Pingdu, a county-level city in Shandong province, earned its title as the “city of false lashes” after adopting South Korean eyelash manufacturing techniques in the 1970s. Today, the city is home to more than 5,000 enterprises in the sector, nearly 20,000 processing facilities, and a workforce of more than 60,000 people. Its annual output value exceeds CNY10 billion and Pingdu commands over 70% of the global false lash market share. “In Pingdu, you can find any type of eyelash you could want,” said Dong Bing, Vice President of the Pingdu Beauty Eyelash Association. The city handles everything from design and production to packaging and shipping for over 10,000 varieties of eyelashes, spanning different styles, materials, and curvatures.
As consumers demand more natural, convenient, and comfortable lash-wearing experiences, a revolution in beauty technology is taking shape. Cheng Ting, Founder of the Dream Deer brand and a pioneer in the industry’s e-commerce sector in Pingdu, witnessed the early “photo studio style” era of false eyelashes and helped shift the product toward everyday use. “We introduced tapered lash styles, turning false lashes into an easy-to-use daily essential for every girl,” she said. Beyond style innovation, Cheng and her team tackled three major sticking points in the industry: unnatural appearance, cumbersome application, and wastefulness. “Our idea to assemble false lashes segment by segment came from the way houses are built with bricks,” Cheng said.
After extensive research and analysis of diverse eye shapes, the team found that a three-section design offers the most versatile fit, suiting round, almond, and mono-lid eyes alike. To simplify application, Cheng proposed integrating adhesive directly into the lash product. This idea came with hurdles, especially around the adhesive formula, which needed to be neither too rigid nor too soft. After testing countless formulations and running thousands of trials, the team finally developed a compound that struck the perfect balance between adhesion and stability.
Additionally, to solve the problem of traditional hot-melt techniques making lashes prone to tearing, the team experimented with using thread as a replacement. “We even gave a single hair strand to our thread craftsmen and asked them to make the thread finer than that,” Cheng said. After thousands of attempts, a craftsman succeeded in stabilizing the thread diameter at 0.03 millimeters, finer yet stronger than a human hair. The industry’s advancement relies not just on innovative product designs but on breakthroughs in core materials. The local government has strategically worked to attract upstream raw material companies to Pingdu. “In the early days, most high-end materials were imported,” said Zheng Wei of one materials company. To change this, the company’s research focused on three challenges: reducing fiber diameter from the industry standard of 0.05 mm to 0.03 mm; developing anti-rebound technology to keep lash curvature intact even after exposure to high temperatures and ultraviolet rays during international shipping; and blending the softness of imported materials with the sturdiness of domestic ones for a perfect balance. While manufacturing forms the backbone of Pingdu’s success, e-commerce has become its gateway to the world, quickly responding to consumer trends, and launching new products every week, the China Daily reports.
