Godiva Skin Care

Godiva’s Secret to E-Commerce Success Revealed

GODIVA Natural Skin Care continues to attain unparalleled heights of achievement, bagging the highly coveted “Information Technology (IT) Excellence Awards” --- the first and only major award given by the Philippine Internet Commerce Society (PICS) during the 2nd National E-Commerce Congress and Exhibit.

See the news articles through the links below:

"Tech places RP firm
on world skincare map"

"Godiva bags top IT
award for SMEs"

Since launching its online store in 2000, Philippine-based natural skin care company Godiva, Inc. has grown into an e-commerce powerhouse, with thousands of loyal customers in over a dozen countries, by effectively utilizing the latest Internet tools to the fullest through its two online stores: www.godivaskincare.com and www.i-godiva.com.

As a model for using e-commerce in developing the global market for a Philippine brand, Godiva was awarded the IT Excellence Award, the first and only major award given by the Philippine Internet Commerce Society (PICS) during the 2nd National E-Commerce Congress and Exhibit at the Philippine Trade Training Center last December 2. This award is just one among the company’s roster of achievements, having been bestowed the People’s Choice Award for best skin care product, the National Consumers Excellence Award for most outstanding and innovative skin care product and the Gawad Makamasa Award for outstanding facial care product.

Godiva is a natural skin care company which harnesses only the best ingredients from nature to treat specific skin concerns. Known for its innovative, safe and effective skin care products, Godiva has firmly established itself as the pioneer in the use of Licorice Extract in its Skin Whitening Line. As a result, the breakthrough product line, which shows clinically-proven results in as early as 7 days, has been garnering a strong and enthusiastic following among satisfied customers all over the world.

Customer Satisfaction

Three years ago, the company launched its online store at www.godivaskincare.com to exploit opportunities for Internet commerce and to target the Filipino immigrant communities. Then local IT firm PDB SME Solutions, Inc. (now Planters Development Bank-PMMD), a subsidiary of Planters Development Bank, was tapped to set up the e-commerce platform and address Godiva’s information dissemination drive.

As it turned out, most of the online buyers were Caucasians and African-Americans who were concerned with skin discolorations due to sun exposure and other factors. Stacie Cobb, a chemical engineer from Connecticut, USA, was ecstatic when she shared her experience with Godiva’s skin whitening line, just one of the many testimonials from worldwide customers featured in the Godiva websites. She attests:

“As an African-American female, I feel it is my duty to let it be known that this product really does work on black skin . . . I ordered the Godiva Licorice Skin Whitening Starter Pack and as promised, I started to see NOTICEABLE results within a week . . . Thank you so much for bringing this product to the market. It’s REAL, it WORKS and I’m a living testimony to it. My complexion is completely clear now after only about two months of use. My OVERALL skin color (and skin texture) is almost what it is when I was a child and I couldn’t be happier. The melasma is completely gone now too.”

Aside from skin whitening, Godiva’s product lines include anti-acne, anti-aging, anti-stress, suncare and pregnancy care. Orders have grown steadily through the years, reaching customers from Asia to as far as America, Europe, Australia, and even Africa. Godiva has also appointed PT San Prima Sejati as exclusive distributor for Indonesia and is eyeing yet even more distributors in various countries.

Digital Edge

Godiva’s two websites have partnered with international online-payment gateways based in the United States to facilitate credit card transactions. The company takes every precaution to protect its customers’ sensitive information – both online and offline – so clients can be assured of secure transactions and safe transmission of personal details.

To remain at the forefront of e-commerce, Godiva constantly seeks new technologies and better ways of servicing its customers. The company provides proactive and personalized online customer service where concerns and queries are addressed within 24 hours. Moreover, all orders are shipped immediately, and delivered in 2 to 3 days worldwide through courier service providers FedEx and DHL. Most customers are pleasantly surprised with Godiva’s prompt shipping service.

