U-KOMI was introduced with the aim of conveying the quality of products through reviews. Increased sales were realized through the acquisition of numerous reviews and improved CV rates.

Mardurex Co., Ltd. specializes in selling cosmetics and skincare products, primarily through its foundation brand, via e-commerce and direct-to-consumer channels. Recognizing the importance of reviews in conveying the quality of their products to new customers, the company implemented U-KOMI. This resulted in a significant increase in reviews and a noticeable boost in sales through their e-commerce platform. In this article, we spoke with 鈴木様, who oversees U-KOMI operations at the company, about the challenges they faced before implementing U-KOMI and the results achieved since its introduction.

Selling foundation and skincare products primarily through e-commerce

First, could you tell us about your business?

Our company primarily handles foundation and skincare products under the brand "Ex:BEAUTE." The brand has a history of over 20 years, and we have sold a cumulative total of approximately 9.7 million units of foundation (as of August 2023). Our main customer base consists of women in their 40s to early 60s.

Driven by the belief that “foundation designed to enhance beauty should never burden the skin,” we have dedicated ourselves to crafting products that spare no effort to ensure skin remains beautiful even 10 years down the line. Ex:BEAUTE’s commitment extends beyond the finish to ensuring “beautiful skin for the future.” The high-quality finish of our base makeup is also supported by actresses and models active on actual photo shoots and other professional settings.

Is e-commerce your main sales channel?

Our own e-commerce site is the main channel, but we also supply products to retail stores such as LOFT and Tokyu Hands, as well as mail-order companies like Co-op, Nissen, and Belluna. In terms of sales breakdown, our own e-commerce site accounts for about 60%, mail-order wholesale for about 30%, and retail stores for about 10%.

We implemented U-KOMI to create an e-commerce site where the quality of our products is conveyed to new customers through reviews

What challenges did you face before implementing the review tool?

Although our core e-commerce system originally had a feature to collect reviews, we were unable to effectively use it to gather reviews and leverage them for promotions. On our e-commerce site, we had no visibility into product reviews, nor could we see how users were using our products on social media.

Many customers have been using our brand for over 10 years, and these long-time fans continue to love our products even if the product presentation on our e-commerce site is insufficient. However, the site was difficult for new customers to understand, so we wanted to display reviews and social media posts to convey the product’s features and benefits at a glance.

Were your existing review tools inconvenient? Also, with other review tools available, could you tell us what made you decide to implement U-KOMI?

With our existing review tool, it took a significant amount of effort just to get customers to write reviews, making it very difficult to collect them—this was a major challenge. Additionally, while we could display reviews, we couldn’t sort them, and we were unable to edit them to remove prohibited words (especially those related to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law).

We considered several other review tools, but U-KOMI was the most affordable option, and the fact that they handle the setup process tailored to our company’s needs was the deciding factor. We also believed that having reviews would lead to sales growth that would more than offset the implementation costs, and we felt that since reviews could be obtained simply by replying to emails, it would be easier to gather them—these factors were also key in our decision.

Since implementing U-KOMI, we’ve been able to collect 30 to 40 reviews per product. This has had a positive impact on sales growth.

What results have you seen since implementing U-KOMI?

Since implementing U-KOMI, we’ve been able to acquire an average of 30 to 40 reviews per product. Additionally, when we experimentally implemented a heatmap on a high-traffic page, we found that users were viewing reviews all the way to the second page. It feels like the reviews are addressing customers’ questions and needs, effectively encouraging them to make a purchase.Page dwell time and bounce rates have also increased, and our overall conversion rate has improved since implementation. Based on these results, we feel that U-KOMI has had a positive impact on expanding our e-commerce sales.

Since reviews started coming in, we’ve been able to objectively reaffirm the strengths of our products—such as their high coverage—and utilize negative comments to improve our products, which are also benefits of the implementation.

In terms of support, when we wanted to quickly gather reviews for our summer cosmetics, we consulted with the support team about points such as “what kind of subject line yields the highest response rate” and “how to effectively set tags when sending emails,” and they responded immediately. Thanks to that, we were able to collect reviews very quickly.

Finally, could you share your future outlook and what you hope to see from U-KOMI?

I haven’t encountered any particular issues with the system itself. Moving forward, I’d like to make even greater use of U-KOMI’s features—such as displaying Instagram posts higher up on the page than we do now, and collecting reviews via LINE as well.