How this Korean skincare brand successfully expanded overseas

I’m Choi Min-young, CEO of Austin Bio Co., Ltd.

Austin Bio Co., Ltd. creates skincare products and tools with Hyaluronic Acid. In 2021, they joined Alibaba.com and launched various brands such as Audery and Fillersoopy to produce even safer products at a higher quality than those sold in the existing market using a new technology called MSFT. Now they have developed a wide international following through their online store on Alibaba.com.

What motivated you to sell on Alibaba.com?

Due to the unique selling points of our products, the B2B market is more suitable for us than the B2C market. And when it comes to expanding into overseas B2B markets, you don’t need to look any further than Alibaba.com. Our first goal was to effectively get the word out to buyers all over the world about our main brand Audrey and increase our sales. Alibaba.com has more than 300 million members worldwide, so it is the first place we looked for our overseas market entry strategy.

Were there any difficulties when selling on Alibaba.com and how did you overcome them?

As soon as we joined Alibaba.com, we tried to market our goods aggressively. we released about 100 posts within the first 2 months of entering the store, but I was very embarrassed that the number of high-rated posts dropped sharply in September. However, with the help of our local service partners, we learned all about the standards to post high-quality products. Photos account for the largest portion of the posting score, I uploaded the photos from various angles that showed a clean presentation of our products. In order to really sell the unique character of our products, we made sure to provide very detailed descriptions to increase the score we got from our product information.

I think the most helpful strategy was deciding to put information anywhere we could; I used every bit of the available text, diagrams, and pictures in the sections available to upload things. After all these conditions had been met, we easily got more than 4 out of 5 posting points, and since then, we have steadily uploaded products following the same process. Now, we have achieved more than 200 high-quality posts, and those get shown to buyers a lot more often by the platform. As a result of our diligence on optimizing our product scores, the boost in our performance began to show. Our exposure in October and November increased by about 165% compared to September! That increased exposure drove the number of active buyers up by about 200% compared to before, and the conversion rate of inquiries we got from clicks increased by 20%.

What was the key to getting lots of buyers on Alibaba.com?

First, you have to work very hard on posting your products. As you are in a global marketplace, you are competing on an international level with some of the biggest manufacturers in the world. You can only expect to get the attention of global buyers only after working harder and harder than other sellers. The amount of high-quality posts in a short time is very important, but it is still important to regularly proceed with posts and update your keywords constantly in existing postings to match the latest trending keywords.

Second, it is very important to respond quickly when you do get inquiries from buyers. This is the most important thing in communicating with buyers and delivering accurate product information that answers their questions clearly. Buyers often contact multiple companies at the same time when they are looking for companies on Alibaba.com. Getting your product details to them quickly often decides whether it would lead to an actual order or not.

Finally, we need to cooperate well with Alibaba.com’s official partners that are in charge of helping get our company set up. They are partners who have been running Alibaba.com for a longer time than we beginners have. So, we understood the importance of learning from them and frequently asked questions that helped upgrade our operations strategy. We were grateful to get partnered with the Alibaba.com official channel partner, CK Bridge Co., Ltd., when we joined Alibaba.com. We were blown away by how much attention we got and really appreciated the dozens of inquiries that came in a single day. We are still in our first year of selling on Alibaba.com, and we already have a 2-star supplier rating.

What would you say are Alibaba.com’s strengths?

Alibaba.com is one of the biggest B2B platforms on the planet with the largest number of visitors across numerous B2B sectors; so, it is packed with buyers and new opportunities to grow sales. The categories within Alibaba.com are so well organized that buyers can easily and quickly find the product and suppliers they need but getting your products to the top of the list is where the real magic happens. When you are in the global market spotlight, getting buyer inquiries is easy. We are dedicated to continually expanding into even more countries and we know Alibaba.com is our path to that goal.