Scaling an Influencer Brand Globally: A Beauty Brand Story

00:00 – Simon de Raadt: Welcome to another episode of The EcommOps Podcast. As I’ve been taking over a bit more of the operational work, Dayu actually has been, therefore, allowed to be more engaging with our existing clients and help them scale. One of the recent cases we’re gonna discuss in this episode: it’s actually a Thai brand that has moved the productions to China and is actually targeting the rest of the world. It’s been a great journey. It’s been actually quite amazing what the brand has been able to achieve in the past six months. So tune in for this episode, and we’ll break it down for you. Dayu, it’s been quite a journey the last six months–you being in Thailand, being in the U.S., being in Europe, being back in China.

How is that? You have actually helped the Thai brand to basically go from local to global and change everything they had put into place. What actually have you been working on during these days and helping our existing clients to get where they are currently?

00:57 – Dayu Yang: Thank you, Simon, for also being able to take more responsibility of working with our clients in EcommOps and allowing me some of the time to actually advise on a higher level strategically in a lot of our client brands. And this specific one, I want to give our audience a little bit more of a deep dive on what we’re doing, because it’s not only a Thai brand. It is a Thai brand; however, it is actually a creator-led brand. So, our client is a Thai influencer, primarily focused on a Thai audience.

She has over half a million followers across multiple platforms. And this is really a brand that is all her own. And she actually has influence from both top of the funnel, all the way to the middle, all the way to the production as well. And the reason why she’s letting me share a lot of these details is because it doesn’t matter, because no one can copy it anyways. And this is one of the things that I want the audience to realize, is how a lot of these influencers or creators are actually monetizing these days–it’s not just via shout-outs, but they’re actually creating their own brands.

And that creates a very interesting moat in itself, because you can’t copy her. You can’t copy her funnel because, well, it’s all related to her.

02:23 – Simon de Raadt: You mentioned “creator”–”creator-led brand.” First, before we go into what actually has been happening in the last six months, “creator-led brand”: it was the first thing I heard as well. What does it really mean, then?

02:34 – Dayu Yang: Yeah, so maybe seven to ten years ago, at the time, pretty nascent influencer economy. So, there are a lot of influencers out there, YouTubers, social media models, stars. At the time, they were more monetizing using things like shout-outs or sponsor posts. That was very effective, and, actually, a lot of the audience here probably have used or are currently using or working with influencers to actually produce sponsored posts as a top-of-the-funnel marketing method for their own brand as well.

And that has evolved over time. There are more and more influencers these days, more and more eyeballs that are kind of spread between them as well. And the downside of a sponsored post is that an influencer typically does not have much control over anything else except, you know, literally their own sponsor posts. And what happens is that then a lot of consumers are getting smarter, okay? They know it’s not their product, so there’s not really that innate trust, even if they trust the influencers themselves.

And also, there’s many situations where the product is just not that great or it’s not aligned with the influencer’s brand. And now there’s been, in the last, like, five years or so, there’s been an evolution of how, especially the top influencers or top creators monetize their own traffic. You have things like Kylie Jenner and, you know, Kylie Cosmetics. You have also, this brand is in skincare, so I’m gonna name some skincare brands.

You have Miranda Kerr’s KORA Organics, for example, and then you have, just, Alicia Keys has a brand as well. Rihanna has Fenty, which is skincare and beauty. And this has been a very big boom, and a big part of that is because, one, they’re obviously leveraging their top-of-the-funnel traffic, but two, they’re able to actually affect their long term LTV, their customer trust, customer retention, because they can actually control the entire chain from eyeballs going into their post or their top-of-the-funnel traffic all the way to the actual product development.

Therefore, natural retention of their customers because they actually want to repurchase the product, and they want to purchase more products from that brand.

04:56 – Simon de Raadt: It sounds very easy. I mean, as an influencer, because basically it’s an influencer that has a following, and you’re trying to influence the following to have a certain purchasing behavior. And I think it’s a very logical step as an influencer to say, if I’m doing it for someone else, what would it mean if I would create [my] own product and start to sell and promote my own product? Is it really that easy? Because you and I both know this is a very different space than just promoting something versus getting the production, getting all the supply chain in line.

05:31 – Dayu Yang: That is a great question, and I learned a lot of lessons from my time at EcommOps, working with clients and just being in the ecommerce industry. And it all comes down to a core concept of a brand is not only surface deep. So, the point is, it’s not that easy. It’s not just easy for an influencer to have an idea for a new brand and then launch it and it goes crazy. And there’s actually very big examples of where that did not work. So, probably a lot of folks listening to this probably heard of MrBeast.

