For seven years, Rokkiss’s “Tea Tree Peeling Gel” has been one of the top sellers on Coupang in the peeling gel category. Over a million units have been sold since its launch, and the product has over 26,000 five-star reviews. The company itself makes billions of won in revenue per year (making over 3.6 million dollars in 2020), with Coupang accounting for 50% of total sales. Two years ago, Rokkiss began forays into international sales, launching its products in China and the U.S.
This level of success is a dream come true for Rokkiss founder and CEO Yoon-joo Jeong, who has loved cosmetics from an early age. “When I was younger, my dream was to become a makeup artist,” she said, “and I always dreamed about doing something related to cosmetics.” But after graduating, she ended up working an office job at a small business until she got married, and then quit that to become a housewife. When her husband’s business failed in the early 2010s, Yoon-joo finally decided to take a shot at her childhood aspirations and started her own cosmetics business.
The couple sold their apartment and significantly downsized for her company’s seed money. Yoon-joo started off focusing on men’s cosmetics, using her home as an office and testing iteration after iteration of her products. She knew that it wouldn’t be easy to find success at the beginning, but one year later, the dismal sales had put her in a hard place. She still had no income and was running out of funds, yet her living expenses had significantly increased after she gave birth to her second child. In a last-ditch effort, she decided to shift focus to the larger but far more competitive women’s cosmetics market. One of the products she developed during this time was the Tea Tree Peeling Gel, whose packaging she adorned with an image of her seven-year-old daughter as a reminder to create a product they could be proud of.
Yoon-joo finally had her best-selling idea, but she still faced the issue of distribution. “I didn’t know how to sell my products,” she said. “I would just upload the product page to the eCommerce sites and wait.” It was around this time that her husband, who worked in online marketing, recommended that she try Coupang. The company had rolled out its Rocket Delivery service just the year before (2014), and he was convinced this could be a game-changer.
“In 2015, other online distributors were larger than Coupang, so I had a lot of doubts at first,” said Yoon-joo. “However, I became convinced that Rocket Delivery would ‘shift the paradigm of online shopping,’ and I saw this initial launch as an opportunity. The most important thing for Koreans is speed, and next-day delivery was more attractive than any other factor. Above all, it was great to be able to focus on product development without worrying about delivery and other additional logistics costs.”
Before she joined Coupang, it took Yoon-joo months to sell a thousand products. But once she joined, she was selling five thousand units a month solely through Rocket Delivery. “As the sales on Rocket Delivery increased, our products were displayed on the front page,” said Yoon-joo. “When sales began skyrocketing, we worked day and night coordinating with our manufacturers to order more products and avoid running out. And to increase product satisfaction, we continued to check reviews and conducted sample tests to adjust our products accordingly.”
Five-star reviews of Rokkiss products on Coupang
As the company grew, it diversified its product lineup to include cleansing products, moisturizing cream, and skin toner. Rokkiss converted from a sole proprietorship to a corporation in 2019, and the company currently employs nine people, with plans to hire five or six more employees this year. As for her personal life, Yoon-joo was able to move back to a bigger apartment. “I moved into a spacious apartment with my family, and I no longer have to worry about things like hospital bills anymore,” she said with a smile.
Even after working with Coupang for seven years, Yoon-joo is continually impressed by the way the company constantly drives innovations and improvements to support customers and small businesses alike. “Coupang has always been improving in terms of fast delivery, clean and safe packaging, and customer service, enabling small and medium-sized businesses like us to grow rapidly,” said Yoon-joo. “If I hadn’t focused on Coupang in the early stages of my company, I don’t think I would have been able to reach the level of sales Rokkiss is making today.”
