Berrybenka.com is an online shopping website for fashion and beauty products operated in Indonesia. Nowadays, it provides 1000 local and international brands, including products from in-house local label. Berrybenka offers a combination of the latest beauty products and fashion to every personal style, ranging from clothing, dresses, tops, bags, shoes, bikini, lingeries and outfit for kids. The mission of the startup is providing fun, easy, and reliable shopping experience to satisfy customers with new collections and special offers every day. In order to do that, Berrybenka.com offers variety of benefits such as ease of product returns up to 30 days after receipt, pay on-site and free shipping.
According to Jason Lamuda, CEO Berrybenka.com, during the grand launching of Berrybenka.com in 2013 as stated in Kompas.com, that what differentiates Berrybenka.com from other e-commerce is its concept to costumer to campaign “Its not hard to be fashionable”. Moreover, Berrybenka.com has price range of products – considered as affordable – from Rp 100,000 to Rp 300,000. When it was launched in 2013, Berrybenka.com introduced the new platform to public by organizing roadshow in several design campuses. The Roadshow aimed to encourage local designers and brands to introduce and market their products in Berrybenka.com.
Who is the founder?
BerryBenka was founded by two women Claudia Widjaya and Yenti Elizabeth. It was run in small scale online shop using Facebook as its main platform to sell products to costumers. Then, the online shop transformed into e-commerce website in 2013 with the contribution of its new CEO, Jason Lamuda, who successfully developed the new e-commerce to be the biggest Indonesian fashion e-commmerce. Jason began his career in McKinsey as a business consultant in August 2008 for two years after graduating from Columbia University, majoring Financial Engineering. He founded Disdus with his colleague, Ferry Tenka, later on acquired by Groupon in 2011. After that, he initiated Berrybenka which first operated using Facebook as marketing platform. He named after 4th most notable start up entrepreneur in 2015 by beritagar.id, alongside with other famous names such as Andrew Darwis (founder of Kaskus), William Tanuwidjaja (founder of Tokopedia.com), David Wayne Ika (founder of Kurio), and Nadiem Makarim (founder of Gojek).
Who invested for Berrybenka.com?
Berrybenka first operated in August 2011 then gained significant increasing in terms of variety of brands. Until March 2012, it sold 50 brands then folded five times to 250 brands in January 2013. In its initial, Berrybenka received seed funding from East Ventures, Singapore based investment company, in 2012, but the amount was never revealed. Then, in early 2013, it received Serie A investment from prestigious investment company from Japan, Gree Ventures. The Serie A funding used for the BerryBenka management to expand payment methods, fashion variety and create smartphone app. Then at the end of 2013, Berrybenka granted Serie B investment, also from Gree Ventures, accounted for 5 million USD, which recorded as biggest Serie B investment for Indonesian start up company.
Who is the competitor?
Berrybenka.com faces competition with exixting fashion marketplace, zalora.com, which was launched in 2012. Berrybenka’s global rank is 26499, while Zalora is 8469. Both sites are face to face as well in terms of search traffic percentage in Indonesia, 92.3 % for Berrybenka and 96,4 % for Zalora.
How Berrybenka Engaged with Local Brands?
Berrybenka declared on of its mission to support local brands. It declared that 40% of the products in the website are made by Berrybenka team, means that the start up has its own fashion label. The production of fashion item involves 50 tailors and 15 designers to create products for the label. While 60% of other products are from local Small-Medium Enterprises. In 2016, it claimed that there were 850 SMEs around Indonesia supplying various products for sale in Berrybenka. To engage with local fashion enterpreneurs, Berrybenka encourage them who want to expand their brand, to send product details to sales@berrybenka.com. As stated in the website, by displaying a collection of the brands in Berrybenka.com, so that it can raise internet user’s attention. In addition, Berrybenka will market the brands online and offline also provides photographers and models for supporting the brand image.
The business model engagement with local brands is based on consignment. Local brands that become Berrybenka partners will put their products in the warehouse. Furthermore, Berrybenka team will take care of the rest, ranging from shooting of the products, ordering, and delivery to the customers. For each sale of the products, Berrybenka get the commission. At first, Berrybenka experienced problems in convincing small local brands to join Berrybenka. Many of those still can be sure that they can increase sales via the internet. But slowly, Berrybenka managed to establish a good image of the company which eventually able to attract local brands to trust Berrybenka as a business partner.
Dedicated Division For Muslim Fashion, Hijabenka
In June 2014, Berrybenka created new platform to sell moslem fashion items, namely Hijabenka. The fashion moslem products, especially for women, ranging from tops, dress, skirt, tunic, scarves and accessories and produced by 150 local insudtries in Indonesia. According to Lily Suryani, CMO of Berrybenka, in the interview with Dailysocial.id, Hijabenka create engagement with hijab community and give support or support for the community events. Besides, Hijabenka also collaborate with Muslim fashion designers to make Hijabenka as the distribution channel.
Due to wide range of customers of moslem fashion items, Hijabenka increased the sale significantly. During 2014 to 2015, transaction in Hijabenka showed the development of up to 300%, far more than Berrybenka which only reached 200% by the year 2015. CEO of Berybenka, Jason Lamuda, stated that the best-selling products and the most transaction do not always come from product which has popular brand name. In case of Berrybenka, the sub product like Hijabenka actually achieved significant increase of sale and transaction.
How Berrybenka Will Do the Business in 2016?
Jason explained in interview with dailysocial.id that the mian focus of Berrybenka’s business plan in 2016 is maintaining its core business as biggest fashion e commerce in Indonesia. To focus on the fashion products business, Berrybenka planed to do some several strategies such as organize pop-up offline bazaar within Jabodetabek (Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi), introduce new payment method via Indomaret, expand the penetration of outside Jabodetabek and develop mobile application. The start up also targeted to be a biggest fashion e-commerce in Indonesia with 90% of its products come from local. It also aimed to provide the convenience of shopping experience through websites, applications, chat platforms and phone call as well created appealing packages of the products for the cutomers.
In Addition, Berrybenka also plan to expand the service by opening pop-up stores in some major cities around Indonesia such as Medan, Makassar, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Manadi and Balikpapan. Jason said that the pop up store project aim to strengthen Berrybenka Brand outside Greater Jakarta area. It was started in 28 Januari 2016 in Medan, and will be followed in other cities. Moreover, to engage loser with the cutomers, the company planning to open e-commerce hubs in Surabaya and Bandung.
In other hand, the digital service also became important part of Berrybenka. Thus, it has created messaging service in the mobile app so costumers can have real time communication with the costumer service. To make shopping experience more convenience, the company also collaborate with Indomaret chain as payment merchant. In the latest interview with the Jakarta Post, Jason stated that the company goal in the end is to not only become the most notable fashion brand in Indonesia but to also help promote the creation of local brands. Nowadays, almost 90% of products in Berrybenka are produced by local companies.