If you haven’t, check him out, Google him. He was, he might actually still be one of the biggest YouTube stars right now, YouTube creators. And a few years back, he launched MrBeast Burgers. I actually had one before. It sucked. It was terrible. And what happened was that he had the right idea, okay? Like, MrBeast burgers. If you’re a fan of MrBeast, you’re going to try the burgers. But what happened was that he was working with a partner that was basically operating ghost kitchens. The quality was not controlled. I don’t even know if he actually had much input on the recipes.

And because they’re ghost kitchens, there’s no consistency. So, people are also getting different burgers, too, depending on the locale. He realized that. He basically bashed his own burger line. Like, he basically publicized the fact that he was not happy with his own burgers, and then the partner is suing him. And by this time, I don’t exactly know, like, by the time you hear this, I don’t know where it’s at, but that’s a great example of how not to build a brand, whether it’s a creator-led brand or really any kind of brand. It’s not just about surface-level marketing and branding and just selling whatever, right? And this is something that you see a lot in, like, dropshipping, for example, right? It’s not just about great marketing. It’s about really everything, right? And it includes product quality.

It includes the customer experience. It includes shipping and really every single touch point that you have. And so how we took that lesson was when we first started working with her. So, the product itself is a turmeric-based body scrub based on traditional Thai recipes. In the Thai market it is, or the South Asian market, the angle is it’s supposed to whiten your skin when you use it. 

And actually, international markets, we’re launching there as well–the angle is more around addressing dark spots, because an American female doesn’t care as much about whitening, but they do care about dark spots, or they do care about sun damage. And turmeric has been proven for thousands of years to be effective in addressing those things in a more natural way. When she first came to us with this product, honestly, the product was not that great. Even after she had, already, three or four iterations at the time, it was produced in Thailand. The packaging was not great. It felt like a cheap product.

And I told her, hey, if we’re going to really do this, you have to do a couple things. First, you have to really make the product something that you’re proud of, like a really great product. So, we actually started working, finding her the best factory in China that produces skincare products. They actually produce for companies like Estee Lauder and Dior, right? Then we were working also on her brand as well. At the time, she was a–I would call her, not as much a pure influencer that people actually followed, and rather a little bit more of a social media star. She had a lot of eyeballs. She went viral.

She is 40-something. She looks beautiful and young for her age, and she had TikTok views in the millions. However, I was, like, look, how are you going to actually connect what you’re doing here with the actual product so the brand even makes sense and that it’s related to your own brand and it’s not just because you’re some model selling something random? One of the things that we were actually working on is beyond the surface level of just her being pretty, or attractive, or young. We worked on her brand angles as well. What is her brand story? What is the “why?” of a customer or her follower who would even buy this product?

And we worked in the fact that she’s actually a genius at cooking. So, she has a very strong sense of feeling and smell, and that’s a very, very important driver in how you think about skincare formulations. And then also, she’s 43, and she looks like she’s 28 or actually younger. I always tell her she looks younger, but she looks very, very young for her age. And the reason why is because she takes care of her skin even though she’s actually in the sun.

And once we worked that brand story out, we then connected with, okay, what does that mean actually for the product? Because she is 40-something, she has a high-end kind of appeal to her audience. We realized that she actually targets, or she can actually target, a very high-end type of market, whether it’s in Thailand, around the world, who have money to spend and who can actually spend more money on what can be positioned as a premium product. So that was our original positioning. But to be able to position as a premium brand, you actually need high-end, high quality, premium products.

And we’ll talk more about details there later. However, this is where, as we thought about what makes a great creator-led brand. And I emphasize that this doesn’t have to just do with a creator-led brand. This is any brand out there. You have to think about what is your brand relationship with your customer. It doesn’t have to be premium, but you have to think about it all, every single touch point–whether it’s marketing, whether it is how you speak to your customers, whether it is the product itself, how you deliver.

You have to think about the entire funnel from top to bottom. And this is how you really are able to find that special connection with your customer base, with this brand, and optimize for building a really valuable brand with your customer base.

11:35 – Simon de Raadt: I still think it’s a quite amazing story because basically there’s a Thai influencer, and she has been, almost in her back garden, has been producing, I would say, maybe, mediocre products, but has an audience that loves her because she is really relatable, and I’ve met her a few times; she is very relatable, and she is very outgoing and very hardcore in everything that she does, which is pretty inspiring for her age. And also her life story has been amazing.

We can have a whole podcast about that. But what I find fascinating is finding her in her situation and then you jumping in saying, I think there’s more. I want to help you, and I want to get you to a bigger level also because you also really feel connected to her as a human being. So, I think that story is, for me, still so fascinating. And then where you guys are now in six months’ time, it’s mind blowing, I would say.

