Bolian Sheng Achieves Record Valuation Amid Market Downturn with Innovative Hair Transplant Solutions

On June 15, 2022, the “2022 Future Healthcare Top 100 Main List” was released. We are pleased to note that Biliansheng has ranked on the “Innovative Medical Services List” for several consecutive years and has achieved a new valuation high. When it was included in the 2020 “Future Healthcare Top 100,” its valuation stood at only RMB 2 billion. Over the past two years, Biliansheng has doubled its valuation, which now reaches RMB 4.5 billion.

How has “leading” enterprise Biliansheng achieved consecutive annual increases in valuation? Amid a cooling macroeconomic environment, how has it managed to achieve counter-trend revenue growth?

According to statistics from iiMedia Research, China had approximately 250 million people suffering from hair loss in 2019. With changing lifestyles and increasing stress levels, hair loss has shown a clear trend toward affecting younger individuals, with about 60% of people experiencing hair loss by the age of 25. Younger demographics have now become the primary consumer group for hair transplant procedures.

As the population troubled by hair loss continues to grow, the hair transplant market is also ushering in vast growth potential. From 2016 to 2020, the market size of hair transplant medical services in China increased from RMB 5.8 billion to RMB 13.4 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.3%, achieving rapid growth. According to Frost & Sullivan’s forecasts,By 2030, the market size of hair transplant medical services in China is expected to reach RMB 75.6 billion.

Although the market is large, hair transplantation itself still faces certain pain points and challenges. The first is consumer privacy. Ensuring that privacy is not compromised and that signs of hair transplantation are not detectable is a key demand among younger consumers for hair restoration procedures.

In response, Biliansheng pioneered technological innovations and safeguards. In August 2020, Biliansheng launched its non-shaving hair transplantation technique for the first time. This technology truly enables long-hair extraction and long-hair implantation. The entire process of extraction and implantation is performed without shaving, allowing patients to see the final results on the day of surgery. This approach avoids the short-term impact on personal appearance associated with traditional shaving-based hair transplantation, meeting consumers’ needs for privacy protection and rapid aesthetic improvement.

According to Biliansheng,To date, Biliansheng has completed over 20,000 no-shave hair transplant procedures, accounting for more than 90% of all such procedures performed across the industry. The no-shave hair transplant technique has become a key competitive moat underpinning Biliansheng’s brand advantage within the industry.

In fact, no-shave hair transplant technology has been around for a long time, but currently, very few hair transplant institutions in China can truly apply it proficiently. The barrier lies not only in the technology itself but also in whether there are many surgeons with mature operational experience.

Currently,Bilian Sheng has assembled an experienced medical and nursing team, comprising over 100 hands-on hair transplant physicians and more than 800 professional medical staff.Among them, attending physicians account for over 60%, with 10 being chief or associate chief physicians.This is relatively rare in the hair transplant industry, and even in the medical aesthetics industry.

Biliansheng has also made significant efforts in attracting, selecting, and cultivating talent. First, Biliansheng has established rigorous recruitment and selection systems along with professional assessment protocols to ensure that every physician holds compliant qualifications and certifications issued by the state.

Secondly, Biliansheng has established a mature training system, such as the physician mentorship model. The company has assigned medical mentors across its seven major regions, all of whom are highly qualified and experienced physicians. New hires enhance their technical skills under their guidance and instruction. Finally, Biliansheng has developed a comprehensive professional development framework for physicians, helping them build personal IP brands through patent applications, academic paper publications, media coverage, and new media promotion.

In terms of technological R&D, Biliansheng is continuously increasing its R&D expenditure and encouraging physicians to innovate techniques, with a particular focus on the development of non-shaven hair transplantation technology, which currently stands as the company’s key priority in technical research. Furthermore, Biliansheng ensures the advancement of technological R&D through institutional innovation; it has appointed medical technology leaders at the level of Chief or Associate Chief Physicians across its seven major regions and established R&D teams centered around these experts. Finally, Biliansheng is also strengthening its efforts in intellectual property protection and patent applications to further consolidate its technological advantages in the field of non-shaven hair transplantation.

From 2021 to 2022, the transaction volume of China’s hair care market grew at a rate of 28.7%, reaching a scale of RMB 40 billion for the hair care and related industries. Due to the inherently low repurchase rate of hair transplant services, coupled with the continuously rising consumer demand for hair maintenance, medical hair care services have gained traction within the hair transplant industry in recent years.

