7x GMV growth in 1 year: How Indonesian cosmetics e-tailer Sociolla did it

Sociolla, the leading Indonesian ecommerce platform dedicated to beauty and personal care products, gained significant ground in the past year – and then some.

“We had fantastic growth in 2018,” says co-founder and CEO John Rasjid. Despite the existence of giant online marketplaces, Sociolla has found a niche serving cosmetics consumers through a blend of ecommerce and content – both in-house and user-generated.

A Sociolla pop-up store in Jakarta / Photo credit: Sociolla

According to Rasjid, Sociolla’s gross merchandise value (GMV) between Q1 2018 and Q1 2019 grew approximately seven times year-on-year. For 2019 overall, they expect to grow at least four times year-on-year.

Conversely, marketing expenses and cost of revenue as a percentage of GMV have gone down. Rasjid declined to comment on Sociolla’s profitability, but because they are a business-to-consumer platform, their take rate can be higher than customer-to-customer marketplaces like Shopee and Tokopedia.

Sociolla, which also operates a media site called Beauty Journal, had a total of 20 million unique visitors overall in 2018.

Rasjid credits the growth to a couple of new developments in Sociolla’s strategy. Since early 2018, the company has branched out into becoming the sole Indonesian distributor (both online and offline) for a number of beauty brands, including Mediheal, a Korean facial mask brand.

(L-R) Sociolla founders John Rasjid, Chrisanti Indiana, and Christopher Madiam / Photo credit: Sociolla

But a key strategy is a new push into content through Sociolla Connect or Soco, a social networking platform where users can create and publish written and video content, as well as write reviews for beauty products.

First announced in mid-2018 along with a US$12 million funding round led by EV Growth, Soco has featured close to 1 million product reviews of almost 30,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) – including products not sold on Sociolla.

“From the user perspective, Soco allows people to look at each other and get relevant information based on their profiles,” Rasjid says. “A place where they can discover a lot of different new products coming in, new trends. And while we have in-house content production, the biggest provider [of this information] is user-generated content.”

Why more people can – and should – be a beauty influencer

The user journey of beauty customers typically starts with reading product reviews and watching do-it-yourself video tutorials before following beauty influencers, usually on platforms like Instagram. Through the latter, users could discover anything from the latest brands to the best technique for applying eyeliner.

Once users are convinced of a particular product, they would then make the purchase, before being compelled to write a product review of their own – thus restarting the loop.

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