12:32 – Dayu Yang: You know, creator or not, at the core of every single business is a person, or it’s people, especially the type of clients and businesses that we work with. We find that the biggest reasons, usually, for their success is that they care–that they’re not just trying to make a dollar. They actually care about their brand. They care about their customers. So, I am talking more of a deep dive on this brand, more because she’s allowing me and basically, like, we can share all the secrets and you can’t steal them anyways because you can’t steal her; you can’t replicate her.

However, this is something that is really nothing that different than what we do already with a lot of our other clients, except we just tend to be more low-key. This is something that, between Simon, you and myself, and I feel very privileged to be working in this industry and supporting some of the best ecomm brands in the world, is that we actually see what is working, what is not working, really all along the entire value chain, from marketing to branding to everything supply chain related, obviously.

And we care a lot about privacy, obviously, so we won’t share any, like, detailed secrets. However, I think both of us, we feel great about providing advice to our clients, and the credit is all to her, by the way. The credit is all to our clients. All I really do is provide the right type of advice. But in this case, and in multiple cases, I’m very thankful for the clients that actually listen to us and actually enact it because this is where, sometimes, you can make fundamental stepwise changes–not just improvements, you know, not just making a little bit more, not just launching a little bit more, but really changing how you might think about something, how you think about running a business.

And I’ll give you a very good example. When she first came to me with this product, it was produced in Thailand. And actually her question was, “can we just import this into China? And then we can leverage China fulfillment. We can ship it around the world.” What a great idea. So, first of all, to the audience, try not to ever import anything into China because that is very complicated, you know, so that is totally not worth it. But that was her. And actually it made a lot of sense. She assumed that that was the right method to be able to access global shipping, right?

However, I was directly like, hey, why don’t we just make this in China? I’m pretty sure there’s better skincare factories in China than Thailand. You know, nothing about Thailand factories, but really, these days, some of the best skincare factories, some of the biggest, most advanced are actually based in China. And she responded, “oh, I didn’t even think that was possible. How do we produce it in China?”

And I was like, okay, let me make some intros and we’ll get it done. And we got it done within just a few months. So, that’s a perfect example of any brand owner is going to know what they know, and I think it is great to always think about optimizations. However, sometimes it is valuable to take a step back and really think about what you’re actually doing in the first place. Like, are there actually different models?

Right? Are there different fulfillment models? Are there different production models? Because of that just one swap, it literally changed everything in terms of the possibilities of the market that she can access. I never tried to ship anything from Thailand to anywhere else, so I have no idea. But I imagine shipping from Thailand to the UK, for example, is probably going to be pretty inefficient.

16:02 – Simon de Raadt: Well, you mentioned basically we know what works and what doesn’t work, and, therefore, we also have built up a network of partners and companies that are actually enabling us, but also our clients, to go to the next level. For her, I think it’s a great showcase, because what else did we do besides us handling the fulfillment? I think there’s far more nuance to that.

16:21 – Dayu Yang: We also introduced her to one of our closest partners, Kanary Solutions–Greg from Kanary Solutions, who actually managed the sourcing process for working with a Chinese factory. And this is actually really, really important. We at EcommOps, we are, I think, the best in China fulfillment. We’re not the best in China factory management. And when you think about your supply chain at that kind of more mature scale, you certainly want to think about it one step at a time, one step in the chain at a time. And how do you optimize for each?

And in this case, because we were launching a new version of what was positioned to be a premium skincare product, we had to find the best: not the cheapest, not the fastest. We had to find the best, the highest quality, and the most premium. And again we found by Greg and Kanary Solutions introduction, we started working with one of the biggest high-end skincare factories–again producing for Estee Lauder, Dior–and I don’t think they would have worked with some random Thai influencer who has this mediocre-looking Thai product without someone who actually makes that introduction and manages that process. 

And that’s where either a sourcing agent, depending on your needs, or obviously, if you have enough scale to have your own sourcing department in China, that is the real value of actually going that route and being able to manage the factory directly versus, for example, just going Alibaba. Don’t do that if you’re trying to build a fully custom premium brand.

18:00 – Simon de Raadt: Yeah, Greg was on a previous episode, so definitely also tune into that one if you want to know more about what he does. But okay, let’s say now you have basically shifted the production from a mediocre to a premium product produced in China. Her audience is still in Thailand. So, then, how does that work? You actually want to scale globally, but you only have a following in Thailand. How do you go from local to global?

18:26 – Dayu Yang: Yeah, so two things there. One is the actual shipping to Thailand, and then two is actually going global, right? So let’s talk about shipping to Thailand first. At first she was sold on producing in China and then, therefore, shipping from China. And our initial plan was actually for the Thailand market. We probably then want to import from China into Thailand and then just fulfill domestically. We were doing some quick calculations, and in a vacuum it seemed like relatively more cost effective but not by that much, right?

