Menard spent 30 years building 200 China counters — then decided it couldn't compete

Menard, a Japanese mid-to-high-end skincare brand, entered China in 1994 by establishing Suzhou Baimei Cosmetics with a local factory. By 2006 it reached its peak with over 200 counters across 60 Chinese cities, and its beauty business recorded ¥28.8 billion in sales in 2015.

From around 2020, Menard's China operations went silent. Its official Weibo was last updated in 2020. The WeChat account's final post was December 2024. Xiaohongshu carried fewer than 40 promotional posts in total. The last new product registrations with China's drug regulator were filed in July 2023. The brand had no Douyin presence, no livestream capability, and no KOL engagement — the very channels that powered Chinese domestic brands.

By 2025, Menard's China sales had approximately halved from peak. Counter withdrawals began in mid-2024 from Sephora channels. In February 2025, customer service confirmed the brand was fully withdrawing from China. The Suzhou factory had already stopped production. The Japanese parent company's stated reason was that the Chinese market had become too difficult to operate in. The WeChat mini-program store was scheduled to close on August 25, 2025.

With no digital presence or new products, it lost visibility and relevance, so HQ chose to exit rather than rebuild, closing 200 counters by 2025.

Menard stopped marketing in 2020 — no digital presence means no visibility in a social-commerce-driven market

Product innovation for China ceased in mid-2023, starving the brand of new stories to tell

HQ decided to exit rather than invest the resources needed to rebuild, making the withdrawal self-fulfilling

A brand that stops investing in marketing in China has already decided to leave — the exit just takes five years to execute.

Menard's Tmall flagship store remained open online after the physical exit, but the WeChat mini-program store closed on August 25, 2025. The Suzhou factory stopped production and the China headquarters operation was wound down. The withdrawal was cited as emblematic of Japanese beauty brands' structural retreat from China in 2024–2025.