(CNN) — There’s a reason why Rihanna is a billionaire. She’s a business mogul in every sense of the word: In addition to her prolific music career, she’s launched successful brands, including her Fenty Beauty cosmetics empire (worth an estimated $2.8 billion according to Forbes) and her Savage X lingerie brand.
Its recent move into China to promote makeup products is a masterclass in how to tap into the lucrative, mostly online, Gen Z market.
This Tuesday night, the chart-topping singer attended a Fenty Beauty pop-up event held at the Museum of Photography in Shanghai. There she showed off her makeup and cooked “jianbing,” a popular Chinese breakfast crepe that costs about a dollar.
Rihanna, dressed head-to-toe in black, cracked an egg, brushed the yolk, sprinkled scallions, dolloped the sauce, and placed a crunchy bun on top of her favorite delicious street food, prepared on a gleaming food truck.
Influential guest makeup bloggers took over the scene and Chinese social media came to life.
“She’s making crepes, but not her new album,” one user on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok, joked, while another wrote on Weibo: “She’s so good at it it’s hard to believe it’s her first time.”
Rihanna is already a beloved star in China and recently appeared on the April cover of Vogue China. She is considered someone who appreciates Chinese culture, and is known for wearing a gorgeous golden yellow design by high fashion designer Guo Pei at the 2015 Chinese-themed Met Gala.
The decision to introduce Jian Ping was a smart one, as he embraced the status of a star among Chinese fans and showed awareness among his fans.
In 2011, Chinese fans dubbed her the “Queen of Shandong”, after her hit song “We Found Love” was phonetically translated as “weifang de ai”, meaning love for the city of Weifang in Shandong Province, eastern China.
Jianping is believed to have originated in the same province more than 2,000 years ago, and for many in China, the 36-year-old’s turn in making the humble crepe was a coming-of-age full-blown moment, with a viral comment on Weibo saying: “She validated her title.” “Chinese” with this verb.
The jianbing buzz added to online chatter about the singer’s appearance earlier that day on Douyin, where she hosted three livestream sessions showcasing lip gloss, blush, and other products from Fenty Beauty.
Rihanna then became the top trending topic on Weibo, where the hashtag #RihannasfirstlivestreaminChina has been viewed more than 81 million times. Another hashtag, #RihannashowsupinShanghai, has been viewed more than 75 million times.
In addition to being a video application, Duane It is a major online shopping platform, where products and discounts are displayed on screen during live streaming and purchases are made with just a swipe or tap. In 2022, there were more than 460 million livestream e-commerce users in mainland China, according to the Council of the Chinese Academy for the Promotion of International Trade, a body under the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing.
Other foreign luxury brands have already organized their own livestream sessions, including Gucci, Dior and Louis Vuitton. China is now the second largest cosmetics market in the world.
Rihanna’s appearance was part of the platform’s broader “618” (or Juneteenth) campaign, one of China’s biggest online shopping events after Singles’ Day in November, which features large-scale promotions starting about a month earlier.
While Fenty Beauty products have been available in the country since 2019, the brand announced in March that it would expand its presence through Sephora stores on the continent. In 2017, the brand launched an unprecedented range of 40 foundation shades, and has since added more. Its enormous profitability has dramatically changed the beauty landscape, with many companies now offering their own, more diverse and comprehensive range of cosmetics.
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