On March 31st, key projects in the second quarter of 2022 in xiong’an new area, Hebei Province were started. Including 53 projects such as non-capital function relief, infrastructure, public services, marketization and smart cities, with a total investment of 88 billion yuan and an annual planned investment of over 40 billion yuan. It is understood that among the projects started in xiong’an new area in the first half of 2022, most are major projects, including 28 projects with a total investment of over 100 billion yuan.

　　The transportation system of the city of the future has basically taken shape.

　　On April 1, 2017, xiong’an new area was established. In the past five years, from "a blank sheet of paper" to tower cranes, it has entered a critical period to undertake the simultaneous development of Beijing’s non-capital functions and large-scale development and construction. This "city of the future" bearing the Millennium plan has fully opened up the external backbone road network and basically formed the internal backbone road network system; The urban framework is being fully opened and a number of landmark projects are put into use.

　　Millennium plan, traffic first. After five years of construction, xiong’an new area’s traffic has extended in all directions. The interconnected road network provides strong support for the large-scale construction of the new district and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei transportation network.

　　Haiyue Street in xiong’an new area is a landscape avenue that runs through xiong’an new area from east to west. The road connects Xiongxian and Zangang to the east and Baoding to the west. At the same time, Haiyue Street is also the "one horizontal" in the northernmost part of the road connected by the "four horizontal and twelve vertical" groups in the starting area of xiong’an new area. The completed Haiyue Street is about 14.7 kilometers long, with six lanes in both directions and a design speed of 60 kilometers per hour. Now, the road project has entered the final stage, and the workers at the scene are working hard on the construction. After the completion of this street, vehicles can directly enter the starting area of xiong’an new area from Jingxiong Expressway.

　　At present, the backbone road network and traffic road network system of xiong’an new area’s inner and outer ring roads have basically taken shape.

　　Zhang Yaodong, General Manager of China Xiong ‘an Group Infrastructure Company:The length of the peripheral link of our traffic is about 90 kilometers, which realizes the comprehensive connection of our Xiong ‘an country park, Rongcheng group, Zangang group and Xiongxian group. The total length of the inner ring road is about 50 kilometers, which realizes the connection between our start-up area, start-up area and high-speed rail area.

　　In terms of external traffic in Xiong ‘an, in May, 2021, the Hebei section of Jingxiong Expressway, the new Rongwu line and the first phase of Jingde Expressway were opened to traffic, marking the comprehensive opening of xiong’an new area’s "four vertical and three horizontal" traffic arteries. Among them, Jingxiong Expressway is also equipped with the first smart high-speed lane in China, which can realize the on-road operation of unmanned buses and networked fleets.

　　In addition, the roadside lampposts of Jingxiong Expressway integrate intelligent devices such as visibility detectors and smart cameras, which can automatically adjust the lighting brightness according to the visibility. At the same time, there is a Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative Systems on the lamppost. With the use of high-precision digital map, it can provide car owners with many services such as vehicle-road communication, high-precision navigation and early warning of confluence area.

　　In terms of external rail transit, on December 27th, 2020, Jingxiong Intercity Railway was put into operation.

　　Liu Dongmei, deputy stationmaster of Xiong ‘an Station of Beijing Railway Depot:Now it takes only 50 minutes from Xiong ‘an Station to Beijing West Railway Station (the fastest) and 19 minutes to Daxing Airport Station. Up to now, the station has transported 840,000 passengers back and forth.

　　In the future, xiong’an new area will become an important highway and rail transit hub.

　　Tian Jinchang, Executive Deputy Director of Hebei xiong’an new area Management Committee:Xiong ‘an Station will form a big hub, and rail transit will connect Beijing, Tianjin, Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Shangqiu and the south area. Xiong ‘an will become an important hub of rail transit in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in the future, and it will also become an important hub of rail transit in northern China.

　　"City parlor" and "wisdom brain" have been stepped up.

