Florasis's 'apology' dodged the price row — and the public got angrier

On 10 September 2023, during a livestream, beauty influencer Li Jiaqi pushed back at a viewer's complaint about the price of a Florasis eyebrow pencil with '79元哪里贵了' (what's so expensive about 79 yuan). The remark ignited a debate: worked out per gram, the pencil came to about 985.71 yuan — 'more expensive than gold' — and the brand became a target of the online crowd.

Florasis stayed silent for nine days. On 19 September it finally posted a statement on Weibo titled 《一封信》('A Letter') — deliberately not an 'apology letter'. Its only apology was for not speaking up in time, not for the incident itself. The letter never mentioned the eyebrow-pencil price controversy, gave no concrete plan for change, and roughly half of it was brand story built around one idea: 'we are a domestic brand (国货)'.

The promised compensation only added to the irritation. In a separate post, Florasis ran a prize draw — 100 gift-box sets and 10,000 eyebrow pencils — that required a repost to enter, with the pencils released in instalments. Many read it as promotion dressed up as apology rather than a genuine gesture.

The public rejected the letter outright. '花西子道歉不够真诚' (Florasis's apology is insincere) and '花西子公关部或集体离职' (Florasis PR team may have resigned en masse) both trended, and reports said daily sales briefly collapsed to about a tenth of normal. The episode became a textbook case of how a non-apology can make a brand crisis worse.