If you follow #beautytok, #beautytube, or any other beauty content on social media platforms, then you are aware that it may be challenging to keep up with the most popular product trends. The way that Summer International keeps one step ahead of its competitors is by locating the most powerful content producers and collaborating with these individuals to incubate new companies. Summer International was started in Singapore and now has offices in both Los Angeles and South Korea. The company announced today that it has successfully raised $5 million in seed funding from a number of investors, including GDP Ventures, Teja Ventures, Gushcloud International, and two angel investors from Singapore named Koh Boon Hwee and Shirley Crystal Tan.
Toni Ko, the original originator of NYX and the current CEO of Bespoke Beauty Brands, will also be joining Summer International as a strategic investor. L’Oréal completed the acquisition of NYX in 2014 for a price of around $500 million.
Xiaoski Kuik, co-founder and CEO of Summer International, said that the company’s mission is to build an ecosystem that would assist beauty influencers and creators in launching and selling their own beauty products by using consumer data and analytics. The company has operations in a number of countries, including the United States of America, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
The year 2018 saw the beginning of operations for both the corporation and its sister enterprise, Gushcloud International, an influencer marketing organization. Since then, Summer International has helped start up brands like the skincare line Baby Face with Singaporean influencer Jamie Chua, who has more than 1.2 million followers, and the wellness brand HANJAN, which launched at Coachella in April and recently teamed up with singer Nicole Scherzinger.
According to what Kuik told TechCrunch, Summer International looks for creators and influencers who have a strong connection with their audience based on engagement rates, how active they are on video-first platforms, and whether or not they have a strong localized community as well as a global presence.
She said that the majority of the time, creators come to them because of our reach and resources. “We are capable of distributing brands all throughout Asia thanks to our social commerce and live distribution platforms, as well as the fact that we operate our very own supply chain.” The establishment of these leading influencers as the creators of the next generation of beauty, skincare, and wellness companies is our primary objective, and we want to do this by providing them with the access and tools they need to successfully penetrate the market.
Pietra and Forma Brands are two such examples of firms that collaborate with artists throughout the brand launch process. According to Ko, Summer International separates itself from competitors by having its own distribution network. In addition, the company has a network of live commerce and social commerce distributors, with the majority of them being micro-influencers headquartered in Southeast Asia.
“It provides us the capacity to understand data about what customers want and would purchase, and this enables us to partner with artists to establish brands in a more cost-efficient way,” Kuik said. “It gives us the ability to grasp data on what consumers want and would buy.” The live commerce distribution network that Summer International maintains enables the company to better understand the brands and items that customers in various areas of Southeast Asia wish to purchase. In addition to this, it supplies data points such as price and demography that may be used to establish new brands and sell those brands.
E-commerce platforms, social and live commerce platforms, and traditional brick-and-mortar retail locations are just some of the ways that Summer International brands are distributed to customers throughout the world. They can also be bought through Summer.store, a social shopping platform that is only for the brand.