　　Rongdong area is the first construction area in xiong’an new area, and it is the first area in the new district to undertake the function of Beijing’s non-capital. At present, there are many buildings built and under construction in Rongdong area, and these building functions have their own emphasis, including living and residential areas and urban functional areas. Some of the buildings in these urban functional areas are "urban living rooms" and some are "urban intelligent brains".

　　In Rongdong District, xiong’an new area, this complex in front of us is the Xiong ‘an Business Service Center, which is known as the "City Meeting Room". It is the first landmark urban complex in Xiong ‘an, and it is a comprehensive park integrating work and residence to undertake the function relief of Beijing’s non-capital and the enterprises that settled in Beijing in advance. There are twelve buildings in the business service center, and the center building, which is "Chinese-oriented, Chinese-western, and ancient-modern", is the exhibition center, and it has gathered many innovative achievements such as green building and intelligence.

　　Zhang Zhongrui, Business Manager of China Xiong ‘an Group Chengfa Company:We make full use of new technologies, combined with spatio-temporal information and big data analysis, to solve the interconnection and sharing of information across formats, buildings, levels and departments in the park.

　　On March 29th, three more buildings with a building area of 200,000 square meters were officially delivered in the Business Service Center. In addition, there are five-star hotels, expert apartments and other buildings, which are undergoing interior decoration and are expected to be completed by the end of June this year. By then, the entire business service center can accommodate more than 20,000 people to work and live here.

　　Next to the Business Service Center, this newly capped building is Xiong ‘an City Computing Center, which is also known as the "wisdom brain" of xiong’an new area.

　　Liu Xin, Deputy General Manager of China Xiong ‘an Group Digital City Technology Co., Ltd.:We will build three cities in xiong’an new area, one on the ground, one underground and one on the cloud. Among them, a city on the cloud is our supercomputing project, providing a steady stream of power.

　　Xiong’an new area’s Urban Supercomputing Cloud Project is the base of Xiong ‘an Smart City. When completed this year, it will provide network, computing and storage services for big data, blockchain and Internet of Things in the whole city.

　　Liu Xin, Deputy General Manager of China Xiong ‘an Group Digital City Technology Co., Ltd.:First of all, it carries the core data of xiong’an new area and some government application systems. It mainly installs sensors in all aspects of municipal administration, roads, bridges and water quality in xiong’an new area. This sensor collects the atmospheric conditions, water quality conditions and the pressure on buildings, and submits them to our data platform to provide some services for government governance.

　　The improvement of water quality in Baiyangdian Lake has entered the ranks of national good lakes.

　　Located in the hinterland of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Baiyangdian Lake is the largest freshwater lake in North China Plain, and it is also an important ecological water body for the development of xiong’an new area. The former Baiyangdian Lake was seriously polluted. Hebei Province and xiong’an new area have taken various measures and ecological control projects against internal and external pollution.

　　In the past five years, with the cooperation of upstream and downstream, the water quality of Baiyangdian Lake has been continuously improved, and the water quality has reached the standard of Class III of surface water in the whole region from the poor V in the past, and entered the ranks of good lakes in the country.

　　Zhang Yingli, 56, is a native of Dongdiantou Village, Anxin County, xiong’an new area. In the past, like many villagers, he was engaged in aquaculture in Baiyangdian at his doorstep. Three years ago, in order to improve the water quality in the lake area, Anxin county completely cleared the aquaculture in Baiyangdian waters of the county. Since then, Zhang Yingli has changed from an aquaculture farmer to a Baiyangdian cleaner, who is responsible for cleaning up the surface garbage. In recent years, Zhang Yingli has personally felt that this Baiyangdian lake has become clear day by day.

　　Zhang Yingli, a villager from Dongdiantou Village, Anxin County, xiong’an new area:Now the water is clear, the sky is blue, the reeds are green and the lotus flowers are red. This environment is quite beautiful, and I am particularly happy.

　　There are 102 Dianbian villages and Dianzhong villages near Baiyangdian, with a total population of about 245,000. In order to solve the problem of domestic sewage entering the lake, in the past five years, 119 small sewage treatment stations have been built in these 102 Dianzhong villages and Dianbian villages, and the treated water quality has basically reached the Class IV standard of surface water, and then it can be used as resource for greening water and farmland irrigation.

