If you had to guess who was behind beauty empire, Cosmetic Capital, your last guess would probably be a criminal lawyer and a Fairfax journalist. But this unlikely duo just served their 100,000th customer, hold 2,000 5-star Google reviews, and stock over 3,000 products in their store. And since ditching briefcases for bronzers, these corporate bro’s have never been happier.
Co-founder and Managing Director, Danny Marcuson first realised there was a gap in the market for affordable online cosmetics after hearing his wife complain about the cost of her makeup. Enlisting the help of his brother Jamie, Danny decided to test the waters with an eBay store. It wasn’t long before they realised there was serious interest in their products, so Danny left behind his law career, and Jamie bid farewell to Fairfax so they could both focus on the business full-time.
After finding out about Neto during their initial discussions with eBay Australia, Danny and Jamie decided to give the platform a try. “eBay can be quite daunting and difficult to use, but this entire process was simplified and streamlined through Neto. We also loved that they’re an Australian company, with all the integrations that you need as an Australian retailer.”
With a successful eBay store under their belt, the pair decided they wanted to go further and establish a database of their own customers. So they set out to build a website on the same platform they used for eBay. “Using Neto for the site was an easy choice because we already understood and trusted the system.”
Beauty by Design
With the beauty industry and the ecommerce landscape changing so rapidly, the website needed a facelift just two years after it launched—with a focus on mobile accessibility. “We could see from the data that our site was weak on mobile. We needed our mobile site to reflect how we were moving forward to really take it to the next level.”
Since Neto was already managing their eBay store and their website back-end, joining forces with the Neto design team was a no-brainer. “The project was well managed with fluid discussion between Cosmetic Capital and the Neto design team every step of the way.”
That easy-breezy production process gave way to a gorgeous site that performed well too. “We’ve definitely seen improvements since the new site has been implemented. Specifically with conversion rates and increased basket sizes on mobile devices. Everyone in the team was really impressed with the end result.”
Accentuating the Products with Powerful Integrations
Although the results were naturally great, there’s nothing wrong with getting a little boost from an integration. When Danny and Jamie introduced a product review service, that’s when they really started turning heads. “Integrating with a review platform was a game-changer for us, and Neto facilitated that integration seamlessly. There’s a huge trust-barrier when buying online, especially with skin products. Garnering more reviews allowed us to build our community and provide users transparency throughout their shopping experience—we’ve now got over 2000 5-star reviews on Google”
But in Danny’s opinion, the most successful integrations they’ve implemented are their Buy Now, Pay Later services.
Once we implemented Afterpay, we started getting requests for ZipPay, so we decided to offer that too. Since we’ve had both services available our average cart value has increased by 30%, and our onsite conversion rate has lifted too.
| Related Reading: Afterpay, zipPay and zipMoney: How Buy Now Pay Later Works and Why Retailers Are Going Crazy for It
Adding Volume to Make the Business Shine
When they opened in 2015, Jamie and Danny set themselves some goals. The first was to receive 50 orders a day and the second was to hit $1 million in sales. Have they achieved those goals? “We haven’t done any less than 50 orders a day for the past year, and since we started, we’ve achieved over $6 million in sales to date.” Needless to say, they’re pretty pleased with their progress so far.
As two brothers who started out with no real understanding of this industry—to what do they credit their success? “We persevered. After many hours of watching tutorials, speaking to brands, talking with our customers, and reading reviews, we’d consider ourselves makeup experts these days. We love the cosmetic industry, it is innovative, dynamic and fast-paced, continuously evolving, and fueled by social media – an exceptionally exciting area to work within.”
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