Inoherb missed the e-commerce window, and its two IPO attempts both ended in withdrawal

Inoherb (相宜本草) was founded in Shanghai in 2000 by 封帅, who came from a medical family. Its herbal skincare products sold mainly through hypermarkets and drugstore chains, and that channel bet paid for a decade: revenue rose from ¥377 million in 2009 to ¥1.335 billion in 2011 — when the KA (hypermarket/drugstore) channel alone accounted for 76% of sales — and peaked at about ¥2.3 billion in 2013, ahead of Proya's ¥1.43 billion that year. In 2012 it ranked ninth in China's skincare market with a 2.1% share.

In 2012 Inoherb filed to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Two years later it voluntarily withdrew, citing a deteriorating KA channel, a penalty from industry and commerce authorities for false advertising, and a falling-out with early investor Capital Today. The timing was fatal: between 2015 and 2020 e-commerce became the industry's leading channel and digitally native brands captured the younger customers. Inoherb had entered Taobao as early as 2007 through agency Liren Lizhuang, but it only took its Tmall flagship in-house in 2020 — a step industry analysts considered years late.

Sales slid to about ¥1.5 billion by 2015, more than 30% below the peak, and the brand aged along with its hypermarket customers. In November 2022 Inoherb signed an IPO tutoring agreement with CICC to try again for an A-share listing. That plan was terminated in 2024: the tutoring process exposed an over-reliance on dealers — a large, scattered distributor network — just as the national cosmetics market contracted for the first time in a decade, with retail sales falling 4.5% in 2022.