　　Baiyangdian Lake is located at the lower tip of Jiuhe River. In view of the problem of external pollution, all the villages around Baiyangdian Lake and along the upper reaches of the river have fully treated domestic sewage.

　　Zhao Xianwei, Director of Ecological Environment Bureau of xiong’an new area City, Hebei Province:In terms of urban life, all garbage is collected and treated. In industry, more than 13,000 sewage outlets have been banned.

　　The sewage treatment plants in 20 counties and cities of Baoding in the upper reaches of Baiyangdian Lake have all been upgraded, and the discharged water quality has reached the standard of Class IV surface water. At the estuaries of Fuhe River and Xiaoyi River, two large estuarine wetlands have been built, and they have been officially put into operation. Through comprehensive treatment such as pre-sedimentation ecological pond, subsurface wetland and aquatic plant pond, the removal rate of ammonia nitrogen in water has reached 60%.

　　In order to monitor the water quality of Baiyangdian Lake, xiong’an new area applied 5G technology to the field of ecological environment. Xiong’an new area Eco-environment Bureau has set up 16 monitoring points of water quality and environment with 5G technology in Baiyangdian Lake and the river inlet. The monitoring instruments automatically sample and analyze the data, and then send the data back to the eco-environment command center in real time.

　　In the past five years, the area of Baiyangdian Lake has increased from more than 250 square kilometers to more than 370 square kilometers, the largest area in history, and the water quality has continued to improve.

　　Zhao Xianwei, Director of Ecological Environment Bureau of xiong’an new area City, Hebei Province:Ecological dredging has been promoted on a large scale. We use the water from the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the Yellow River Diversion Project and the water from the upstream reservoir to strengthen the ecological replenishment of Baiyangdian Lake. In the past five years, we have accumulated 3 billion cubic meters of water.

　　Tian Jinchang, Executive Deputy Director of Hebei xiong’an new area Management Committee:Including our project of connecting Baidian and Dianshan, and the project of returning farmland to Dianshan. The water quality of Baiyangdian Lake will be worse than Grade V water in 2017 to Grade III water in 2021. It is necessary to realize the harmony between the city and the lake.

　　CCTV News:According to WeChat official account of the Ministry of Transport, on August 22nd, the Office of the Inter-Ministerial Joint Conference on Coordination and Supervision of New Transportation Forms conducted a reminder interview with 11 platform companies, including Didi Chuxing, T3 Chuxing, Gaode Chuxing, Caocao Chuxing, Shouqi Chuxing, Meituan Chuxing, Wanshun Chuxing, Enjoy Road Chuxing, Ruqi Chuxing, Sunshine Chuxing and Dida Inc..

　　The interview pointed out that after combing industry monitoring, calls and letters from the masses and media reports, it was found that some platform companies had problems such as inadequate implementation of corporate main responsibility, infringement of the legitimate rights and interests of employees and passengers, prominent illegal operations, and hidden safety and stability risks.

　　Interview requirements: First, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate and rectify the hidden dangers of stability risks existing in various platform companies, and timely prevent and resolve them to ensure the stability of the industry. Second, it is necessary to implement the requirements of "Sunshine Action" of the new transportation platform enterprises, improve the openness and transparency of business strategies, improve the customer service system, and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of employees and consumers. Third, it is necessary to operate in strict accordance with relevant regulations, comply with laws and regulations, strictly control access, and repel non-compliant vehicles and personnel. The aggregation platform should ensure that the connected network car platform meets the relevant regulations, and urge the connected network car platform companies to strengthen vehicle and personnel management. In the event of a security incident, the aggregation platform company shall fulfill the responsibility of paying in advance according to law, and jointly handle the accident with the involved network car platform company. Fourth, it is necessary to strengthen operational safety management, enhance safety production capacity, improve the emergency response mechanism for safety accidents, and strengthen driver management and education and training.