“Wow! I received my order today. It only took a couple of days," says one customer from Nevada, USA. Another customer from California declares, “I just received the products today and am looking forward to using them immediately. I was surprised at how fast they got here. You have wonderful service."

In addressing the problem on high international shipping fees, Godiva offers its customers free worldwide shipping on orders of $50 and above. And in cases where a customer is not satisfied with the product shipped, a 100% refund is guaranteed without any wrangling or haggling.

Promos such as rebates and free products are being offered to increase patronage and extend goodwill among its clientele. Customers can get as much 10% in rebates or free Godiva Green Tea Sunblock Cream on orders over $100. Wholesale distributors likewise enjoy as much as 50% off on orders of $1,000 and more, still with free shipping anywhere in the world.

To keep customers in the loop, a weekly e-newsletter is sent for free to all subscribers. It features skin care tips, pick of the month and testimonial of the month, promos, product updates, and skin care advice among others. A special promo for e-newsletter subscribers has also been created where seven winners per week receive 7% off on their online Godiva purchases. Free personalized skin evaluations can also be availed of by simply filling out an online form. From there, a Godiva Skin Care Counselor assesses an individual’s skin type and addresses the client’s skin care concerns by email.

Godiva’s secrets to e-commerce success lie in its commitment to provide first-class security on transactions which give customers peace of mind when shopping online, highly efficient customer service, and affordable yet effective products that offer the best from nature.

For inquiries, e-mail info@godivaskincare.com or info@igodiva.com

THE GODIVA STORY

(Speech delivered by Fred C. Reyes, President of Godiva Inc., during the Young Entrepreneurs Convention of the University of the Philippines (UP) Circle of Entrepreneurs at the Legend Hotel, Mandaluyong City, Philippines, on March 8, 2003.)

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk before you, a young group of people who dream of becoming multi-millionaires. One question that always comes up when I am with people like you who want to start their own business is this, “When is the right time to start a business? Or, should we even think of starting one, eh ang gulo-gulo na at may economic crisis pa sa ating bansa?” (Or, should we even think of starting one, when things are in turmoil and there is an economic crisis in the country?”)

If that is also your question, let me answer you by citing my own experiences.

Before Godiva, my first venture was Chemworld. Chemworld is the specialty chemical trading business I started in late 1985. That was just a few months before the first EDSA revolution. It was a crazy time to start a business, especially an import-dependent business, when you source dollars not from banks but from the black market. You can imagine me calling on my clients in the morning, and marching on the streets in the afternoon. What a way to start a business!

When Marcos escaped to Hawaii, and Cory was installed as President in February 1986, Chemworld’s client network was in place. We experienced exponential growth afterwards.

Then we started Godiva in late 1996, a time when things looked rosy – on the surface. Suddenly, in July 1997, we were jolted by the Asian currency crisis. The peso dived from 26 to 46 against the US dollar. All our ingredients are imported so the financial crisis really hurt us. Well, Godiva not just survived the crisis. It even thrived in the aftermath. We confirmed the old belief that women would spend more to look good and feel good, especially during times of crisis. While most companies were laying off personnel, we continued to expand and hire more people.

The answer then is clear. There will always be opportunities even when there is blood on the streets. In good times and in bad, a true entrepreneur is always willing to take the risks.

Another important quality that should help entrepreneurs become successful is the ability to spot opportunities. The story of how Godiva started is a classic case of turning a problem into an opportunity.

In 1994, Chemworld was promoting licorice extract as the best whitening ingredient you can possibly get from nature. We showed the biggest skin care manufacturers how licorice is 16 times better than hydroquinone and 30 times more active than melawhite. We even commissioned a group of independent dermatologists from UP-Philippine General Hospital (PGH) to prove our claims. The clinical study showed that licorice produced significant result in as early as 7 days! Amazing! We presented the result to our prospective customers. By offering the best, we thought it will be easy to sell licorice extract to the industry giants. We were wrong. All the clients of Chemworld rejected licorice. They don’t even want to tinker with it in their labs. Why? Because licorice is very expensive. It costs one million pesos per kilo at today’s depreciated peso. Compare that to hydroquinone which is only P 300.00 per kg. They all said, the Philippines is not ready for such kind of ingredient.

