Modern Shanghai National Cosmetics Industry Research (1910-1937)

Shanghai has gradually developed as the biggest city for commercial trade in China since it opened to outside world in the modern times. And then varieties of goods started to be imported into Shanghai in large quantities, which not only affected people's daily life, but also was a shock to the traditional industry in Shanghai.And the industry of traditional cosmetic was gradually knocked out after the incoming of foreign cosmetics. In the meantime, the foreign cosmetics dominated the market in Shanghai step by step during this process, which made a bigger and bigger loss of money with the increase of input quantity.Combined with the stimulus of Western merchants, some enlightened people noticed the profit in the new-style cosmetic industry, and they started to set up factories, introduced advanced machines,and then produced cosmetics just modeled after the foreign ones by their own. Kwong Sang Hong set up a branch in Shanghai in 1910, which marked the national cosmetic industry started to rise in Shanghai. Subsequently, a batch of the new-style machine-made cosmetic enterprises established there. Among them, China Chemical Works, Family Industry Manufactory and Xiang Ya Company are bigger ones following the Kwong Sang Hong. As the most representative companies in cosmetic at that time, the establishment ofthese four enterprises marked the formal rise of the national cosmetic industry in Shanghai. With the lead of these large enterprises, the national cosmetic industry in Shanghai was under way after the May Fourth Movement in 1919. It had got a further development during the period of the May Fourth Movement to 1927, and achieve prosperity during 1928 to 1937. And it presented different characteristics in the three stages of development. Besides, with the development of the national cosmetic industry, the technical training and the articles about cosmetic making became popular, which reflected the demands of developing the national cosmetic industry.The reason why the national cosmetic industry got a great development in Shanghai mattered with the trends of thought and the inprovement. A serious of social trends of thought such as economic rights concept, the ideal of saving the country with industry and promoting home-made products gave a strong promotion to the development of the industry. In addition, in order to promote the development of the industry, those enterprises took a lot of measures:Firstly, improve the quality of products by researching and exploiting raw materials, updating technology and equipment, and cultivating and introducing professionals; Secondly, evangelize the products through ads especially the national-goods-ads and taking part in a variety of exhibitions, so that upgrading the enterprises'reputation and popularity; Thirdly, lots of enterprises in the industry combined with each other, and founded Cosmetic Guild, making contributions for the development of the national cosmetic industry. However, in spite of the achievement of the national cosmetic industry in Shanghai during the period of 1910 to 1937 just as the establishment of a lot of cosmetic enterprises, there were also some problems in the process, such as fake and poor commodities, trademark disputes and other unhealthy competition, which impeded the development of the industry.