　　Each platform company indicated that it will conduct a comprehensive and systematic review of the business behavior of the enterprise in accordance with the interview requirements, earnestly fulfill the main responsibility of the enterprise, do a solid job in rectification, conduct business in accordance with laws and regulations, effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and employees, maintain the safety and stability of the industry, and promote the healthy and sustainable development of new transportation formats.

Recently, the entire overseas beauty circle is talking about the Rhode brand lip balm mobile phone case; Just two weeks ago, the makeup brand Rare Beauty launched a dog toy.

-This is just the category expansion of two overseas "It" brands this spring.

No matter whether the outside world thinks that this is just a short-lived marketing or the influence of online celebrity stars, more and more beauty brands are beginning to break the circle by category, realizing the sound volume and sales volume.

It seems that beauty is no longer a "proposition composition" that only specifies elements such as "make-up, skin care and fragrance", but a "stage" that can be arbitrarily decorated by fashion, trends, cultural symbols and consumer preferences. On the stage, the core actors can still be beauty categories, but the subtle brand atmosphere and the brand content supplement are all completed by category expansion and wall breaking.

It seems that the imagination of beauty is outside the category of beauty.

01

Be a beauty brand

Start jumping out of the beauty box.

In June 2022, model and online celebrity Haley Bieber founded the skin care brand Rhode, focusing on science, minimalism and truth. Only one year after the brand was founded, the polypeptide lip balm sold more than one million pieces, contributing 16 million US dollars (about 116 million yuan) in sales.

Just in February of this year, Rhode innovatively introduced a mobile phone case that can accommodate a lip balm on the back cover. "Lipstick shell" costs $35, and lip gloss needs to be purchased separately. It is suitable for iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 and their respective Pro versions. This mobile phone case immediately became a "phenomenal" explosive product that swept the Internet, and the first batch was exhausted in 25 minutes.

The popularity continues to spread, and not only is the "mobile phone shell card everything" popular on the Internet, but the explosion has also attracted brands such as luxury car Porsche and food giant Heinz to launch car key shells and ketchup shells.

　

The dog toy with makeup Rare Beauty is another story about sustainable development.

The launch of this dog toy coincides with the International Pet Day on April 11th, and the second is to celebrate that the brand has just obtained the certification of the international leading cruel organization "Leaping Bunny". Toys are based on the brand’s explosive items, liquid blush and mascara, and can be disassembled to play interactive games with their owners. Each toy retails for $18 and is only available on the brand’s website.

This is not the first batch of new products of Rare Beauty that are not cosmetics. In September 2023, on the third anniversary of the brand, Rare Beauty launched a limited edition comfortable hoodie and sweatpants. This is the brand’s first formal clothing category. Later, Rare Beauty developed and sold a series of bags, including backpacks, fluffy totes, cosmetic bags and toiletries related to the brand culture, as well as versatile clothing items such as short sleeves and baseball caps.

More than that, more beauty brands began to step out of the beauty category.

One of the best brands is Glossier, one of the hottest makeup brands in America. As early as 2019, the brand launched the "GlossiWear" series. In the presence of many celebrities and online celebrity, a pink hoodie became a phenomenal explosion at that time. Once it was launched, it was immediately sold out, and more than 10,000 people lined up on the waiting list for goods that month.

In addition to permanent products such as hoodies and beauty bags, it also includes limited edition slippers, socks, handbags, key chains and so on. At the end of 2023, Glossier even introduced a pepper grinder (brand You Eau de Parfum perfume contains pepper) and a mini microphone.

Youth To The People ("YTTP"), an American sustainable vegan skin care and lifestyle brand acquired by L ‘Oré al at the end of 2021, directly opened up clothing categories in categories, juxtaposed with skin care and body care, and currently sells baseball caps, sweaters and T-shirts in official website.

In the report "Byredo Pushes High-grade Jewelry, A New Narrative of" Crowd Brand ",it is also mentioned that Byredo, which is known to China consumers for its fragrance, is more than just a fragrance brand. From leather goods and sunglasses to clothing and home, and then to the launch of high-end jewelry series by the end of 2023, Byredo constantly explores beyond categories and breaks the established cognition of beauty brands.

