Bringing Rituals to Southeast Asia
My time working on Rituals Cosmetics was memorable, as I saw the brand come to life, first working on it as an intern and then returning to it as a permanent position.
During my internship, I developed the go-to-market strategy and gathered data on Malaysian consumer’s purchasing behavior and the factors that affected them compared to other markets. We then presented this to the global strategy team, which helped facilitate the brand’s launch.
I was part of the core pioneer team that built the brand in Southeast Asia from scratch. Being the sole marketing representative, I supported the Regional General Manager and worked closely with the Rituals global team, being the main point of contact locally for all marketing and PR initiatives.
Skills
Go-to-Market Strategy
Retail Strategy
Digital and E-Commerce
4 store openings in under 6 months
Before we could do any marketing, we had to first physically open the stores.
Working together with the merchandising, operations, and mall retail teams, we successfully opened four store locations in under six months across Malaysia and Singapore.
Concurrently, we also planned two PR launch events, 1 in East Malaysia and 1 in Singapore. The PR event was crucial to nail, as it set the tone of the brand’s potential to succeed in Southeast Asia to important business stakeholders in attendance.
Today, Rituals has more than 10 store locations across Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
every store opening, we always tried to build the “longest line”.
Building Rituals’ presence online
Beyond opening physical stores, we also had to launch localized websites and lay down the foundations for the omnichannel path to purchasing strategy for Malaysia and Singapore.
Working with the Rituals and Valiram digital teams, we set up a skeleton for the local websites, adapting the UI to Southeast Asia and introducing the tone as a new brand in the region.
We spent months A/B testing different copies and messaging for our digital ads and email marketing strategy, considering that there would be two primary target audiences—1 who knew the brand from their travels to Europe and 1 who had no clue who we were.
Digital ads were also the primary medium to promote store openings and build our customer database from scratch. Surpassing our attendance KPIs by 105% and sales KPIs by 10%, our Imago Shopping Mall store opening in East Malaysia will always be one of my favorites.