Meantime, licorice as a highly effective and revolutionary skin-whitening ingredient was met with tremendous response by the dermatologists in Metro Manila, who learned of the result of the clinical study. Licorice made significant waves in the said sector that an impressive number of dermatologists were even knocking on our doors, asking for supply of licorice whitening cream. We obliged. We served the professional market. We can see that our product is really good by the enthusiastic response of the doctors. However, that market is very small. Sayang naman yung licorice if only the rich who can afford the dermatologists can enjoy its benefits. (It’s a pity if the benefits of licorice would be available only to the rich who can afford the dermatologists.)

We know deep in our hearts that licorice for whitening has a huge business potential, in spite of its atrocious cost. With the big players rejecting licorice, the only way we can tap that huge potential is to launch our own consumer product. And Godiva was born in 1996.

Why the name Godiva? Godiva is an old English word which means Gift of God. Since our product positioning is natural skin care, we thought the name is appropriate for a product that derives its ingredients from nature. Nature is God’s gift, of course. There is also the legendary Lady Godiva who rode naked on a horse to protest the increase in taxes imposed by the King of Coventry in England. The name still fits our skin care line since Lady Godiva rode au naturel. The added benefit of the brand name Godiva is that it creates the image of a beautiful goddess, an imported one at that.

That’s exactly the perception when Godiva first came out on the shelves of Shoemart and Mercury Drug. That it’s an imported brand. Our product packaging was unique and very professionally done. Our cost for the package design? One thousand five hundred pesos only, courtesy of Design Center of the Philippines. That we priced our products at the high end of the market also helped create the impression that Godiva is an imported brand. If I recall right, the rage of the whitening market then was Block & White lotion which was priced at P 30.00. Our whitening lotion was P 150.00, or 5 times more expensive. Of course, we cannot help it. We are using the most expensive ingredient in the world. An equivalent product from Kanebo or Christian Dior costs 10 times more than Godiva. And we use the same licorice ingredients.

By pricing our products higher than mass-marketed brands, we also got the attention of our target market. The first question we have to answer is, “Anong karapatan ng Godiva na magpresyo ng ganyan kataas?” (What right does Godiva have to price its products that high?”)

The challenge then for us is to communicate well the benefits of using licorice as a whitening active. That is a big challenge since there are very few people who know what licorice is. Even the few who are familiar with licorice know the product as flavouring for gummy bear. To tell them that licorice whitens skin can only be met with incredulity. We cannot, therefore, just rely on ads as you can only say so much and, at best, just create awareness. Besides, we have very small budget for advertising. That little we had, we used on print ads in women’s magazines. But we used extensively leaflets, glossy, professional, full-color leaflets which explain in detail the features and benefits of Godiva licorice skin whiteners. We decided that we need informational campaigns more than advertising campaigns.

Then we positioned promo girls in every outlet we opened. We trained them very well. We trained them not only how to sell, but also gave them intensive training on Godiva products and common skin care concerns. We did not call them promo girls. We called them skin care counselors. We did this to boost their self-esteem, for them to feel that they are not ordinary frontliners but several notches above the rest. This worked very well, especially when we introduced an incentive scheme that rewards performance over and above what is expected of them. Most of our skin care counselors get an equivalent of 15 months’ pay, some as much as 18 months.

In effect, we brought our battle for the consumer’s pocket away from media where we are weak, to the outlets where the buying decision is made, and where we are very strong. We took away sales from competing brands which spent millions in trimedia advertising campaigns but neglected to post their own girls in the outlets. Godiva is consistently among the top 5 skin care brands in outlets where it is available even though it has much lesser product lines than competing brands.

