On April 29, 2025, the L’Oréal BRANDSTORM 2025 (the Chinese Mainland Finals) was successfully concluded in Shanghai. The Dr.Adonis team, comprised of students Zhang Junhao, Shen Kehan, and Ma Siyuan from the School of Management and Economics (SME), The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen (CUHK-Shenzhen), stood out from many participating teams with their outstanding performance and clinched the national championship. They will represent the Chinese mainland in the global finals to be held in Paris, France. It is worth mentioning that it marks the seventh time that SME students have won the championship in such competitions. Simultaneously, the Tri Y team, comprised of students Ding Panyan, Cui Yuzi, and Deng Mingyu, is also among the top six with a stellar presentation.

The competition (the Chinese mainland division) was reported to have attracted more than 40,000 young talents, with more than 1,000 works solicited. The competition was fierce. This year, it joined hands with L’Oréal’s Consumer Products Division to set up tracks—Tech, Products and Beyond, with a focus on men’s beauty and care to inspire the joint creativity of the young people with L’Oréal’s deep insights and pioneering innovations in the men’s beauty market.

Dr.Adonis Team

DARKLION, an innovative product proposed by the Dr.Adonis team, is an intelligent home hair dyeing device for male consumers aged 30 to 50 with dual functions of “white hair covering + anti-hair loss care.” This product aims to break the existing barriers in the hair dyeing market, which is so dominated by women’s needs that it ignores men’s hair care needs. BladeBridge, a men’s exclusive intelligent skin care device created by the Tri Y team, featuring “Shave-Detect-Care” integration, is committed to bringing an unprecedentedly efficient skin care experience to male users.

Instructor’s Comments

Professor So Lai Man (Stella)

Associate Professor, SME, CUHK-Shenzhen

Professor So Lai Man (Stella) highly praised the tenacity and dedication of the participating students from the two teams. In preparation for this competition, the team members worked so hard. They polished their plans through high-density drills, optimized the presentation frame by frame, and finally condensed their complex business plans into a highly contagious five-minute stage narrative.

The key to the teams’ victory lies in its dual breakthrough of “accurate demand insight + technology empowerment.” Based on the male market, the focus of the competition, the students conducted in-depth research to explore the pains yet to be addressed in the male group and creatively proposed AI technology-driven solutions, creative enough to closely match L’Oreal’s brand proposition and feasible enough to be commercialized in practice. Such “solutions based on real consumer scenarios” are particularly rare, fully reflecting the combination of theory and practice.

For future contestants, the professor proposed the following key suggestions:

First, find partners with matching values and complementary capabilities, and keep in mind that collaborative understanding is the basis for breaking barriers;

Second, cultivate a keen observation of consumer market dynamics and select a track that is closely integrated with your own interests; 

Third, given the long cycle and high intensity of the business competition, only inner passion can support a team to continue to invest and enjoy the process.