Why is online fashion forging ahead while digital beauty flounders? Here, we speak to award-winning Zu Rafalat of Zuneta, a business that’s breaking the mould. She explains why online success means paying the medium more than just lip service.
It became apparent five years ago. The fashion industry was finally embracing the huge potential that online sales could bring their businesses yet beauty companies were still refusing to engage.
Fast-forward five years and how much has changed? The fashion industry has forged ahead, with online sales making up huge portions of their revenue, live streaming of fashion shows allowing people to buy clothes at the click of a button, and fashion houses without an online presence considered firmly behind the trend. But the beauty industry? Well, that’s a different story.
It’s why 29-year-old Zu Rafalat stepped into the space three years ago with her luxury e-tail business, Zuneta, selling everything from top skincare brands to cosmetics online. Hailing originally from Poland, after graduating from Bristol University, she joined L’Oreal’s management training scheme before working out of their UK, Paris and New York offices. But, unlike the rest of the industry, Rafalat couldn’t ignore where the sector was heading.
Part of her job at L’Oreal was keeping abreast of what smaller beauty brands were doing to improve and shake up the industry. Yet, even those doing interesting and innovative things weren’t making an impact because they simply didn’t have the platform to do so.
“Not even L’Oreal had an online strategy at the time,” admits Rafalat. “All these niche companies were doing really interesting things but getting access to them was really difficult. And I thought ‘Why isn’t someone selling them online?’ In the UK in particular, there didn’t seem to be any sites for online beauty, so I decided to come back here and do it myself.”
It was a bold move, and one that’s full of challenges even today. “There’s still a massive block in the beauty business about online,” says Rafalat, “it’s like where fashion was about ten years ago, when fashion houses were just terrified of loosing control of their brand. Many of the big brands still have a policy that if you don’t have a bricks and mortar store, they won’t work with you.”
“Beauty is where fashion was about ten years ago, when fashion houses were terrified of loosing control of their brand”
While Rafalat has been working hard to change this perception, those big brands haven’t been her focus to date. Because, while the beauty industry continues to bamboozle buyers with new products, Zuneta has always been about helping customers identify their skin type, educating them on what will work best, and then offering them an edited selection of brands to meet those needs.
“In the beauty industry, it’s always new, new, new because, from a brand perspective, that’s the only way you get attention and press. But quite often there isn’t a huge amount of difference between the formulas. There’s absolutely innovation all the time but not as much as there are new products.”
Zuneta caught the zeitgeist. People were itching for more education and information about beauty brands and products, and looking for alternative ways to buy them. They were also wiser about the industry - like that people working behind the beauty counters were incentivised to sell certain products, and that beauty endorsements in magazines were often inextricably linked to the companies advertising in their pages.
“People aren’t responding to offline media in the way they used to,” Rafalat says. “A few years ago at L’Oreal, we put something in a magazine and you’d get an almost guaranteed uplift. But towards the end of my time there, we were seeing a very different story.”
The Internet would see the truth flourish. “Online is having a huge influence on the way people think about products,” Raffalat confirms. “They’re looking for reviews but looking for realistic reviews and unbiased advice. And the Internet is actually really crucial to this.”
Rafalat herself had no personal experience of the online world when she launched Zuneta. But it wasn’t driving traffic to her site, interacting with bloggers and encouraging honest consumer reviews that would prove most challenging. In fact, embracing all this provided just rewards.
Today, Zuneta has a loyal customer base of 30,000, 50 per cent of whom are based outside the UK, with huge demand coming from the US, Germany, Australia and China. Rafalat was also one of Management Today’s Top 35 Women Under 35 in July, and she scooped the Iris NatWest Everywoman Award in December, which recognises businesses for their innovative use of digital technology.
In fact, her biggest challenge was the sheer loneliness she felt working solo for so long. Setting up with her own savings and money from friends and family, she initially did everything herself - from the researching and signing up beauty companies to packaging and posting customers’ purchases.
“It was difficult not working in a large office anymore, not having people to run things past or share things with. Financially it was also quite tough. You’re working very hard, under an extremely tight budgets to break even as quickly as possible.”
“Online is having a huge influence on the beauty industry. People are looking for realistic reviews and unbiased advice, and the Internet is actually crucial to this”
The work paid off though. Zuneta now has 15 employees, including Rafalat’s brother (her first hire) and her cousin. Last year, she also accepted outside investment, became co-CEO of Lovelula after merging with the online natural beauty e-tailer, and took her first holiday in three years.
But there’s more hard slog ahead. With a team behind her, she’s now responsible for growing awareness of the business, boosting the number of top brands available to consumers and increasing sales. She’s been easily achieving this to date – and finds herself wondering these days why more companies and beauty brands aren’t doing the same?
Do they not see how the online fashion industry has flourished? Or recognise its influence on beauty sales already? Besides Christmas, Zuneta’s busiest months are February and September when they post blogs and ‘get the look’ videos revealing the latest beauty trends within hours of the catwalk shows taking place.
“The pace is quite terrifying,” she admits. “But you have to be fast as things become old so quickly online and you have to take the opportunities that are there, especially if you’re expecting your customers to come to you as a thought leader.” Zuneta is fast becoming this in the luxury sector. Other beauty businesses would do well to take note.
Visit the Zuneta website for more information.
By Barbara Walshe
