While last April marked Indonesian beauty box startup Lolabox’s first anniversary, only one month later the startup faces a more somber occasion: it just announced that it has sent out its last box to customers.
Lolabox currently has 7,000 subscribers, 60 beauty brand partners, and has sent out more than 30,000 beauty boxes to date. While those numbers look decent, the beauty box industry is no walk in the park. Among other challenges, many companies that sell subscription sample bundles struggle with growth due to the limited supply of product samples from brands.
See: Beauty boxes, a once great ecommerce trend in Asia, has unraveled
Lolabox was co-founded by Rocket Internet alumni Christian Sutardi and Cynthia Chaerunnisa. The startup received a seed investment from local VC Grupara last year.
Other beauty box startups in Indonesia have faced similar bottlenecks and have changed their business models in order to survive. BeautyTreats and Vanity Trove no longer sell beauty boxes in Indonesia, and have pivoted towards traditional ecommerce. First Blush, another beauty box startup, shut down earlier this year.
Editing by Josh Horwitz and Steven Millward
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