If you have a good product, word-of-mouth will work for you more than any ad campaign. Our market research showed that 70% of new users of Godiva bought our products because they were recommended by a friend, or a relative. How did we use this information to further boost our sales? We did extensive product sampling. We participated in special events and paid with products. We booked print ads on ex-deal basis. We sponsored movie premieres, golf tournaments, beauty contests and provided Godiva products as prizes. The multiplier effect of experiencing a really good product is simply amazing.

When we were just starting, we wanted to focus on manufacturing and marketing and just get a distribution company to handle opening of outlets, restocking, and collection. We wanted to simplify our life since we really have no in-house knowledge of these things.

We approached Metro Drug, McCondray, and some other regional distributors. They refused to take us in as their customer. Being an unknown brand with an expensive price tag, the distributors believed we were a very risky proposition.

We had no choice then but to approach directly our target outlets. We went to Mercury Drug and SM, they having the widest reach of the market. It took almost 6 months for Mercury Drug to approve us, but there was to be no central purchasing for our products. We have to go from branch to branch to beg for purchase order. We did that and all we got were a few pieces of products for an initial order from the few branches who agreed. Talo ka pa sa delivery cost. (And we ended spending even more for delivery cost.)

Sa Shoemart naman (In the case of Shoemart), they accepted Godiva provisionally at 2 La Botica outlets, in SM Sta. Mesa and SM Megamall. They said, if you make good there, we will give you more branches. It turned out that these two outlets are the worst-performing La Botica outlets. And that’s where they wanted to try us.

We were beggars so we just have to accept the little windows of opportunities opened to us. What we did, we positioned our best girls at La Botica and placed roving promo girls at Mercury Drug branches. Our orders from Mercury Drug slowly increased as sales picked up. At La Botica, we surprised SM by being one of their top sellers in the two small branches. So SM gave us more branches to sell at, but not at once. It took us about a year before Godiva became available in all SM outlets.

We used our track record at SM and Mercury Drug to open other department stores and supermarkets. We focused on Metro Manila and Luzon during the first 3 years, followed by Visayas, and just 2 years ago, Mindanao. For Visayas and Mindanao, we looked for employees with supervisory potential who have been with us in Metro Manila and are willing to go back to their home province. Our “balik-probinsiya” (“back-to-the-province”) program assured us that we have well-trained, loyal people in the provinces. This is important because we did not set up satellite offices in the provinces. In this age of mobile communication, we find no need for such extra expense.

As time went on, we increased our product lines by 3-5 every year. We are careful not to launch “me too” products. We want to be innovative, to be the first to come out with fresh product concepts. And we only launch new products if we are convinced that a certain natural ingredient is scientifically proven to be the best remedy for a skin care concern.

So from licorice skin whiteners, we have the time-released fruit acid for anti-aging, followed by green tea sunblock with transparent zinc oxide. Our latest products are the licorice anti-blemish line for acne-prone skin, and the firming cream with Actifirm. More exciting new products are in the pipeline that will surprise the market.

We are also now exporting Godiva through our onlinestore, www.i-godiva.com. Most of our clients there are Americans, some from Canada, Britain, Australia and Japan. We have started to appoint exclusive distributors, such as in Indonesia.

The rewards come not just in financial form, but also in terms of recognition of Godiva as the “best skin care brand” in 2002 given by 3 consumer groups.

It is very tempting to take personal glory for the accomplishments of Godiva after going through such difficulties. However, the very meaning of Godiva, that of Gift of God, is a constant reminder that whatever success we may have achieved, it’s because God gave us those blessings and not because we are good. We are just stewards of God’s blessings on this earth.

My final words to you are these: As an entrepreneur, you will encounter many problems and difficulties, especially at the start. That’s why you have to love your business concept with a passion. This passion will help sustain you. It will keep you going. Just be confident. Believe in yourself. And believe that when you do your best, God will take care of the rest.

