In 2013, husband-and-wife duo Jean and Kenneth Baik, in their mid-30s based in Texas, USA, trialled an e-commerce store to test their value proposition – the beauty industry is saturated, and there is a potential blue-ocean market – lowest prices in the industry.
Its marketing and differentiation were $1 cosmetics and beauty tools. People would say – How do you even sell these products for $1?
Now the most valuable asset in the world today is attention.
Miss A – attention is $1 – the lowest price in the market.
The business is profitable, has not raised any external capital – and continues to grow faster than its competitors.
Initial products were
- makeup, eyelashes, bath bombs,
- nail products and beauty tools,
- brushes and sponge applicators,
The business has widened its product mix to include
- jewellery, hair accessories,
- seasonal items, storage and greeting cards,
The business had an immediate impact.
- YouTubers first put the business on the map in 2013.
- Tik Tok went mad in 2016.
Demand was strong – their first stores opened in Texas malls in 2016.
The Stores now carry 5,000 items with new items around 10 to 15 each week – press-on nails and nail stickers as examples.
- beauty category makes up around 90% of its online sales and about 60% of its in-store sales,
In-store shoppers see new products every few weeks -the key to floor traffic is to refresh the shops with the latest trendy products to stay ahead of the industry and deliver the brand promise.
Now Miss A operates online and has 15 locations throughout Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, with about 300 employees – it has less than 1% market share.
Its future strategy is stepping up store openings and plans to have 200 stores open over the next five years.
How does Miss A keep prices low? The supplier base is 200+ factories internationally—some are with giants like Sephora and L’Oréal.
We now live in a Social Selling economy.
Marketing – social media only – now you can influence and sell more with little advertising spend. Leveraging its community of 325k Instagram followers and 75 million TikTok followers, many of whom make user-generated content, to advertise.
- Advertised products— like sunglasses, scarves, or bath bombs— are often sold with little to no profit to draw in consumers, while most of its beauty-product margins are higher, around ~50% GP margin.
The FASTEST growing businesses have one thing in common they get more attention on multiple social media platforms – every day.
Currently, it is battling surging inflation.
- It’s trying to combat higher manufacturing costs with higher order volumes and using bundles to save customers on packaging costs.
In response to pricing pressures
- Miss A has introduced a sell-up range of higher-priced beauty line, AOA Pro, which has a $3–$10 price point.
Now the most valuable asset in the world today is attention.
The best businesses
- Get more attention first,
- Next More engagement,
- Influence and Sell More,
ACCELERATE DELIVERS MORE – ATTENTION + ENGAGEMENT – FASTER to Influence and Sell more.
Without
- paid advertising,
- lots of content generation,
- and without doing a lot of outreach #socialselling,
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If you have read this far, thank you for your attention. It means a lot. I hope this helped you even a little bit in better making sense of this topic. If so, please, share it with a friend who might also benefit from it.
Thanks for reading,
David