However, when we actually started evaluating the process–there’s many other markets out there. The actual import process can be quite complicated. It can take a long time, especially for something that is skincare or health related. And basically there was an indefinite amount of time that we had to wait if we had to–if we wanted to formally import the product in Thailand because we have to go through the Thailand version of the FDA approval.

Whereas being able to actually ship directly from China, even to Thailand, I think the estimate was only maybe, like, $0.50 or a dollar more expensive anyways than if we had local Thailand fulfillment, and it completely skips that bulk import process. Now there’s nothing wrong about it, right? It’s just that there is an existing option for D2C. It’s one of the values of D2C shipping is that small parcels skip the normally very, very extensive, very complicated process of bulk import approvals.

So, even for the Thailand market, we realized it was actually much more efficient just to ship directly from China. We’ve been shipping a lot already, and basically from China to Thailand, it would arrive in an average of five days. So, it’s actually one of the faster markets to actually ship to without any issues at all. No customs, no import issues.

20:21 – Simon de Raadt: Not just for Asia. I mean, I’ve been helping brands import in China before. Some of these brands want to go from China to also [the] Asia market because they saw that as a hub–China or Hong Kong as a hub to go into Asia. Everything you put on your skin or you put in your mouth is subject to some licenses. And these licenses are in less developed countries, more complicated than in more developed countries, and more developed countries are already complicated. So, don’t get me wrong, but it’s actually a much more frustrating process. And it can delay your brand by, not months, but years to get it launched, and if you even have a bad chance, it can get stuck there.

You cannot get there. It’s going to be there, and you’ve invested all your money in that stock. It is a very big hurdle for brands to launch in Asia. But I’m curious, because you’ve been living in Asia for a while–as well, back and forth–and most of our client base is not focused on Asia. There are more in the western market, Europe, U.S., Australia, UK. How does it look like in Asia? How much different is it? Is there actually a difference on the operation itself or in the supply chain?

21:29 – Dayu Yang: Yes, completely, actually. So, the whole method of selling in, well, I’ll just talk about Thailand specifically because it also varies across countries as well. It’s very different. There is very low credit card adoption. The vast majority of sales is either physically cash based, or QR code based, or, like, literally just bank transfers with your bank app, which, by the way, in Asia is much more advanced than, like, the U.S., for example. I still don’t know why in the U.S. it’s so complicated to, like, just use a QR code to make transfers for commerce. But anyways, so that was the processing agent. Actuall, that created an issue for us because she’s not using, like, Shopify.

When we first started this, we were actually working on a separate project. She couldn’t figure out how to get orders to us. They weren’t used to stuff like CSVs, even, right? It was a huge mess. So, one of the things that we actually did, EcommOps working with her, is we realized, okay, there’s a huge opportunity in this. There’s obviously something here, but we need to figure out how to get your orders to our system to even make it work. And that was one of the things that we, from an EcommOps process and development standpoint, we actually created a customized solution working actually with one of our platform partners as well: 29 Next. 29 Next is basically a better replacement, I think, for Shopify. And then we created integration with 29 Next.

So, we actually made it so that for every order coming in, there’s this manual process of getting a QR code and bank transfer. And then they would have the ability to then manually use the platform backend to actually input that order, confirm the pricing, and then pass that order directly to our system. So to our system, it works the same as if you’re connected to something like Shopify. The Thai team, they can then connect the manual process that otherwise wouldn’t be automated at all of the Thai sales process, but still be able to translate that to the right integrations to be able to fulfill from our system.

This brand aside, one insight just generally about different markets sometimes have different types of processes in terms of sales, and, therefore, they require different types of integrations and considerations for how do you get the orders to your 3PL, your fulfillment in the first place, especially if you’re selling to a market that’s not super standard like the U.S., for example, you do want to make sure that you actually understand the nuances of that market and how to make sure that you can actually fulfill efficiently to that market. Now, in some cases, though, you probably don’t want to actually utilize certain sales channels or payment channels. So, for example, in South Asia in general and Thailand included, cash on delivery is very, very popular, especially for lower-end to medium-end products.

We do not support that. And I really suggest that you seriously consider if you want to support that, whether it’s South Asia or East Europe, unless you have deep experience and deep operational ability to do that. However, for us, we were able to say, because her target is more of a premium, high-end market, that they are more willing to make bank transfers, even credit card payments, that we can literally say that we just don’t accept any cash-on-delivery orders. That is going to cut out maybe, like, the lower 70% of the Thai market, but that’s totally fine. Be very specific on the market that you’re targeting.

Optimize for what they’re used to in terms of payment flows, in terms of funnels, in terms of marketing strategy, marketing angles, and then be okay with maybe not accepting certain forms of payments, certain forms of processes. Be okay with pricing out or not being able to serve certain customers as well.

