TWO years after entering the e-commerce space, American beauty brand Kiehl’s is now expanding its online presence by entering Lazada in a bid to introduce more customers to its products.

“After successfully pioneering social commerce for the premium beauty segment in the country, we saw that there’s a bigger opportunity to tap customers outside of our Kiehl’s community. So with Lazada we feel that we’re able to offer the best of both worlds: which is scale and personalization,” Lerizze Tan, product manager for Kiehl’s, said in a digital briefing in late August.

In 2018, Kiehl’s entered the online space by introducing its products in BeautyMNL, an online store focused on selling skincare and wellness products. A year later, the brand pulled out of BeautyMNL in favor of developing its own e-commerce platform on Facebook which it called “social commerce” as orders are made through Facebook Messenger and customer representatives were on hand to give new customers a free healthy skin check digitally before recommending products. Kiehl’s is known for offering free consultation and skincare samples in its stores in order to tailor fit a routine for customers.

Via LazMall, Lazada’s section for big brands and products, Kiehl’s will still be offering the skin consultation through the chat box and Ms. Tan explained that there is a customer representative who will be there to answer any questions a customer may have.

“Through social commerce, we were able to test the waters and really see how best to converse with customers and how they want to be consulted online. And we were able to take those learnings to LazMall in order to serve a much wider audience,” Ms. Tan said.

Though it is now in LazMall (and has been since the start of September), Ms. Tan said that Kiehl’s will still keep its Facebook social commerce portal up. It has now been adapted to offer pick-ups because “a lot of our loyal customers actually still prefer to visit the store and speak to their Kiehl’s customer representatives.”

The same process also allows for same-day pick-ups where customers can book their own delivery service to have their skincare products picked up and delivered to them.

And in celebration of opening the store in Lazada, Kiehl’s will be having a grand launch party on Sept. 17 via the Lazada Philippines App. The launch party will be hosted by Alodia Gosiengfiao, Camille Co, Laureen Uy, Kryz Uy, and David Guison. — Z.B. Chua

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