We opened our Facebook page in August 2013 and have since been operating as an online shop.
Designing Beauty Box's Identity
We came out on a whim. Really... we just thought one night that we wanted to sell makeup. We thought of a few names like, Beauty Central, Beauty Bar, Face Central and Beauty Box.
About 2 hours in conceptualization, we decided to name the store Beauty Box... Only because we thought we would be shipping the items in boxes... which became different when we actually started shipping out and boxes became an issue on the courier's side.
So ... Beauty Box ... and then we started designing the logo and the Facebook Profile. Originally we wanted a more couture-ish, more editorial-ish kind of image, but we realized how intimidating it looked to a regular online shopper... ok...ok we didn't want to look like we were trying too hard to be expensive when we were selling a mix of dupes and originals (lol) so we went for livelier Barbie colors of teal, fuschia, salmon and vermillion.
Here's how our first profile looked.
Obviously it looked a bit gloomy, so we changed it to this... and yes the Barbie colors... Oh and yes we love Daphne Groenveld!
Just this month, we started selling Korean products and so we changed our image into something more KPOP.
As you can see our logo was geometric at the start and it looked too stiff. So we decided to soften the lines and the type face.
The Suppliers
We started out selling dupe MAC Cosmetics from Makeup Art a cosmetics manufacturer in Canada and then we incorporated other brands, like Bobbi Brown and Urban Decay until the manufacturer closed in January 2014.
Immediately after losing the manufacturer, we were lucky to find a supplier that gets Benefit Cosmetics as shelf-pulls from a warehouse in HongKong.
What are 'shelf-pulls'? They could be any of the following:
- 'Overstock' or excess supply of cosmetics that were delivered to the store. The warehouse stocks them up and sells them in auctions. ;
- They could also be stocks with missing product pamphlet or box. ;
- 'Recalled" stocks that have been at the store for more than six months. (which isn't expired but some stores, like, Sephora have a mutual agreement with their suppliers that if the products have been sitting in the shelf for 6 months, they will be recalled) When these products are recalled they are holed out in a warehouse and also sold in auctions.
From our HongKong Supplier, we were able to get Benefit Cosmetics, Dollywink Japan, Korean Cosmetics, like Etude House, Holika Holika, etc.
In February 2014, we found another supplier from a warehouse in L.A. This helped us incorporate Sigma brushes into the picture. The moment we started posting the Sigma Kabuki brushes on our Facebook page, they became an instant hit, the orders just started flooding in.
From that same supplier we also got Ecotools brushes, Burt's Bees, Maybelline Cosmetics, EOS etc.
The Couriers
In August 2014, we shipped our products via LBC. We only had a few customers. Sometimes we'd have 4-5 in a week. It was because the shipping charge was just unreal. At 150 Php (Metro Manila) and 165 Php (Provincial) people were just intimidated by it. LBC is the most trusted courier in the Philippines and as beginners, and that time it was the only courier we knew and trusted.
Later on we found Xend but registering in their website was just too much of a hassle. We tried more than a hundred times to register but to no avail. We were getting an error: Registration failed. Please try again Later.
And then in November 2013, we found Philfox. That time, it was a total lifesaver! They shipped our Metro Manila Parcels for only 40 Php and 98 for our provincial deliveries. They were pretty efficient too sometimes our Metro Manila customers will get their packages delivered in less than 24 hours and our provincial customers got theirs in less than 30 hours.
And then we also learned about BayadPo courier, which we now use as a backup.
And so that sums up our little business history. We don't really have a big plan, so to speak, but we do want to continue doing well. So far there has been a huge improvement in sales and customer feedback, so we must be doing it right. :D
If you have any questions, leave a feedback and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
View our Facebook profile and hit 'LIKE'! click here
Our official e-mail is at lovebeautyboxmanila@gmail.com
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