The Story Application Presents Honest Reviews of Beauty Products, Ambitious to Become a "Social Commerce"

The use of social media for sales purposes has actually become a common thing. There is a term that is more often used to refer to this concept, namely social commerce. In the last year, many platforms that carry this concept have started to appear, you name it Woobiz and Chilibeli.

This was seen by several UCWeb Alibaba Group alumni consisting of Liu Feida, Rizky Maulana, and HE Yaoming as an opportunity, to be able to contribute in answering the challenges of the Indonesian beauty world through the platform. social commerce story.

About potential social commerce Rizky said, "We see that social media has become a tool for driving trends, including the world of beauty. That's why we founded Story, by combining social media with E-commerce."

His party revealed that the basic idea of ​​Story is to invite Indonesian women to be more confident in assessing themselves. From there, a beauty application that upholds honesty was launched make-up, skincare, and lifestyle contemporary.

In this application, users are offered review honest from the beauty vloggers and or society in general about trends makeup and Skincare without having to be afraid to get "bully" or ridicule by the audience. Story wants to provide a safe place for users to express themselves and their passion in the world of beauty.

Beautytech in Indonesia

With a female population of more than 130 million, the beauty industry in Indonesia is a market which promises many opportunities as well as requires a well-targeted way to enter and survive in this business. Previously, one platform beautytech Indonesia has also recently received funding. This shows that there is hope for the penetration of technology in the world of beauty.

"Indonesia is a blue ocean market for the beauty industry, we see the easier access to information through media and digital channels. The easier it is for local and international products to enter the Indonesian market, forming a very dynamic market where the quality and quality of a product will be very decisive but not the only success factor for a product," explained Rizky.

From a strategy perspective, Story tries to capture the desire and point bread facing society today. One of them is inaccurate information and the lack of a community that brings vibe positive. The company, which turned one year old in May, has also launched an application for Android users with total downloads exceeding 500 thousand and active users around 100 thousand per day.

In terms of content curation, his party said that they had dedicated two special teams, namely the QC (Quality Control) team and the content standardization team to determine benchmarking and filter the content on the platform. During this pandemic, it is recognized that there have been many changes in business plans and monetization strategies, but the company is trying to see this as a momentum to be able to innovate better.

Business plan

In business monetization, Rizky concluded that so far revenue come from brand deals who want to launch campaign nor launching product. "In the future we will work with all brand so that their products can be sold in Stories," Rizky added.

In the near future, Story will also launch a new initiative on its platform to simplify in-app transactions and refine the concept social commerce hers.

At the end of 2019, the company was selected as one of three Indonesian startups to participate in the Sequoia Capital accelerator program, Arises batch second. Alpha JWC Ventures also participated in seed round together through this Surge program.

Entering order new normal the company sees hope." As a dynamic company, as well as a society that is increasingly moving towards digital, it believes there is an opportunity to grow.

"It is undeniable that Covid-19 has changed the world order and business and technology, and everything will lead to a digital platform, digitizing all lines of life. And we are a company that is ready to transform to answer that challenge," concluded Rizky.