Beauty Retail's Future Is Instant — and It's Heading to Hefei

On June 30, in Hefei, a battle for growth — custom-built for beauty professionals — officially begins.

When ordering online and getting delivery in 30 minutes goes from novelty to muscle memory, sticking to old channel logic doesn't just mean slower growth. It means slowly surrendering pricing power, losing customer touchpoints, and eventually getting silently eliminated in a zero-sum game. That's not fear-mongering. It's the brutal reality of beauty retail in 2026.

But anxiety is never the answer — reconstruction is.

Scene from the Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow (Sichuan stop)

The Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow (Anhui stop), organized by China Beauty Network, will kick off in Hefei on June 30. The conference is expected to attract over 800 channel partners, 100 benchmark stores, and 100 brands.

This event is laser-focused on instant retail, targeting the CS (cosmetics specialty store) channel's distributors and stores — the group currently feeling the most anxiety and in greatest need of transformation. In this critical period of paradigm shift in beauty retail, instead of stumbling alone through trial and error, come to the scene and resonate with pioneers, turning trend awareness into real revenue growth.

Rethinking Traffic: How Instant Retail Creates a Second Growth Curve for CS Stores

Traditional beauty CS stores are facing a cliff-like drop in foot traffic. The continuous diversion from online e-commerce and the rapid evolution of consumer shopping habits have left distributors and stores that rely on "waiting for customers" stuck in a growth quagmire. The explosion of instant retail is fundamentally reconstructing the "people, products, and places" of the beauty industry.

Instant retail extends a store's service radius from the physical 1 kilometer to 5 kilometers or more. Opening hours stretch from the traditional 12 hours to 24-hour fulfillment. CS stores evolve from mere "product display showrooms" into "micro-warehouses and experience centers" in the city's capillaries. Distributors' roles upgrade from traditional "inventory pushing" to "supply chain and fulfillment service providers."

The Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow (Anhui stop) is built on this fundamental shift, providing CS channel practitioners with a highly actionable guide to break through and find reliable growth in a zero-sum market.

Strategic Upgrade: Understanding the Underlying Logic of Channel Change and Landscape Reshaping

This time, we designed the afternoon agenda as a complete "instant retail growth chain" — from macro trends to micro execution, from offline stores to omnichannel operations. Each talk builds on the previous one, and every question finds its answer on site.

Yu Qi, curator of the Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow, will take the stage first with "From Channel Change to Growth Breakthrough." He has stated bluntly at several roadshow openings: "Instant retail is not a choice; it's a must-do."

Data supports his judgment: In 2026, China's instant retail market will exceed 1 trillion yuan, and beauty and personal care has become one of the fastest-growing segments. More notably, over 30% of instant retail orders come from nighttime hours, making the night economy an unignorable growth source for brick-and-mortar beauty stores. Yu Qi's views strike directly at the anxiety of the CS channel: foot traffic continues to decline, traditional methods fail, but the "store as micro-warehouse" model is capturing market dividends with minute-level fulfillment.

Yu Qi, curator of the Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow, speaking

But direction alone isn't enough — supply chain capacity determines the growth ceiling.

Zhao Tianshu, head of supply chain operations for Meituan Lightning Warehouse, will present "Meituan Lightning Warehouse: Beauty Instant Retail Supply Chain and Fulfillment Efficiency in Practice." As the initiator of the Lightning Warehouse model, Meituan is promoting the construction of "brand official flagship Lightning Warehouses," which are expected to expand to tens of thousands of brands, covering beauty, electronics, sports, and more.

Under the high standard of "30-minute delivery," how can the fulfillment network be built to achieve both scale and cost-efficiency? This is a calculation every entrant aiming for volume must get right. Zhao Tianshu's talk will provide Meituan's practical answers.

Jin Hui, founder of Langzun, will give a talk titled "How Offline Channels Can Achieve Rapid Growth Through Instant Retail," with a pragmatic judgment: physical stores are not the enemy of instant retail but its most scarce "front-end nodes." The key is not whether to transform, but how to use instant retail to restructure the store's fulfillment radius and customer reach. Jin Hui will combine Langzun's practical cases to break down the specific path for offline channels to achieve growth through instant retail.

