BEIJING -
Chinese startup Yuemei.com, a leading
online marketplace for cosmetic surgery, announced on Thursday it will open ten
brick-and-mortar surgery centers by 2017.
It is the
first Chinese online medical beauty service provider to make a foray into
offline business.
The move
was spurred by growing demand from affluent Chinese who are increasingly
image-conscious and more willing than ever to pay for sexier lips, thinner
faces and whiter teeth.
China's
plastic surgery and beauty market stands at about 500 billion yuan ($77.16
billion) by the end of 2015 and is expected to reach 850 billion yuan by 2018,
according to an industrial report.
Yuemei.com,
which offers patients seeking plastic surgeons with local listings, prices and
profile pages for registered practitioners, saw its orders and revenue rising
by about 50 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with Q4 2015,
according to Xiang Xiaoqin, founder and CEO with Yuemei.com.
Investors
are also spotting the opportunity to make a pretty penny from this growing
market. Yuemei.com has just secured its series B funding worth 110 million
yuan, according to Xiang.
The main
problem facing China's cosmetic surgery industry are nontransparent costs and
lack of trust on quality. Many Chinese customers instead go to nearby South
Korea, which is well known for its plastic surgery, said Zhang Bin, head of
Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics.
"The
market needs a change more than promotion and advertisement, and combination of
online consulting and review rating with offline services will help improve
service transparency and quality and reduce patients' costs," Zhang added.
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