There are many others. Glow Recipe, the most popular K-beauty skin care brand in North America, launched a hair band suit, which also sells sweaters, headscarves, hats, cosmetic bags and skin care diaries. Like Glossier, Glow Recipe also launched a hoodie in the game of Animal Friends. Supergoop, the best-selling niche sunscreen brand of Sephora in North America! Launch a t-shirt; Flesh Beauty, a makeup brand of Revlon Group, launched a necklace; Bei Lingfei, an old-fashioned make-up, has introduced vests, handbags and other products.

Obviously, in the category of beauty brands, the sales of new products are not the focus of the brand, but the resulting attention and social sensation.

After all, cosmetics or skin care products rubbed on the face are usually difficult to identify the brand, but in the millennial generation or the Z generation, exquisite small items such as clothes, hair accessories and mobile phone cases with brand logos shared by selfies can help brands to show their faces to the greatest extent.

02

The new category era of beauty cosmetics

Brand first, then category.

In the past, when we talked about the expansion of beauty categories, we still couldn’t jump out of the circle of "beauty", whether it was the make-up brand that produced skin care or the skin care brand that produced fragrance-categories still revolved around beauty.

This logic is easy to understand. Make-up, skin care and fragrance are traditional beauty categories. The mutual category expansion will not dilute the brand value, and on the basis of the original brand customer base, it can achieve the reach of new consumers with lower cost and faster trial and error. Therefore, it can be seen that whether M·A·C launched the skincare line or Charlotte Tilbury launched the first perfume series, the new category was added without affecting the tonality of the original brand.

In the past many years, the shelf thinking of supermarkets or department stores has greatly restricted the brand’s imagination of categories.

In an era when supermarkets, department stores, collective stores and franchise stores are the mainstream of shopping, the logic of shopping is "people look for goods", that is, when they arrive at the store, they can find their favorite goods through slow comparison in the process of shopping. Often, consumers have to go to different floors and different partitions of the store to get what they want. Therefore, there are artificial categories such as fresh food, home, electronics and beauty.

It can be said that the traditional way of selling shelves stipulates the attributes of categories and invisibly locks the boundaries of categories. It allows the founders of traditional beauty brands to first establish the general impression and framework of categories in their minds, and then further build brands around products.

However, at a time when the media environment and consumption habits are different from those in the shelf age, the thinking of brand building must be "brand first, then category".

Nowadays, the shopping channels are extremely prosperous, and the categories of goods are extremely rich. The logic of shopping is "looking for goods" or "people and goods go in both directions". Therefore, how to "find people (let the brand be seen by the target consumers to the maximum extent, and promote the desire to buy), touch people and introduce people to the door" is the key.

When a consumer’s home to buy cosmetics is no longer an offline channel, one thing in his mind is that he will no longer have the impression of offline shelves, and the other is that he will not classify brands in strict accordance with shelf thinking-which also means that these cutting-edge brands born in the era of mobile internet can take brand building as the first priority and are not bound by traditional beauty thinking.

As Marie Suter, deputy creative director of Glossier, once said: "For us, branding is no longer just about labeling something-this is the way of thinking of traditional commodity categories. For those brands that want to bridge the gap between beauty and lifestyle, the product category is gaining new meaning. "

The Rhode brand team also said in an interview that the success of the brand is attributed to "the unconventional beauty background of the founders and the team, which means that they may be more subversive and shape the brand in new ways, including products and marketing." This means that Rhode’s decision does not follow the development path of traditional beauty brands, but is based on market data and consumer insight. The brand has no preconceived concept about "what kind of products should be released".

From the two rows of figurative products listed on the shelves before, they only meet the functional value or experience value; Up to now, through richer online and offline display, exposure and content touch, a "narrative picture" about brand past lives has been constructed in consumers’ minds-beauty may enter a new category era.

