endorsements on social media, building brand awareness around young consumers’ value of embracing imperfection.

The revitalization of the acne patch category has created new business opportunities for manufacturing players. Key insights are as follows:

1. Shifts in product and design demand: The market now has a dual demand structure. On one hand, the mass market still prefers traditional round, nude, invisible patches and has high requirements for cost control. On the other hand, the Gen Z market demands differentiated, colored decorative patches in a variety of shapes including stars, hearts, and flowers, with higher requirements for packaging design, as well as new product formats such as portable boxes and custom IP collaboration designs.

2. Business opportunity: Companies with medical backgrounds, medical dressing brands, and beauty brands have all entered the acne patch track, driving clear incremental market demand and leaving substantial room for growth in OEM orders. Factories can develop differentiated production solutions to meet different client needs, covering both high-volume affordable products and custom creative designs.

3. Transformation takeaway: Factories need to keep up with shifting consumer trends, adjust production lines in time to adapt to new product formats, and proactively connect with the needs of e-commerce merchants to capture the industry dividend from the revitalization of a mature category.

The revitalization of the acne patch track has brought new industry trends and new business opportunities for relevant service providers. Key insights are as follows:

1. Industry trend: Hydrocolloid acne patches, originally classified as medical devices, have completed a transformation from medical wound care products to beauty consumer goods, becoming a new category that delivers both functional and emotional value. The track maintains high-speed growth and has attracted players from multiple sectors including healthcare and beauty, forming a competitive landscape where brands compete intensely on both efficacy and aesthetic design.

2. Core client pain points: Brands entering the space currently face three core pain points. First, they need to balance product quality and pricing to compete with the large number of low-cost bagged products on the market. Second, they need to develop differentiated shapes and packaging designs to meet Gen Z’s demand for personalization. Third, they need marketing strategies aligned with social media dissemination logic to help their products break through quickly.

3. Business direction: Service providers can develop targeted solutions. For example, they can offer small and medium-sized brands one-stop services covering supply chain, packaging design, and marketing promotion, helping merchants quickly build a complete production line and launch products that meet market demand.

As a newly booming incremental category, acne patches bring new opportunities for platform merchant recruitment and operations. Key insights are as follows:

1. Merchant demand: Different types of brands — including new domestic Chinese brands, traditional medical dressing brands, and international beauty brands — are all entering the acne patch track and looking to expand into the category and capture platform traffic. Platforms can launch targeted recruitment campaigns to attract brands of all types and enrich category offerings.

2. Operational adjustment: Platforms can prioritize displaying shaped acne patches that align with current trends in search results, create a dedicated category entry, and launch supporting sections similar to "domestic brand curation" to help high-quality new brands gain exposure. They can also run overall category promotions tied to social media trends to drive user search and conversion.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms need to standardize category marketing claims, clarify qualification requirements for medical-grade and cosmetics-grade acne patches respectively to avoid the risk of false advertising. They should also guide healthy competition among merchants, crack down on pricing irregularities, protect consumer rights, and support the healthy development of the category.

The revitalization and growth of the acne patch category is a typical case of mature category reconstruction against the background of new consumption, with high research value. Key insights are as follows:

1. New industry trend: Traditional mature categories can be revitalized and reconstructed through shifting consumer attitudes. Hydrocolloid dressing, originally classified as a medical device, has transformed into a beauty consumer product that delivers both functional and emotional value, turning a niche, overlooked category into a new incremental track that attracts players from healthcare, beauty and other sectors. It has formed a new competitive landscape where brands compete intensely on both efficacy and aesthetic appeal.

2. Characteristics of the new business model: The category’s growth capitalized on Gen Z’s value demands, building user resonance by promoting the idea of embracing imperfection. It broke out quickly through celebrity/influencer seeding and social media marketing, and even expanded into scenarios like fashion shows to achieve category breakout, forging a new business model that combines functional product attributes with emotional value.

3. Research implications: This case provides a reference for the revitalization of other mature traditional categories. It can inform extended research on paths for mature category revitalization, the restructuring effect of shifting consumer attitudes on industries, and the logic of building emotional value for functional products, reflecting the overall industrial transformation driven by changing Gen Z consumption concepts.