25:14 – Simon de Raadt: Yeah, these are huge differences–and also the pragmatic approach, and what works locally, and how to scale this to something sustainably. The ambition is also to go–to go global. You’re already going global, right? So, is that–how is that transition going also with her thinking of living the life as a Thai and becoming a global citizen, that’s going to be a change for her. But also even targeting a different audience that’s much wider and more complex than her original audience.

25:43 – Dayu Yang: So we’ve gone global already in a surprising way, actually. So all of her 500k or so followers, they are all Thai. All of her content is literally in Thai language. I mean, there’s English here and there, but it’s pretty much Thai. You guys can check her out, by the way. Just search for her. You can find her social media. It’s all in Thai. And at first I was like, okay, the global market is definitely a next step.

Let’s just launch and just focus on the Thai market at first. However, we did already set up an international English platform or webpage using 29 Next because it’s quite easy and then we can accept credit cards if needed. And because we were fulfilling from our China warehouse anyways, we at least open up the ability for customers from 40 countries or so to purchase, even though she was not doing any actually targeted marketing to anything else other than Thai language, right?

But we had, even from the start, international orders. I think we shipped to maybe ten or 20 different countries already without any kind of targeting at all. Now, obviously, she being a social media influencer, there’s no geographic targeting. So, her customers right now that are international are Thai–Thai women abroad who are following her social media. For a more general insight from this, though, for other brands, is going international effectively or quickly is not just about actually targeting or optimizing for a specific market.

And especially as you think about different languages, right? There’s obviously sometimes a huge, complicated process if you’re specifically planning for going international. However, with her, her brand, we realized, was international. It was not English-speaking, but it was Thai abroad, and there’s a lot of them. I’ve been finding out more and more, actually. Wherever you are as an audience, you look on Google Maps and search for, like, Thai restaurants near you. There’s probably a lot. I mean, there’s a lot of Thai influence around the world, and we saw that in the orders with her doing nothing to sell any internationally.

And this is one of the things that we’ve seen other brands and other clients do as well, is build a brand that actually works internationally. And, like, it’s not about language. It’s about just building a great brand in the first place that anyone around the world would be willing to buy regardless of language. And then if you have the ability to ship internationally, which you do very efficiently, shipping from China, then why not, right?

We’ve had clients recently who were concerned about, okay, well, I want to tackle the EU, but I don’t want to deal with localizing to German, to Dutch, whatever. And I’m like, just try out English-speaking ads. You have a great brand; just try out English and see what happens. And the next day, they had crazy ROAS from their test, literally just from English-speaking ads. And it’s not because, by the way, it’s not because somehow the German audience loves their marketing approach, right?

It’s about they have a great brand. They have a great following, they have, like, social media proof already. They have just something that people around the world want to buy. Even if it’s English ads. And then there’s a question of why not? Well, if you don’t have international fulfillment, then it’s much more complicated, right? But if you have your inventory in China, you’re using China fulfillment, you can access 30, 40 markets extremely efficiently and cheaper than local fulfillment. Then why not? You don’t have to invest a single dime in marketing those countries if you don’t want, especially for someone like her.

But why do you–you don’t need to turn it off, right? You don’t need to turn off your shipping options to only Thailand. And that’s what she did. She opened it up to 40 different markets, and a pretty good portion (I would say, like, 20-30% of orders) are actually to international markets. And she gets–she’s getting increasing international demand without really doing anything there.

29:56 – Simon de Raadt: That’s roughly what we also see, actually, for anyone that’s opening up [to] another country than the local market. 20% to 30% is normally extra sales they’re roughly getting in. And she’s not an outlier in that. It’s actually pretty much the average. Her traveling style is pretty cool. She has a very fancy travel style approach, and you can see her videos. What also fascinates me, everywhere she goes, she finds someone that knows her, and that really shows also her global presence as well–that her English capabilities are limited, but it’s not an issue to connect, to have a network, to be able to tap into it, to get the response, to have an actually–a personal approach. I remember you saying as well that somebody at the airport, I think in Thailand, she just shot a video that she is on the way to the airport, posted that on Facebook, or Instagram, or wherever there was.

And then someone working at the airport says, like, “huh, I was just watching your video going to the airport. You’re actually going to the airport?” “Yeah, yeah, I’m actually going to the airport.” And I think that’s also her personality, and her genuine sharing her journey with everything from morning till midnight and whatever happens in between and past midnight, even, is a pretty cool way of connecting. She really can. She’s a connector for sure.

31:12 – Dayu Yang: In the Thailand influencer space, her followers–they call themselves her fan club, proudly so, but basically they’re her fans. They actually call her “Idol” or their idol, right? It really shows the power: the power of being a creator, being an influencer that people actually follow, they listen to, they want to learn from, they want to buy from. So, it’s not about her selling anything. They’re interested in what she says, and they’re interested in at least learning about and experiencing what she offers. Now, there’s a very direct parallel to any brand out there. The very best brands in the world, they don’t have customers. They don’t just have customers; they have fans.

