Announcing: CosmeHunt update
Great storytelling can be your most powerful tool for disseminating your vision. I am lazy to talk about myself even in my first language. However, storytelling will be one of my goals in 2018.
After I posted an article on Cosme Hunt for Japanese readers 3 months ago, I got a chance to be interviewed by 2 different media and gave my talk to the audience 3 times in a month. 5 times in total with just one post! How powerful is writing blogs? From this experience, I learned that it’s so important to tell what you are aiming to be and why, not only people in front of you but everyone on the internet.
Moreover, telling your story isn’t just about yourself. It’s the proof that you’ve improved and achieved something you promised before. If you want to build trust with someone you ask for advice, it’s important that you do what you promise to do, and show what you’ve done. You can’t just take advice and waste people’s time then do nothing with them. So from next year, though it’ll be little by little, I‘d like to try writing or telling Cosme Hunt Story on any kind of media as much as I can. (maybe posting more short-videos or Vlogging will be easier and fun for me rather than just blogging!)
How We Executed Our First Idea
So today, we have some update on Cosme Hunt and I’d like to explain how we came through last couple months to get here today ( You can also check out my latest article 4 months ago, Female Founder’s Conference July 2017.)
Back in early 2016, I was enjoying my life in a beautiful city, Vancouver Canada. I found myself enjoying being a UI/UX designer and helping some startups with their design in order to grow their business. The weather was perfect. People were very nice there. I also met a company who wanted to hire me in Vancouver. Everything seemed to go well except one thing.
The problem happened when winter came. One day in the bathroom while applying toner on my face, I realized that my skin got really dry and its condition started getting worse in my 26 years of life. Maybe it was because of dry weather or type of water in the west coast. I already run out all skincare products which I brought from Japan, then immediately started looking for stores at which I could buy something similar. Then I realized that how it’s difficult to find right products here in other country. The more I asked my friends, the better I noticed that how it’s different living in a diverse country, Canada because everyone has a different skin type and own solution! I searched online and tried to find if there’s any good service that lets me find the products that could solve my suffer and match my sensitive Asian skin type. But at the end of the day, it ended up asking my mom to ship my favorite Japanese products to me, which I could never get in Canada.
From then on, I couldn’t stop thinking about this inconvenience and how I could solve the problem in order to quickly find the right products next time. I was so in to it that I forgot even sleeping every night. That’s the moment I started planning Cosme Hunt and running the project as my side work.
After a few months I moved to California with my husband. My very first idea of Cosme Hunt was to offer all beauty product information and let people from all over the world (not just Vancouver!) write their reviews on the mobile app. The app shows you what’s popular and latest at your place, what people around you like, and what your friends use.
When we pivoted
The idea sounded cool. We immediately gained 200 users. And yet, after the launch of the first app in SF, I sooner realized that how it could be hard to grow the engagement on our app. We needed more resource to build strong database and knowledge about cosmetics to respond all requests from people all over the world who have different skin types and hair types. That problem made me feel that I was little stuck in my idea and even lost what to do next.
Fortunately, I had a few mentors in SF who know me very well and who know the business in the US. Some of them advised me to reframe smaller picture, like maybe focusing on only users who have Asian skin, or like dealing with only Japanese products first. “Maybe this idea might work or maybe not, but you already know many people in Japan and they may want to help you.”
To tell you the truth, I didn’t hear the advice from my friends at the beginning, but right after I pivoted the idea and decided to deal with only Japanese products, it obviously felt more comfortable with targeting consumers and tracking KPIs.
If you are Elon Musk, you can draw a big picture, build electric cars and send people to Mars. However, I am just a short Asian girl moved halfway around the world from Japan without any strong connection in Silicon Valley.
It’s not easy to meet someone who can give you a right advice as a mentor in new place because they should know you well. So I greatly appreciate that I could find some here in my life!
Announcing Our News!
Then October 2017, I asked random our core users through the product and went back all the way to Japan to make sure if this idea will work for both of our consumers and clients.
It was a great experience to meet every stakeholder in Japan for a month (including mega beauty companies and beauty distributors) and discuss how Japanese beauty reigns the beauty market in the world but still isn’t acceptable in many places. I’ve met many companies that actually want to bring their beauty products to the world but don’t know how to do even though they are amazing, sophisticated, and well-organized! (if you’ve ever been to japan, you know what I’m trying to mean!) I’ve come to like Japanese culture more than before I moved out.
Meanwhile, I had some concern when the companies asked me to sign a contract. It’s not easy for a small startup to bring tons of products across the border of course. I didn’t want to take either inventory risk or some opportunity loss risk when out of stock. So right after the business trip in Japan, with tons of research and the great cooperation from my friends and partners, we came up with the conclusion that provides a subscription-style beauty box! ( so that we can get a handle on stock status to some extent. ) (I guess we‘ll be the first company which does J-beauty box in the U.S!)
Who We Are
For those who don’t know us, we aim to make Japanese beauty accessible to everyone and change the way you think about your skin and how you treat yourself. To that end, we’ll first focus on improving awareness of Japanese beauty through our curated website and the beauty box.
From this month, we are shortly starting our first edition of beauty box. The boxes are very limited! So if you want to be in-the-know on the latest and greatest in J-Beauty, let us know at chloe@cosmehunt.com or my personal contact you have!
We’re so thankful to all of you as we continue our journey to bring out an amazing platform for women in the world. We’re excited to share more J-beauty tips soon!
Cosme Hunt : We believe beauty is for each person to define and ours to celebrate. Cosme Hunt allows people shine by finding their own beauty and clients to engage with our unbiased and unique beauty experts.
