Zhang, who once worked as an overseas shipping agent while studying abroad, is now taking his own brand global — a "reverse export", as he describes it.

"Not long ago, we were chasing international brands. Now they're studying our ingredient lists. This upstairs-downstairs model lets us integrate resources, test quickly, iterate quickly and innovate quickly," he said.

But how do brands know whether their products truly deliver results to end consumers?

Inside the same building, Yiwei Testing & Evaluation provides one-stop services from formulation design and consumer insights to efficacy verification and sensory evaluation.

For example, advanced sensory evaluation technologies help address a major industry challenge — the heavy reliance on subjective human perception in assessing product texture and makeup performance, which makes it difficult to quantify results, said Li Mingyuan, founder and CEO of Yiwei.

"Objective, quantifiable assessments of usage experience are provided by trained panelists. These sensory data can then be modeled with rheology, consumer behavior preferences and other indicators to generate measurable feedback," Li said.