Apple fanboys, right? I would consider myself an Apple fanboy. I mean, I’ve been buying iPhones–since it came out–every two years. That’s, like, $8,000 worth of iPhones. I don’t even know, right? I mean, that’s just Apple products, right? Now, I don’t like to call myself an Apple fanboy, but that probably makes me Apple fanboy, right? Now, I don’t, like, sleep and dream Apple, right? However, every single time they come out with a new product, I would at least consider it because it is Apple. Because I am actually a fan. Fundamentally, even from a customer standpoint, I am a fan. I’m not just a transactional customer of Apple.

And this is the power of–obviously, for her, she’s an influencer, so people naturally want to follow her–but this is also why brands have significant followings. So, for any brand out there, or any aspiring brands out there, if you really want to build a very loyal customer base, a customer base that purchases from you over and over again, that at least considers purchasing any product that you launch, think about how do you make your customers your fans–or at least a good portion of your customers your fans? Because, then, that’s how you really build a long-term brand and how your long term brand really builds that LTV in your customers naturally, without using stuff like complex email flows or re-engagement campaigns. 

Those are all enablers, right? But focus on how can you make your customers loyal fans? And everything else comes naturally after that.

33:25 – Simon de Raadt: What we haven’t touched upon, actually, what I just realized is that this Thai brand, is a single-SKU brand. So, actually, the whole journey, the complexity was partially in the product, but more on finding the right supplier and using our network. It was actually–the complexity was in the growth strategy and putting the foundation in place to be able to allow the brand to grow. You’re building a foundation. I think you’re pretty much there.

And now what’s next for the brand to go further than your imagination, I would say?

33:59 – Dayu Yang: I would say let’s talk about the pros and cons of having a single SKU. Now, when, actually, when we were first strategizing our launch, she looked at other skincare brands, beauty brands. Maybe we should consider, like, having more products. Every other skincare brand out there has a category of products for body, for face, et cetera, right? No very successful skincare brand out there only has one product line–even just one SKU.

However, what I suggested is one thing at a time. First, the problem with too many SKUs, especially when you don’t hit traction, is every single SKU adds way more complexity in terms of supply chain management, inventory management. It adds cost in terms of inventory and things like that. And if you launch too many things at a time, like, first of all, you have no confidence that any or all of them are going to sell.

And also it actually spreads out your attention and your focus so that, potentially, you’re not really getting a great product in any of them. If we think back on the more traditional dropshipping days, folks probably remember this idea of having a one-product store: focusing on one product, optimizing for that, right? There is a lot of value in that, even if you’re not dropshipping. So, in traditional retail or skincare, there’s this concept of having a hero product, like having an amazing product that people just absolutely love and that not only represents your brand, however, the quality and the reception to that, and that the physical relationship that builds with the customer, that then builds a stronger relationship with your brand so that they either repurchase that product product or they buy more products in the future.

So, it is actually incredibly important to get that first product out and have it as perfect as you can or, at the very least, as close as possible to achieving what you have your customers expecting for a product like this, in terms of quality, efficacy, and price and value as well. And what’s going to happen, though, is that a one-SKU brand is not going to maximize the total LTV of that brand. This is why skincare/beauty brands have, like, 50 different SKUs, right?

Because over the long run, that’s how you really build the LTV as a brand. However, those skincare brands with 50 different SKUs, they’ve been around for ten years, and they started with a handful–maybe even one hero product–that they got really right. And they were able to leverage that to then, step by step, focus more on product extensions. Now, right now, what we’re seeing is that we’re more or less breakeven within, like, the first purchase or the first couple purchases on marketing spend on just this one product.

But to me, that’s great. From the traditional dropshipping mindset, there’s always this kind of a conception or, I think, misconception that you have to be profitable on the first order. Whether it’s skincare or any other kind of product, if you have a great product, if you have great retention, if your LTV is going to be way higher than your first purchase AOV, then you should be comfortable with breakeven or even losing money on the front end because you make it back either on repurchases–and in this case, I am fully confident that we’re going to make it back on even just repurchases because people love the product. 

And over the long run, over the next three, five years, everything else–every additional great product that we add to this line–is just gravy because then we can reintroduce those to existing customers with very little marketing spend, if any, and then really extend out the LTV of the brand and optimize for the long-term growth and profitability of this product and brand, rather than just focusing on the short-term profitability.

37:57 – Simon de Raadt: What are you actually saving now on ads by having this creator-led brand? How much ad spend are you actually saving?

38:05 – Dayu Yang: Yeah, well, you know, technically we’ve only started spending on some ads, you know, which is that kind of spending is roughly breakeven for now, which I’m very happy about, but all the sales before this were all technically free. I mean, it was her time; it was her organic social media. She would just make a post and people would buy. That’s obviously not completely replicable if you’re not a creator.

