The K-beauty market is indeed expanding every year. Then it is no surprise that they have an eye on vegan skincare these days. Today, we’ll look into an iconic vegan skincare brand trending right now in Korea. Let us introduce MELIXIR.
1. About Melixir
“We are on a mission to make healthy and sustainable skincare accessible for all.”
Melixir is a 100% vegan skincare brand founded in 2018. Its name is derived from the word ‘Elixir’ which means ‘cure-all medicine’.
The CEO, Hana Lee started her career in the beauty business from 2013 at MEMEBOX. It was the time when MEMEBOX attracted investment from Y Combinator. So it was a grand opportunity for her to experience the global market from the starting point. After she enrolled in the cosmetic industry, she noticed that her skin condition worsened. She soon realized that it was due to all the harmful toxins included in most skincare products. As she worked at the San Francisco Branch, she had more chances to be exposed to vegan products, which was still an unfamiliar concept in Korea at the time. After overcoming her skin complexion by nontoxic plant-derived ingredients, she wanted to share her experience with the people who when through the same problem with her. And there comes the Melixir.
These three statements below are the promises Melixir keeps with their consumers.
- 100% Vegan Product
- 100% Cruelty-Free
- Sustainable Packaging
2. Wadiz, the crowdfunding platform
It was a transition period for the vegan to settle down in Korea when Melixar was launched. In other words, the concept of vegan was not fully accepted to the public yet. So it was extremely challenging for Melixir to overcome such bias and unawareness. So what Melixir did was to choose the platform that can form massive attention at a reasonable price. And their choice was Wadiz.
Wadiz is one of the crowdfunding platforms. Simply just a Korean version of ‘Kickstarter.’ The most significant merit of using a crowdfunding platform is a cost - to both supplier and consumer. In the provider’s perspective, there won’t be any dead stocks due to the preorder system. This means there won’t be any extra management costs. Also, the commission charge is cheaper compared to the existing market. Consumers, on the other hand, they can get tremendous preorder discounts. So it lowers the barrier of a brand new meets their new customers.
Melixir’s very first project achieved over 2000% of its sales goal, selling over 10M KRW. This news soon went viral, so their second project scored over 6000% of their goal, which was over 30M KRW.
3. Lululemon & Patagonia
When looking at the path of where Melixir is heading, there are two global brands that pop’s into our minds. Lululemon and Patagonia.
Lululemon
Lululemon is renowned for its experiential marketing strategy. This prestigious athleisure brand created a sort of a community of its own. As their vision was to create a community hub where people could learn and share a healthy lifestyle, they focused on building a strong connection between the fitness trainers and their consumers. Not only building an experiential store, they also run various community classes such as yoga, boxing, and even flower arrangement to weaving!
Melixir also provides various offline classes. They have made a partnership with Airbnb since 2019. Through Airbnb Trip service, customers can enroll in the one-day courses to make a vegan bath bomb by themselves. This unique marketing strategy helped out Melixir a lot to promote its brand value to the potential customer with face to face.
Patagonia
Patagonia is the first brand to comes in mind when we think of ethical consumption. This tendency is especially widespread among millennials. They are fascinated by the fact that they can be involved in something meaningful by their spending.
Most of Patagonia’s goods are made of sustainable materials. Their mission is to ‘build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.’ Followed by their rules, they offer repair and reuse programs even encourage their customers to buy less of their products!
The leader of Melixir, Hana Lee mentioned their role model is Patagonia. She feels strong needs of reducing the environmental impacts in production. So Melixir uses sugarcane instead of plastic for the packaging. Just by doing that, it reduces up to 72% of carbon emission. This strong ethics of Melixir surely excites the millennials to get involved in the environmental movement.
Melixir is a pioneer of the vegan skincare in Korean beauty business. After the great success of Melixir brand, many new vegan beauty brands are launching up to now. Today we looked over the key marketing strategy of what Melixir has progressed so far. But those successful records won’t be made if the quality of the product was not satisfying enough.