On December 30, 2025, amid the ceremonial ringing of gongs at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, our partner Forest Cabin also marked its public listing.

GenBridge team first met Mr. Sun, the founder of Forest Cabin, in 2019, and witnessed the company weather the challenges of the pandemic with remarkable resilience and perseverance. In 2024, we invited Mr. Sun to our annual founders’ gathering, where we quickly found strong alignment and became close partners working side by side.

We believe that through more than a decade of deep focus on camellia as its core ingredient, the creation of a hero essence oil product, and the expansion of a directly operated offline retail network, Forest Cabin has built strong user loyalty and brand recognition.

In 2014, Forest Cabin officially launched its Camellia Essence Oil. Centered on extracts from locally sourced Chinese camellia, the product pioneered a differentiated “oil-based skincare” approach. Since its launch, it has sold over 45 million bottles cumulatively and has ranked first in sales within China’s facial essence oil category for 11 consecutive years.

At GenBridge Capital’s 2025 Portfolios Annual Gathering, Forest Cabin founder Sun Laichun shared that for more than a decade, the company has focused on a single core question: how to enable oil-based skincare to truly address users’ needs for anti-aging and refined skin texture, while reducing the burden of use.

In this process, Forest Cabin chose to “fully master one point first,” building user trust through a single-product strategy. Through continuous dialogue with users, the company repeatedly iterated around the core pain point of “making essence oil non-greasy,” advancing from enzymatic processing and fermentation to molecular weight optimization and sebum compatibility, steadily bringing both experience and efficacy closer to users’ ideal expectations.

As the only company in China’s facial essence oil market to achieve full value-chain integration of its core ingredients, Forest Cabin developed its proprietary core complex “Qingxuan Extract” based on camellia seed oil and camellia flower/leaf extracts. Combined with biotechnology and patented processes, the company has built end-to-end barriers spanning raw material cultivation through product R&D and manufacturing.

On the raw material front, since 2012 Forest Cabin has focused on discovering natural ingredients with distinct Chinese characteristics, specifically high-altitude red camellia grown in China.

In R&D, Forest Cabin has accumulated a total of 86 patents, including 46 invention patents, covering key areas such as camellia ingredient extraction, formulation systems, and anti-wrinkle repair technologies.

Across the industrial chain, Forest Cabin has established partnerships with numerous high-quality upstream and downstream suppliers of Chinese raw materials and packaging. Its carbon-neutral R&D and intelligent manufacturing base, built with an investment of nearly RMB 300 million, commenced operations last year and will continue to generate more innovative concepts and products.

In terms of channel strategy, Forest Cabin has gradually established a differentiated development model characterized by “steady offline growth and rapid online expansion.”

In its early years, Forest Cabin focused on establishing strong consumer mindshare around essence oils, gradually becoming synonymous with the premium essence oil category. In recent years, centered on camellia as its core ingredient, the company has continued to deepen a “user-oriented agile innovation system,” building multiple category matrices.

For example, the “Little Gold Beads Bouncy Water,” which sold out rapidly upon launch this year, originated from the team’s clear breakdown of user pain points and careful selection of technical pathways. The result was a differentiated product combining the light, refreshing texture of water with the efficacy of essence and cream, representing a form of systematic innovation.

In 2025, GenBridge Capital’s post-investment value creation team co-created two strategic workshops with the company, identifying “Little Gold Pearl” lotion as Forest Cabin’s next “hero product” and injecting strong momentum into the company’s continued growth.

From 2022 to 2024, Forest Cabin’s revenue increased steadily, reaching RMB 691 million, RMB 805 million, and RMB 1.21 billion respectively; in the first half of 2025, revenue surged 98.3% year-on-year to RMB 1.052 billion.

Behind this high-growth trajectory lies sustained insight into user needs, deep investment in product R&D and supply chain development, active exploration of channel expansion, and long-term commitment to brand mindshare.

We are seeing premium domestic brands earn increasing recognition and affection from consumers. As a benchmark for China’s homegrown skincare brands, we look forward to accompanying Forest Cabin on its journey from “China’s camellia” to “Forest Cabin of the world.”