However, if you have a brand that people are fans of and you launch something, for example, right? You know, that’s where the power really comes in, especially–and you know, this is also one of the powers of having a consumable product as well. So, consumable products are hard (you know, skincare, you know, whatever it might be). However, if you get it right, it’s so powerful because she was just selling or even just talking about her product on social media, and people were buying, and people are buying again. People will buy one unit the first time. Then they’ll buy three.

We actually just had an order for twelve on a second purchase. And it’s, like, no email series. I mean, she’s just talking about the product. That’s what I mean–it’s how do you focus on creating such a great product or service so that people want to buy and they want to buy again naturally? And everything else that you hear about in terms of re-engagement tactics, email series tactics–those are great, but those would be reminders to your customers or your fans: hey, I exist. You might want to buy again if you like it, right?

And that’s actually exactly why, like, things like email series, text series, and things like that–that should come later. That should come after you have confidence that you actually have an engaged customer base or a fan base and utilize in the right way to remind them that you exist, rather than focusing first on sometimes too salesy re-engagement tactics when you don’t even have an engaged fan base in the first place.

39:49 – Simon de Raadt: So, us offering a fulfillment solution, more on a logistics side, and you also getting involved with more of our clients and advising them: what are your learnings and takeaways from that? How does it impact our day-to day-business as a fulfillment company?

40:05 – Dayu Yang: One thing that I’ve realized being deep in this business, both as a brand owner and also a service provider over the last ten years or so, is that everything changes all the time. Nothing is static. And as a matter of fact, change is basically–it should be assumed. And, therefore, you, as a brand owner, need to adapt. You need to figure out what other people are doing. You need to figure out what strategies, whether it’s marketing or fulfillment, are changing.

At least keep up with the game, but hopefully, like, be at the forefront of the trend. So, I’ll give you a perfect example. Just probably four years ago, three-four years ago, this idea of shipping from China was almost taboo in some segments. My customers wouldn’t want to get products from China, right? And then Shein came along, and then Temu came along. And both of them are actually some of the top players in many different markets around the world.

In insurgent markets, completely unexpected. I mean, we’re talking about, Simon, about the Dutch market. I mean, tell me a little about Temu and the Dutch market.

41:12 – Simon de Raadt: Yeah, actually the local marketplaces are getting scared because the top-five place that they’ve been holding so strongly and haven’t been competing for locally is suddenly being in danger with Chinese marketplaces stepping in and crushing it and taking away clientele, taking away volume, taking away traffic, which also then is, like, for them, the decision–and that’s also the industry–is, like, going globally. Temu has advantages and disadvantages.

The products, large products for volumetric, is difficult for them, so they have to have a local supply chain as well as China. But the local platforms, they cannot offer it as effectively and efficiently as Temu or Shein is doing it. So, in that sense, these local marketplaces also need to pivot and need to change because the industry has changed and the playing field has changed. And that applies for them to what they’ve been good at for the last few years, and what actually has been their unique selling point might not be–it might even be killing their business–a few years from now, because if you stick to your USP now, it probably is a limiting thought. 

It is a limiting thought. It’s not probably; it is a limiting thought in this industry. And that applies, I guess, for our business model as well. What we see, logistics fulfillment everywhere across the world is a commodity. It’s not in China. China fulfillment is not a commodity yet, but it will be.

So, for us as a player to be able to tap into what our clients are struggling with, how can we have a stronger reach into their business model, understanding it better and still focus on excelling in the service that we’re offering for the logistics side? It’s just going to help us to see what’s coming because the logistics is normally not the first one that’s changing. It’s what’s happening before–what’s changing first and then you have to adapt to it. So us being much more involved, much more engaging, also advising our clients allows us to be ahead of the curve, adjust our IT infrastructure, adjust our operations, adjust our advice, the branding aspect, logistics, whatever lines we need to be adding. 

It is all connected, and the sooner we tap into that, the easier it is for us to navigate.

43:37 – Dayu Yang: Exactly. And from the Thai brand’s perspective, initially she was stuck or limited, understandably so, by the idea of this product is produced in Thailand; it should be shipped to Thailand, but maybe we can import it to China to maybe access some global markets, right? This is where the suggestion to just move production to China and make everything more efficient completely changed the game. This is something that is related to, as the market changes–usually when the market changes–it’s not by a tiny bit. 

There’s usually fundamental changes in how people do things and how people compete. You know, Shein and Temu really kind of changing global mindset both in terms of customers and also brand owners around China fulfillment is one example of that. So, this is something that we advise every brand to think about, and how we at EcommOps always think about, is how do we keep up?

