US Market and Earned Media: How Silk The Rich Expanded

Kodai Takahashi

So, Silk Rich is a Japanese hair care product, mostly doing shampoo, conditioner, hair care product, and body care products, using a liquid silk inside the every single product, which is our like a unique point.

Kodai Takahashi

And sell it over 20 countries now, making around $25 million annually, this is our fourth year and get ready to expand to the US.

Kodai Takahashi

first of all, I myself, I was I have never been to the states and it's the first time for me to stay in stay in the USculture is whole new thinghow people buy things, how people find the things, how people want to see the products, especially in beauty. It's totally different.

Kodai Takahashi

Yes, 100%.

Kodai Takahashi

right now we focus on California, New York, Seattle, especially me like West Coast and Hawaii, but when we think about expanding to the other states in the retail, we have to think about like the strategy again, I guess. Cuz there are so diverse people out there and we have to reconsider how we talk to them, communicate them.

Kodai Takahashi

last December after launching Amazon, we were featured on Vogue as the best Japanese shampoo and conditioners. That was so sudden.

Kodai Takahashi

So, I give away some shampoo to the editor in LA and she literally liked our product and then she posted about us into Vogue and then the next day after the publishing, I saw the like Japan and Amazon, I saw the really like good growth and that growth didn't go like go down.

Chase

once you get one, it makes it easier to get the others and then you'd repurpose that content, never stop talking about it because your newest your newest customer didn't know you were featured in Vogue and that social proof might be the thing that drives them to make the purchase to try the product.

Kodai Takahashi

The ROI was it doesn't make sense. So, I stopped it and posted after the Vogue feature, we pushed it again with the creative and then it's made our like conversion rate really like really high, like you said, three times more and then even more after that, after all the efforts of our teams.

Kodai Takahashi

And through those journeys, after launching D2C channel, we can see how like people behave and we can get more customer information because for Amazon, it's so hard to get the information of customers, but in D2C channel, we can see what they like or how they find our product. We can ask some questions, we can send emailswe found like small community kind of thing after Vogue feature.

Kodai Takahashi

But in the states, we only have like three or four. They are like part-timers actually. So, I'm the CEO, but some people are in charge of social media is one of them, then sales and shipping and admin and meit's basically four of us.

Kodai Takahashi

But we heavily utilizing AI and stuff recently, especially like AI agent we see like muse and dots coming upwe try to utilize those agents too, but I personally using AI and I let my team members use AI to whatever they can use AI.

Kodai Takahashi

And the service providers which can utilize AI for sure because they are professional and they have to understand how brand think about because if the brand figure out the way to utilize AI into their work, brands don't have reason to work with service providers, right?

Kodai Takahashi

But towards the end of the year, we're going to open more doors, like including the main major retailers in the states. And so, I feel like after seeing all the data on Amazon or D2C or we started TikTok shop recently, I feel like we can start expanding more in retail.

Kodai Takahashi

Well, we are selling in 12,000 stores globallycompared to that, 50 is small, but still we can get some data like POS, which store is selling better than other stores and what kind of customers are purchasingwe gather the data and connecting the data with Shopify and compare those data and we can like deepen down into our target customers more than ever.