Joy Group Makes Strides Towards Goal to Be the L'Oréal of China

When former consumer investor Allan Liu started his beauty company Joy Group in 2016, he had only one thing on his mind: to be the L'Oréal of China.

- Amanda Chai

The China-born 37-year-old seems to be on track. After all, he has got the sales revenue and global expansion down pat.

Joy Group's two flagship brands and C-beauty favorites Joocyee and Judydoll are opening their first international stores in Singapore in July and October respectively.

The group's total sales in the 2024 fiscal year exceeded US$580 million (S$746 million), with annual revenue reaching US$483 million, representing a year-on-year growth of 36 per cent.

Following in the footsteps of beauty giants before it, Joy Group acquired French haircare brand Rene Furterer's China operations and Chinese skincare brand Biophyto Genesis in 2024 and 2025 respectively — adding new verticals to the conglomerate.

Mr. Liu may not have been a beauty lover himself, but the group chairman and chief executive — who studied electrical engineering at Nanyang Technological University and completed an MBA at Insead Singapore — had keenly noticed a gap in the market.

While working in consumer investment, he saw many competitive Chinese brands in other markets like shoes and sportswear.

But in cosmetics, it was clear then that Chinese products still lagged behind Western brands, says Mr. Liu, who spent four years at global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group as a project leader.

"Every key market had a dominant player — Estée Lauder in America, Shiseido in Japan, Amorepacific in Korea. But in China, for a very long time, our products were sub-optimal in quality and not attractive or inspirational to consumers.

"There was huge room in bringing Chinese brands to a world-class quality and removing the 'made in China' taboo."

BUILDING TRUST