Coupang partners with small cosmetics company to make products customers will truly love

In February last year, cosmetics shoppers saw an intriguing prompt in their Coupang app. “Choose the next product to launch,” it said above an image of three different types of cotton pads. Customers voted in droves, with a response rate 10 times that of regular promotional events. The winning “skin fit” pads, which conform perfectly to the skin through compression technology, were launched soon thereafter to great success.

The first “Let’s Create Together” project is the brainchild of Coupang’s Beauty Data Lab, a team committed to raising customer satisfaction for beauty products through data-based analysis. “There are 18 million active customers on Coupang, with 30 million beauty-related searches each month,” said one member. “As a team that analyzes and implements big data, we thought about what role we could play for customers.” The team decided to turn directly to the customers themselves to create the products they most wanted.

This led to the team choosing cotton pads as their first project. While cotton pads are one of the most basic and essential items in any daily beauty routine, customers can be very particular about the products they buy. The team conducted direct consumer research, gathering customer opinions and noting common complaints such as lint, absorption issues, and texture. They then met with Sinsedae, a small but promising cosmetics company that made high-quality cotton pad products.

“Because small businesses like us lack know-how in matters such as marketing and customer management, no matter how great the products are, it’s hard for us to grow on our own,” said Min-gyu Shin, a sales manager at Sinsedae. The Beauty Data Lab team, however, saw the company’s potential and proposed a collaboration to create cotton pads that customers would love by combining Coupang’s resources and know-how with Sinsedae’s capacity to produce excellent products.

Sinsedae worked with Coupang to come up with three final candidates to present to customers, building hype as customers grew curious about the outcome of their vote. Less than a month later, the new product was first shipped to those who had pre-registered, followed by the official launch and a flood of praising reviews from amazed customers.

“The beauty industry is dominated by powerful brands, making the barrier to entry too high for new brands,” said Sung-jun Ahn, the CEO of Sinsedae. “However, Coupang empowers small businesses to increase their brand competitiveness and attract customers. With Rocket Delivery, Coupang purchases the products directly and takes care of everything from orders, packaging, and delivery to customer management, so it’s really helpful for SMEs that don’t have such systems in place.” He added, “I’m so glad we joined Coupang. I look forward to developing more products and hiring more employees in the future.”