Hermo just recently turned 6.
That’s 6 years of helping Malaysians to get their hands on trendy and high quality beauty products from all over the world, while cutting down on expensive shipping fees.
Although we’ve grown into one of the largest beauty websites in Malaysia, getting here wasn’t exactly a walk in a park.
But despite the challenges we faced, our base of loyal customers is what has kept us going.
To celebrate our anniversary, our CEO and co-founder, Ian Chua, shared 6 key messages that our team wishes to express to these very customers whose support have helped elevate Hermo to the brand it is now.
1) “We handle things from a user’s point of view.”
One thing we pride ourselves on is our customer service.
If you’ve ever engaged with our customer service team, you’ll notice that they’re amicable and casual, as though you were their friends.
“We have a monthly practice with all the top management where we conduct in-depth interviews to understand your pain points so that we can focus on improving that in the next month,” shared Ian.
Since the beginning, Hermo has kept a tight control on the procurement of stock as we want to continue building a name as a reliable source for you to purchase cosmetics.
“We’ve always handled our business from a user’s point of view. From our pricing model to even choosing the brands we approach to bring in their products, we always refer to your feedback and we appreciate every single one.”
2) “Our current selection already covers drug-store to high-end brands, but we still want to expand it further.”
We started off with only 50 products in our inventory—now we have over 10,000 products and counting! This ranges from the drugstore fare to even high-end brands.
But, it took a lot of good old-fashioned hard work to get us here.
Getting brands on board wasn’t always easy; in fact we still encounter brands that don’t want to go online.
Having great marketing campaigns where we help them sell their products is what builds trust.
We now carry 300 brands, and we’re looking to get even more on board.
More partnerships does translate into more promotions, so that’s an extra bonus for you.
3) “It’s not just about affordable prices.”
Over the years, our mindset has definitely evolved.
It’s not enough to just be an e-commerce site that’s known to sell beauty products at an affordable price.
What we want is to enhance user experience, and some of the ways we do this are via analysing products to give you the best descriptions, and beauty tutorials that may entice you to try out some new products.
“Instead of just being cheaper than others, we want to provide more value to you by launching more unique promotions such as our Hermo-exclusive ‘Gift With Purchase’ deal. Through this, we can partner closely with the brands to get more beauty content, which in turn will provide more value to you,” said Ian.
4) “We’re going to be a brand that provides all sorts of beauty services.”
We know that going into a price war is not going to work out for us in the long term.
So last year, after Istyle invested in us, we collaborated with @cosme—Japan’s largest beauty site—to have a more transparent and reliable system for you to discover the best products in the market.
As @cosme has a lot of connections with trendy Japanese brands, this helps us get our hands on products that are harder to get in Malaysia, to bring them to you.
Our beauty reviews also got an upgrade—@cosme’s Beauty Ranking is based entirely on users’ honest reviews, so you’ll know for sure if a product works or not.
“We wanted to explore other ways to reach you, so aside from our e-commerce service, we can also have a daily media content site that will have features like charts showing the most reviewed product of the year in Malaysia by actual users.”
5) “We want to use our experience to help our users more.”
Now in our sixth year, the brand’s looking to take things further through the launch of Hermo Global where you can now get your package shipped directly from oversea suppliers straight to your doorstep.
“When we import the products ourself, the process can take a while because of customs, registration and all that. By the time it reaches our warehouse, it’s actually 3 months later and people don’t find it interesting anymore,” shared Ian.
So through Hermo Global, we can tap into a global network of major beauty retailers to sell their products to Malaysia. With a “shop globally” concept, this could be a way for you to get the hottest products as they launch globally instead of needing to wait.
Hermo Global is currently in its soft launch phase to test out operations from Korea and we’re looking to expand into Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and maybe Australia in the next quarter.
“We want to use our experience in cross-border logistics to help you. You no longer need to ask your friends to buy products overseas and you can try out trending products as soon as it launches,” said Ian.
6) “Focusing on what our users need made us what we are today.”
We’ve had a tough but fun journey, from facing doubts and speculations from users and brands about our services, to now being a fairly well-recognised name.
But as a local and homegrown brand, we really appreciate our customers who’ve brought us to where we are today and we stand by the fact that we’re a proud Malaysian brand built by Malaysians, for Malaysians.
As such, we never want to forget our mission of providing convenience to our customers.
“Even our upper management, like myself, read customer feedback e-mails all the time. So I think focusing on what our users need made us what we are today.”
With the launch of our media content site, and a retail store opening next year, we’re looking to continue being a reliable brand for people to come to for everything beauty-related.
- For more information on what Hermo’s offering for their 6th year anniversary, you can check out their official website here.
Feature Image Credit: ecinsider.my