NEW MELASMA CLINICAL STUDY CONFIRMS GODIVA LICORICE LIGHTENS IN 7 DAYS!!

Double blind challenge test using Godiva whitening cream vs. 4% Hydroquinone cream (the highest permissible concentration allowed for hydroquinone) using 36 subjects with Melasma, a difficult skin discoloration associated with pregnancy, UV radiation and phototoxic drugs & cosmetics...

After 7 days: Godiva showed lightening in 55.6%subjects, Hydroquinone 5.5%
On the 2nd month: Godiva 55.6%, Hydroquinone 11.1%
On the 3rd month: Godiva 88.9%, Hydroquinone 88.9%
On the 4th month: Godiva 94.4%, Hydroquinone 91.7%

We hope this information will somehow guide you in your expectations. We have inserted the phrase "in as early as" in our 7 day claim so as not to create unrealistic expectations. This, however, does not detract from the fact that when tested against the strongest dose of hydroquinone, supposedly the most effective tool of dermatologists, Godiva came out with amazing results.

We have received countless testimonials from customers claiming they experienced lighter complexion with Godiva in as early as 7 days. They confirm the results of the above-mentioned clinical study as well as a study conducted in 1996.

We notice, however, that the darker the original skin color, the longer the effects would become apparent. Plus the level of outdoor activities a person has also affects the speed of the result. With continuous and regular application of Godiva, you can get at least a shade lighter skin color.

Godiva is one of the first to use licorice as a skin whitening active ingredient way back in 1996. Lately, we see Avon, Nivea and Neutrogena, three reputable brands copying the lead of Godiva and they have come out with whitening products using licorice also.

GODIVA WINS 3 AWARDS IN 2002!

Godiva Natural Skin Care has won the People's Choice Award for Best Skin Care Product. This fiercely competitive category is composed of every local and international brand selling skin care products in the Philippines. The winning selection was made based on product features or quality (35%), contribution to public service (20%), random public opinion survey (25%), and pricing (20%).

Awards Chairman, Ms. Nancy Chongbian and Special Products Director, Ms. Imelda Papin presented the award to Godiva's Sales and Marketing Manager, Ms. Bing Kabahar and General Manager, Mr. Ed Rada at the 2002 People's Choice Awards Ceremony held recently in the Philippine International Convention Center.

Godiva, known for providing consumers with highly effective natural skin care products, has been awarded three times this year alone, claiming the National Consumers Excellence Award for Most Outstanding and Innovative Skin Care Product and the Gawad Makamasa Award for Outstanding Facial Care Product earlier this spring. Their product lines include: skin whitening, anti-acne, sun protection, anti-stress and anti-ageing.

The National Consumers Excellence Award is jointly conferred by the National Consumer Affairs Foundation and Who's Who in the Philippines who has been giving recognition to outstanding products, organizations, professionals for the past 18 years.

GODIVA GETS FEATURED

Click on the links and read more about Godiva!

UPDATE: GODIVA Natural Skin Care continues to attain unparalleled heights of achievement, bagging the highly coveted “Information Technology (IT) Excellence Awards” --- the first and only major award given by the Philippine Internet Commerce Society (PICS) during the 2nd National E-Commerce Congress and Exhibit.

See the news articles through the links below:

"Tech places RP firm
on world skincare map"

"Godiva bags top IT
award for SMEs"

Other articles featuring Godiva:

"Love means a cosmetic line"

"If they won't buy your goods, use it yourself"

"Hot tips to prevent beauty disasters this summer"

"Smudgy eyeliners and other problems"

"How effective is licorice as skin whitener?"

"Choosing the best cleanser for combination skin"

"Dislodge dead skin with whitening lotion"

"How to choose the right skin care products for you"

"Licorice for your skin?"

"Study shows green tea reduces skin cancer risk"