To this end, in late 2020, Biliansheng officially launched Lian Zhuren, a wholly-owned independent brand dedicated to the hair care and maintenance market.“Medical Hair Care” is the key distinction between Director Lian’s approach and traditional hair care.Traditional hair care improves hair health through a "nourishment-over-treatment" approach, focusing on maintenance and conditioning, but it does not address issues from a medical perspective.

Director Lian, while emphasizing the importance of maintenance, places greater stress on the rigor and professionalism of medical treatment. She advocates integrating maintenance with therapy, combining pharmaceuticals with medical devices, and linking scalp treatments with dermal layer therapies. By proceeding from the surface to the deeper layers and from superficial to profound levels, she provides clients with multi-level, multi-dimensional, full-cycle medical hair growth management solutions.

In terms of treatment approaches, traditional hair care institutions focus on scalp maintenance and cleansing the epidermal layer of the scalp, addressing only superficial and symptomatic issues. In contrast, Director Lian prioritizes the treatment of hair follicles, employing medical methods to resolve the underlying problems affecting hair health.

At the service personnel level, traditional hair care institutions typically rely on hair care specialists, who can begin work after receiving only short-term training from the salon, with no medical qualifications required. In contrast, Director Lian has assembled a team of experienced nurses, all of whom hold compliant medical credentials, thereby providing users with medical services.

Since the launch of Director Lian’s brand, its professional services have gained widespread recognition among consumers, with many hair transplant patients transitioning into maintenance care clients. Through private-domain operations and word-of-mouth referrals, a viral dissemination effect has already been achieved.

Compared with 2020,Director Lian’s revenue growth rate reached 100% in 2021.. Meanwhile, Director Lian's revenueIts share of Biliansheng’s total revenue has also been increasing year by year, currently reaching 20%.In the future, Director Lian’s business share at Biliansheng will continue to increase, with significant market potential.

On June 10, 2021, the National Health Commission, together with seven other ministries and commissions, jointly issued the "Work Plan for Special Campaign to Crack Down on Illegal Medical Aesthetic Services," signaling intensified efforts to rectify non-compliant medical institutions and chaotic industry practices. Market preference is expected to shift toward leading hair transplant institutions, further increasing industry concentration.

As a widely recognized industry leader, Biliansheng believesEffective and orderly internal management, coupled with refined and precise services, serves as the guarantee for compliant operations.In terms of business model, Biliansheng adopts a direct-operated “one city, one clinic” model and has established direct-operated institutions in 38 cities across China. All branch clinics of Biliansheng, from site selection to renovation, are uniformly managed by the group’s headquarters.

Currently, Biliansheng has established a standardized brand system, operational framework, training program, patient journey protocol, and service standards. All clinics across China maintain a consistent visual identity, while receptionists, consultants, and medical staff undergo unified training. Every branch nationwide adheres to uniform management standards, ensuring that patients throughout China receive consistently high-quality services.

There is substantial market demand across the entire hair transplant industry chain. In the future, Biliansheng will continue to increase R&D investment, improve its service system, expand its network of directly operated hospitals, and develop proprietary branded products. By deepening its industry footprint, strengthening the integration of upstream and downstream resources, and seamlessly connecting online and offline channels, the company aims to build a closed-loop ecosystem for the hair health industry that integrates hair transplantation, hair care, and hair stabilization.

Furthermore, Biliansheng will further penetrate lower-tier markets by expanding into third- and fourth-tier cities, thereby completing its strategic layout of “100 stores in 100 cities.” Meanwhile, the company will increase its investment in the hair care sector, aiming to establish “Director Lian” as a highly influential brand in the industry and build a scalable chain of hair care clinics.

Yulina, founder of Biliansheng, stated“The pandemic has brought many uncertainties to the development of Biliansheng. However, the outbreak allowed us to pause and reflect, which is invaluable. During this period, we undertook another round of corporate reform, making significant adjustments to our organizational structure, innovating the hospital director responsibility system, and advancing digital intelligence. Meanwhile, Biliansheng established an Operations Center to implement a three-pronged approach: empowering individual hospitals, driving decisions with data, and leveraging headquarters’ support. This reform has propelled Biliansheng forward in management, performance, and digitalization.”

The hair transplant industry’s evolution from relative obscurity to its current status as a hot-button topic in public discourse has been driven by the collective efforts and breakthroughs of the entire sector. As a leading enterprise, Biliansheng will continue to leverage its competitive advantages to steer industry development. Specifically, the company will uphold regulatory compliance as a fundamental baseline, fortify its technological moat, explore scalable business models, advance its strategic initiative to deepen market penetration into lower-tier cities, and steadily progress toward its initial public offering (IPO), thereby contributing to the hair transplant industry’s early achievement of a trillion-yuan market valuation.