And it’s not just, like, optimization steps, right? How are we aware of how the market is changing and sometimes taking a step back and actually thinking differently? Okay, like what we’re doing right now is actually not the right approach. So, as opposed to just do it better, let’s take a step back and figure out what the right approach actually might be. And using EcommOps as an example, we started out years ago as more of kind of that next-step, dropshipping agent. We never did pure dropshipping. However, we initially were kind of working in that next step from dropshipping, so we were holding stock, but still it was our clients’ generic products, right? It was not much customization, right?

We actually were one of the earlier ones to realize, along with our biggest clients, that that model is starting to, like, really get too much competition; it’s not working. And then we evolved with our clients to, okay, let’s optimize more for actually building brands–so, building our processes, introducing our clients to great factories, great partners to help them create more customized products.

And then now, more recently, we have been working with–and actually more and more brands are having more complicated operational flows as well, because more brands are building deeper funnels. It’s not just about that front-end, right? It’s all about their backend as well. And more and more companies are supporting multiple brands at the same time. And we saw that as well. So, we actually have been prioritizing not only are we a fulfillment center, because honestly, anyone can do fulfillment, right?

However, we realize that the ever-changing needs of the market involves, actually, a certain level of operational improvements and development improvements. So, we’ve been focusing on how to revamp our entire IT and operations process infrastructure to do things like support multi-brand portfolios, to do things like support hybrid fulfillment when companies have multiple fulfillment warehouses, to do things like how do we support, like, Thai sales where they don’t even accept credit cards, right?

There’s no end to that, right? And that is one thing I can guarantee you. I can’t guarantee you anything else, but I can guarantee you, to this audience, that change is certain. As a brand owner, always be aware of the change in the market, whether it’s the marketing, whether it’s customers, whether it’s supply chain. Always be aware of it, and, ideally, be at the forefront of the trend. Even if not, don’t get left behind.

And China fulfillment is a pretty good example of that. If we asked some brands, like, four years ago, they would never consider China fulfillment. The same brands, whether they like it or not, it has to be part of their playbook, because otherwise they’re going to be left behind. And a few years from now, I’m sorry to say, it’s going to be exactly those types of brands or businesses who refuse to adapt to a changing market, whatever it is, that are going to be, unfortunately, left behind. And you know, I’m just being frank about it, you know–don’t mean to be negative–but hopefully there’s a positive viewpoint to this: it’s change is good. Change can be good.

Change is going to happen anyways, so adapting to that change is good and necessary.

47:53 – Simon de Raadt: Yeah, I think that pretty much wraps up the episode for today. We started off with a Thai creator-led brand that is actually what we see commonly, right? The change is there. There are influencers helping brands to grow. These influencers are thinking, hey, I can do this myself. Can I? How to do–how can I do this? What network do I have to leverage it? How do I structure it? Us, in this case, helping her structure that for her. But the fundamentals are her, right? The brand itself. And then it’s just seeing how the industry keeps evolving and tapping into, and being flexible, and navigating that. I think that’s the key.

The end of this podcast is really the key of how do you navigate change? How can you stay ahead of the game? How do we understand better what it is as an influencer running a brand itself? What are the dynamics on the foreground, in the front-end before we’re actually receiving the order?

48:46 – Dayu Yang: Yes, Simon, certainly part of the reason why I am so willing to, and her is so willing to, share a lot of these details of this brand is that this is something that, again, no one can exactly replicate. Part of it is because she’s a creator, but part of it is because this brand is actually at the forefront of that trend. And even if she’s not a creator, if you think about some of the best brands in the world who actually have a moat, they can share with you what their brand is. They can share with you what their marketing strategy even is, and you can’t copy it, right?

So, this is something that’s almost a litmus test of how great of a brand you have. How much of a moat do you actually have? If you have a brand, if you have a strategy that is at the forefront of the trend–whether it’s marketing strategy, supply chain strategy, product strategy, whatever it might be–and you can talk about it and you feel confident that no one can follow you, or at least follow you enough to actually compete with you, then that’s actually, you know, one of the real tests of do you actually have something unique?

Now, not everything has to be unique. However, if you do have something unique–that you even know that no one can replicate in the same way and outcompete you–then that’s how you have, really, something that can scale to eight, nine figures and beyond.

50:07 – Simon de Raadt: Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you, Dayu, for sharing, and thank you to her, for allowing us to share this part of her story, and the story continues. So, looking forward to where this is going to take her and her brand in the future. 

Thank you all for listening to this podcast episode of The EcommOps Podcast. We’re sharing the stories on how to leverage China fulfillment, and it goes much deeper than just the operations. It’s actually the brand stories as well that we are adding into the mix.

Hope you enjoy it. Please do follow, like, and share this episode. 

This was amazing. Thank you, Dayu, for sharing all this, and I hope to see you on the next one.