How Hero Cosmetics scaled their omnichannel advertising with Perpetua to increase attributed sales by 3x

Hero Cosmetics, the skincare company co-founded by Ju Rhyu, started off with one product, their infamous Mighty Patch, which has since grown into a best-selling line of pimple patches, as well as a robust lineup of face and body skincare solutions for acne-prone skin.

Unlike other direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands that traditionally launch with a DTC site first, Hero Cosmetics launched Amazon-first in 2017, and earned the Amazon Best Seller badge in 2020. With an already strong presence on Amazon when the pandemic hit in 2020, Hero Cosmetics was well-positioned to leverage their existing eCommerce presence to expand into and dominate new marketplaces in 2021.

This meant finding a partner that allowed them to test and learn what works to best scale their ads efficiently, while giving them a holistic view into their omnichannel performance.

Working with Perpetua, Hero Cosmetics has:

• scaled from Amazon to 5 additional marketplaces in the last year including Target, Walmart, Instacart, Ulta and GoPuff

• increased total attributed sales by 3x

• scaled impressions by 222% on aggregate across all marketplaces

Challenge

For Hero Cosmetics, their marketplace expansion comes down to playing the strategic long game — adopting new marketplaces early enough to test and learn what works best. This means knowing what products/SKUs will perform best, and understanding the pros and cons of the ad inventory of that market.

But to do this, they required a partner that could get them into marketplaces early, and provide SKU-level performance insights cross-channel.

“We’re willing to accept a lower ROAS on these new marketplaces.” says Alan Kwok, Growth Lead at Hero Cosmetics, “We understand it takes investment to see a longtime goal come to fruition and getting access to early Betas enables us to de-risk ourselves and prepare for the future.”

Solution

To get access to these new marketplaces early, and in one place, Hero Cosmetics, an existing Perpetua customer for Amazon Ads, leveraged Perpetua’s new marketplace Betas to build out a robust omnichannel advertising strategy. Housing all of their marketplaces in a single platform, Hero Cosmetics has been able to ensure that goals are created, managed and optimized in a cohesive manner unlocking aggregate and per marketplace reporting that provides insights into cross-channel purchasing behaviour and sales.

“What I love about working with Perpetua is our access to a dedicated Data Strategist and eCommerce Associate when onboarding to a new marketplace beta. We’re learning and building together — having someone that has bought into our brand to help us strategize really makes us feel like a true partner, not just customers,” says Alan Kwok.

“One of Perpetua’s big strengths is allowing brands to look at performance of specific products,” says Hero Cosmetics’ Director of Amazon, Aaron Mizrahi. “As we launch into new channels, it’s important for us to understand which SKUs are in demand or can even succeed on that channel, and with the flexibility of Perpetua’s goals to hone in at a product-level, we can track performance for each product across each channel.”

Results

As a result of their early adoption to new marketplaces like Instacart, Target, Walmart, GoPuff, and Ulta, Hero Cosmetics has seen a 222% increase in impressions, and driven a 247% increase in attributed sales. Through testing and learning across each new marketplace, they’ve been able to more efficiently scale their spend6x on aggregate.

For newer marketplaces like Target, for example, Hero Cosmetics has seen record growth, driving a 128% increase in attributed sales in the first 6 months since launch, and 824% in 10 months respectively.

To get started or learn more about how Perpetua can help you scale your eCommerce business, contact us at hello@perpetua.io.