03

"Pond" Ecology of Self-built Brand

When the category is given priority, a brand must focus on sales, thinking about how to explode the product; When the brand is given priority, the focus of a brand will not leave sales, but it must be driven by brand building and sales.

If we use natural analogy, the former is more like asking for water from the sky, and the abundance of rain (flow) depends on the sky (platform) for charity; The latter is a self-built small pond ecology. Although it is small, the water source (self-built channel) is stable, the ecology (community) is lively, the residents (fans) are stable and the business is sustainable.

A good brand "pond" ecology needs the following factors:

■ The first is the strong control of sales and publicity channels.

The broken-wall brands mentioned above are almost all DTC beauty brands born online. Compared with traditional brands with thousands of online channels, they can easily deliver all kinds of goods with social media as the tipping point and DTC official website as the sales channel.

"We set our own rhythm. When a large part of your business is carried out through direct channels, and you have spent many years establishing contact with many people, and you have your own’ community’ of the brand, you can launch any product at the time you want and in the way you want. " Ben Gorham, founder of Byredo brand, once said this.

■ The second is the control of consumer demand.

Selling goods is a process, not an end. The purpose of the brand is always to solve the pain points of consumers.

Take the explosion of Rhode’s "lipstick shell" as an example. In many countries in Europe and America, lip balm has become a just-needed product out of love for perfect lip augmentation. Many consumers believe that the design of "Rhode lipstick shell" makes lipstick lovers who rummage through their bags to find it stop being annoyed.

At the same time, with the popularity of the mobile Internet, the explosion of interesting mobile phone case brands such as Casetify and Flaunt is enough to show that the value of mobile phone cases has advanced from practicality and functionality to become an indispensable decorative accessory in the Internet society. The combination of the two accurately cuts the pain points of young people who are keen on the Internet (just the potential customers of Rhode).

The pain point is borderless-even on social media such as Little Red Book and Weibo, the design of "lipstick shell" has almost won overwhelming praise from beauty lovers before Rhode officially entered China.

■ Followed by the construction of community ecology.

Overseas, brands like to talk about the word "community". In China, this word is often translated into "private domain", which has a strong meaning of sales orientation. However, overseas, the word "community" more reflects the brand’s treasure of consumers’ will, and the sense of home that consumers find in the brand.

Lululemon’s operation of the community has been learned by many brands.

Christine Chang, co-founder and CEO of Glow Recipe, once said that the loyal customers of Glow Recipe favored the brand because of the strong "community awareness" of the brand. Loyal fans of the brand firmly believe that they are members of the "Glow" ("Glow" means to glow). They use products, believe in brand value and firmly believe that the brand will get better and better with themselves. Therefore, "wearing sweaters and hats launched by the brand will help to further strengthen the loyalty between themselves and the brand".

■ Finally, the guidance of the brand mission.

For beauty brands, brand spirit is a more metaphysical requirement than brand positioning. It has jumped out of pure business and is influencing consumers, even this society and nature with heavier emotions.

Youth To The People’s launch of clothing is also considered by the brand founders to be a natural thing. "When we launched this brand, it was not just a specific product. As a company, we are thinking about what we can do to embrace all the changes and positive factors that are happening in the world and become a part of it? " In order to implement the brand’s sustainable concept, the brand’s sweatshirt is made of 15 plastic bottles and post-consumption organic cotton (leftover materials from cotton mills or other garment factories).

The brand that breaks the wall of the category hopes to find people who can condense in the brand spirit. "It is easy to find people who like a certain mascara, but are these consumers really connected with the company that makes the mascara? Do they agree with the brand values like their own products? " Marie Suter, deputy creative director of Glossier, said.

It can be seen that with consumers’ consumption demand, spiritual demand, life scene change and interest, cultural preference, etc. as the anchor point, whether it is to launch beauty, clothing, accessories or any products, the purpose is "the same goal", and the ultimate goal is to focus on consumer communication and brand value.

Perhaps in the future, more brands will no longer be beauty brands, but brands that spread beauty.