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Jofie Yordan · · 3 min readIndonesia’s Sociolla says it hit profitability in Q1 2024
Sociolla, the Indonesia-based beauty ecommerce firm, achieved EBITDA profitability in the first quarter of this year, CEO and co-founder Christopher Madiam tells us at the ongoing Tech in Asia Conference in Jakarta.
Its revenue also grew by more than 50% year on year in 2024, he adds.
According to Madiam, Sociolla’s business model was sustainable “from the start” with a “positive gross profit margin.”
He also says that the company had “focused on ahead-of-time investments and marketing” instead of “burning money to subsidize the market.”
Sociolla store / Photo credit: Sociolla
An example of such an investment was building an offline store network in Indonesia and Vietnam. Sociolla only had two stores in 2019 but now has 86 in Indonesia and 10 in Vietnam.
“When a new store opens, the numbers can’t be good right away,” Madiam explains. “It takes time for adjustments, learning about customers, stock fulfillment, and inventory in different cities.”
Ultimately, the company’s scaling efforts have shaped a business with revenue larger than its expenses, he adds.
Readjusting in Vietnam
Sociolla first expanded into Vietnam at the end of 2020. Almost four years into its operations in the country, the beauty commerce firm is now making adjustments to its business there.
Although its growth this year in Vietnam is “much higher” than in Indonesia, Madiam says Sociolla is more focused on improving its infrastructure in the country before expanding further, especially relating to product distribution.
“For example, the accuracy of stock levels isn’t right, and the supply isn’t sufficient, so the demand isn’t balanced,” Madiam explains.
As a result, Sociolla won’t be opening new stores in Vietnam, at least for this year. This is in contrast to Indonesia, where around 30 stores have already opened in 2024.
See also: The key players in Indonesia’s beauty commerce space
He also highlighted the imperfect “culture mix” between the teams in Vietnam and Indonesia. Madiam attributes this to the expansion taking place during the pandemic, when his team in Indonesia couldn’t travel to Vietnam and vice versa.
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Sociolla only had two offline stores in 2019 but now has 86 in Indonesia and 10 in Vietnam.
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