Pinning down success with COLORIS’s “needle brand strategy”
The personalized hair coloring brand COLORIS, which launched in the fall of 2019, is the first brand by Tokyo-based startup Stork Mediation. Let’s dive into what COLORIS is all about and the unique strategy behind it.
COLORIS is a service where, by drawing from over 10,000 different formula patterns, hair dyes are customized to suit the unique hair condition and color of individual consumers and then delivered to their door. Pricing starts at 3,980 yen (US$36) per delivery, and a regular purchase option is also available.
The brand is run by Stork Mediation Co., Ltd. CEO Yuki Umeno previously worked at Pola Orbis Holdings before he broke off to launch his startup in November 2018.
In using the COLORIS service, customers first answer questions online concerning 11 aspects of their hair, including its length, thickness, the last time it was dyed, and what hair color they’re interested in applying. Then, based on these answers, the formula for the dye, the dying duration, and the treatment medicine are all planned and decided in an algorithm created with beauty experts.
Normally at hair salons, a beautician checks the condition of the customer’s hair and, after hearing their preferences and requests, mixes together both a developer and a color base before applying the dye. By bringing this process online, COLORIS allows the experience of salon-quality hair coloring in the user’s own home. While they outsource manufacturing to OEM maker Shisei-chem Co., Ltd., they’re still able to provide the service at a more reasonable price range through the omission of the fees related to beauticians’ practical skills.
There are already a number of companies in Japan that have entered the field of personalized shampoo, but COLORIS is the first brand here to start out in the field of personalized hair coloring.
Compared to shampoo and hair treatment, hair coloring tends to have higher Life Time Value, and consumers more naturally continue to use a hair coloring product they’ve grown fond of. CEO Umeno explains that on launching the brand he decided to adopt a DTC (Direct-To-Consumer) business model, and in wanting to first concentrate on strengthening the brand’s base, he chose hair coloring as his first business, because it was a product category where consumers displayed more customer loyalty. He also says that success in the US of brands such as Madison Reed and eSalon has helped to boost confidence in his business.
At the moment, COLORIS has around 300 users, and its rate of persistence has climbed to 90%. As the business has grown, Umeno has also found that because consumers are unfamiliar with evaluating their hair color through an online process, it’s been necessary to create opportunities for them to do so. As many consumers claim that it’s difficult to judge by themselves the thickness or thinness of their hair or amount of their white hairs, the company has started providing hair counseling with specialist beauticians over the LINE messaging app, with the purpose of encouraging consumers to take online hair analyses.
Aiming to create 100 lifestyle brands
For Stork Mediation, COLORIS is just the beginning — they plan to launch many other brands. In fact, their goal is to “create 100 lifestyle brands by 2040”. In a market environment where mass-marketed brands are getting harder to produce, Stork Mediation is taking the direction of developing multiple brands in parallel, each of which is niche and can more deeply “pierce” into the needs of customers. Recognizing that times are changing fast, they’re looking 10 years down the track at how much customers’ values are likely to widen and diversify.
Umeno recognizes that “conglomerate companies that roll out all sorts of highly independent businesses that aren’t directly related have come to be regarded as being inefficient. However, I think we’ll soon see an era where conglomerates become more valuable. In times of greater uncertainty, it is conglomerate business entities that can more easily absorb risks.” Indeed, for his vision of becoming a conglomerate, Umeno is considering a wide range of ideas, including launching new projects with his company, mergers and acquisitions, and investments.
Umeno has likened the idea of many different brands strongly engaging many different individual customers with pinning things down with needles, and has named this the “needle brand strategy”. Consumers are diverse, and rolling out mass-marketed brands that cover the preferences of the majority is not easy. Rather, narrowing down to specific segments and producing several brands that are adapted to different types of needs is what will best fulfill consumers’ needs overall.
One industry insider made the prediction that “one brand will emerge with an influential hit in 2020 among the many DTC brands that have appeared so far”. The realization of Umeno’s “needle brand strategy” will depend on first what degree of growth his first brand COLORIS can achieve this year, and then what kind of brands he’ll launch as numbers two and three.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Mina Shimizu
