MG Mask led China's mask market at 26%. It stopped innovating and lost 90% of its sales.

MG Mask was founded in 2003 and built China's sheet-mask category. Its slogan — "停下来，享受美丽", stop and enjoy beauty — was everywhere; by 2007 it was the top-selling mask in Watsons, and at its 2012 peak it held 26.4 percent of the Chinese market with sales of 1.35 billion yuan. In 2010 it became the first domestic mask brand to list, on the Hong Kong exchange. It was, by any measure, the category's king.

In 2013 L'Oréal paid HK$6.538 billion to buy it outright — at the time one of the most expensive Chinese beauty acquisitions ever — and took it private in 2014. The giant invested: a dedicated mask research centre, and in 2015 a brand redesign by the Japanese designer Kenya Hara. None of it held. By 2016 MG Mask's sales had fallen to under 200 million yuan, down 90 percent from 2012. The mask market around it was growing; MG Mask was shrinking inside it.

The retreat became a rout. In 2018 MG Mask pulled out of Watsons, the chain that had made it, to focus on e-commerce. L'Oréal eventually wrote the brand down by 213 million euros — about 1.58 billion yuan — an admission that what it had paid for had largely evaporated. Newer domestic brands, built on social commerce and faster product cycles, had taken the share MG Mask once owned.

In October 2024 MG Mask announced it would close its official online stores; by the end of the month its Tmall, JD and Douyin shops could no longer be found. L'Oréal said consumers could still buy it offline, in a dozen channels. The brand that had defined a category in China was reduced to a clearance of its remaining shelves. Its slogan, in the end, described the company rather than the customer: it had stopped.