In the booming world of e-commerce, a new trend is emerging: so-called subscription e-commerce, whereby users get a regular box of goodies – usually monthly – for their membership fee. The Hong Kong- and Shanghai-based MyLuxBox.com says it is the largest such site operating in the Greater China area [1], with over a quarter of a million registered users and 10,000 paying subscribers getting boxfuls of high-end cosmetics and skincare products.
The startup tells TiA that it’s growing at the rate of 30 percent per month right now, and it might soon be able to announce some major series A funding. That’d be a nice continuation from MyLuxBox’s two rounds of seed funding last year, which included US$400,000 from Zhenfund. It launched last summer and now boasts subscribers in over 300 cities across mainland China.
What MyLuxBox subscribers get is a “beauty box” of products from the likes of LMVH, Clarins, and L’Oreal. That’s for the ladies. There’s a different box available for men, as well as a new variation called ‘Taste’ that comes packed with quality confectionary and snacks [2]. MyLuxBox generates revenue not only from conventional sales, but also from social media marketing for its brand partners. The startup’s biz dev director, Amy Cheng, explains how it works:
The luxury companies in China, including the beauty brands, have only recently started realizing how important having a strong online presence is and how essential social media is in building brand awareness, but many of these companies have yet to build this capability internally or are still very weak in this area. […] This is where MyLuxBox comes in. We help brand partners with their social media marketing by leveraging the sampling and our vast social network – over 32 million in social reach in Greater China – to generate online buzz and increase brand awareness for the brands.
Some MyLuxBox subscribers in China show off what they got in their latest monthly box on social media.
And so MyLuxBox describes itself as a social media marketing enterprise as well, and is active on Sina Weibo, Renren, Kaixin, and Douban, talking about brands and products as much as their own boxes of goodies. For example, here’s its Weibo page.
The startup freely admits to being inspired by such US sites as Birchbox and Blissmo, which have kickstarted this new genre of home-shopping by injecting into it the element of surprise and fun, giving consumers more products to toy with with smaller-sized samples. For brands, they get a social media boost from MyLuxBox and its rivals, and also get to reach out to new customers – plus, those subscribers might well share samples with friends, generating some word-of-mouth advertising as well.
There are a few other sites in the same sector in China, such as Glamabox, GlossyBox, and 1P1G, which take different approaches and have varying price points and differing brands.
Interestingly, MyLuxBox’s CEO, MD and co-founder, and biz dev director (the afore-quoted Amy) are all alumni of Gaopeng, Groupon’s (NASDAQ:GRPN) venture in China.
We’ll update you with funding news when it arrives.
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Greater China is mainland China plus Hong Kong and Taiwan. ↩
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On a related note, recently we looked at CandyJapan, which uses the same subscription e-commerce model to send out packages of bizarre and wonderful Japanese sweets to customers around the world. But that’s a one-man operation for now. ↩