Can professional or salon-only products be exported to the China retail market?

Professional or salon-only cosmetics can be exported to the China market, but calling them professional does not create an exemption. If the product is placed on the mainland market—including sale to salons, exclusive professional counters or retail “salon lines”—it still needs ordinary filing or special registration according to its function. Hair dye, perm products and anti-hair-loss tonics remain special cosmetics. Ordinary shampoos and styling products remain ordinary cosmetics.

Published 11 November 2026 · Updated 11 November 2026

How to judge the path

Some hair-dye and perm standards include professional-use warning language. Those warnings are additions, not substitutes for registration.

A product used only inside a foreign salon and never placed on the China market is outside this page. This page concerns China market placement.

Typical documents, tests and labels

Complete the same path you would complete for a retail twin with the same function. Jinshang Testing organizes the compliance work. Testing is coordinated with partner laboratories, and those laboratories issue the reports they perform. After a record is issued, check it on the official NMPA filing query https://hzpba.nmpa.gov.cn/gccx/ and the NMPA data-search page https://datasearch.nmpa.gov.cn/datasearch/home-index.html#category=hzp.

Cautions

Do not use “for professional use only” to justify drug-like peels, lash-growth serums or disinfectant concentrates that are not cosmetics.

Questions we are often asked

Can salons mix an unfiled colour at the back bar?

A colour product placed on the China market still needs the correct hair-dye registration. Back-bar use is not a silent exemption described in the cosmetics marketing rules.

Are salon sizes filed separately from retail sizes?

Different net contents of the same product may be specifications of one record when the identity matches. A different name or formula is a different product.