Manjiaxi operates over 600 Lightning Warehouses with an annual GMV exceeding 3 billion yuan, making it the largest directly operated Lightning Warehouse brand in China. Zheng Huadong, co-founder of Manjiaxi, will share frontline experience in "Collaborative Growth Path of Warehouse Stores and Brands in Instant Retail Channels" — how warehouse stores and brands can establish efficient collaboration mechanisms, how brand resources can precisely land at warehouse store terminals, and how both sides can integrate efforts in product selection, marketing, data, and more to achieve mutual growth in warehouse store profitability and brand sales. This time, he will combine the characteristics of the Anhui market to offer more targeted growth strategies from the perspective of warehouse-store-brand synergy.

Zheng Huadong, co-founder of Manjiaxi, speaking

Once the channel and layout are clear, it's time to step back and see the whole picture.

Sun Qin, COO of Jiang Xiaotun, will use the title "Instant Retail Reconstructs the Beauty Landscape" to break down the deep restructuring of power among beauty brands, distributors, and retailers from a macro perspective. When "30-minute delivery" becomes the norm and the distance between brands and terminals shrinks, who is rising, who is falling behind, and where is the next window of opportunity? This talk will help attendees re-examine their position in the beauty industry chain from a higher vantage point.

Store Operations: Benchmark Case Studies and the Rules of Differentiation

With the landscape reshaped, how do physical stores find their place in the era of instant retail?

Wang Yichen, founder of Yidachen, will give a practical review titled "How CS Stores Can Graft Instant Retail and Become Regional Leaders." She will detail how a traditional beauty store can, without abandoning offline experience advantages, graft instant retail capabilities, shifting from "waiting for customers" to "delivering beauty to their door," and become a leader in regional markets. For the many Anhui CS stores still on the fence, this methodology is an invaluable transformation guide.

When everyone is rushing into instant retail, differentiation becomes the key to survival.

Sun Rong, co-founder of QVQMi, will explore "Differentiated Survival and Growth in the Instant Retail Era." With the number of Lightning Warehouses across the country rising rapidly, homogenization competition is intensifying. Sun Rong will share how to build differentiation barriers in dimensions like product selection, service, and user operations.

Nancy, founder of PriceTag, will dissect "Efficient Omnichannel Operations in Instant Retail." The traffic dividends of a single platform are fading, making a multi-platform matrix a necessary choice. Nancy will integrate the day's insights from an omnichannel perspective, sorting out a final strategy for connecting with platforms, managing users, and merging online and offline. After her talk, you will have a complete and clear understanding of how to implement instant retail.

Nancy, founder of PriceTag, speaking

Ecosystem Building: Connecting 800+ Channel Partners and 100 Benchmark Stores

This roadshow is structured around three modules: all-day exhibition area for product selection and matchmaking, afternoon of 8 practical talks, and evening awards gala. Morning focuses on precise supply-demand matching, afternoon dissects the growth chain, and evening features a VIP-by-invitation dinner for in-depth networking.

Scene from the Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow (Sichuan stop)

All-day exhibition area | Gathering hundreds of brands

Covering beauty and personal care, skincare, color cosmetics, supply chain services, and more. For brands, this is a window directly facing the channel; for the channel, it's a one-stop platform for efficient product selection.

Morning 10:00-12:00 | Channel matchmaking session: Matching supply and demand first

Before the talks begin, suppliers and buyers complete their matchmaking. Hundreds of brand exhibitors, instant retail operators, and regional chains will meet face-to-face for product selection.

Afternoon 14:30-17:30 | 8 practical talks: A complete "Instant Retail Growth Map"

The 8 afternoon talks are designed as a complete "instant retail growth chain" — from macro trends to supply chain infrastructure, to offline store implementation, channel layout, landscape analysis, single-store models, and omnichannel operations — each piece interlocking and progressively deepening.

Evening 19:00-21:30 | Awards Gala: VIP-by-invitation dinner

Recognizing outstanding distributors and retail terminals in Anhui, using exemplary role models to set transformation benchmarks for the industry.

Instant retail is accelerating from "first-tier trial" to "county-level deep cultivation." Whoever completes the model upgrade first will seize the initiative in the next round of competition.

Over the past few months, this roadshow has traveled from Quanzhou to Zhengzhou, from Kunming to Chengdu, selling out at every stop. Countless CS retailers and distributors found answers on site and took action afterward. This time, it's Hefei's turn.

Scene from the Beauty Instant Retail Roadshow (Sichuan stop)

If you're still debating whether to do instant retail, your competitors may already have a head start. If you've decided but don't know where to begin, this conference is the shortest path.

June 30, at the Sheraton Hefei Xinzhan Ligang Hotel. Answers are on site. Action starts now.