SuperOrdinary CEO Julian Reis on being exactly where the customer is

Despite taking a self-proclaimed non-traditional career path, Julian Reis, founder and CEO of beauty incubator SuperOrdinary, credits his initial experience in the conventional finance industry as the catalyst to understanding the potential of the e-commerce beauty market. 

“E-commerce 1.0 was just beginning,” said Reis, who, while working in finance in Singapore in 2013, successfully facilitated the growth of laser-facial company Skin Laundry. But that was not the end of his innovation within the beauty market in China. 

“I noticed that a lot of the luxury store counters -- many of the big shops like Lane Crawford -- were being dominated by Chinese tourists. [They were] buying lots of product and bringing it back to China,” said Reis, who made it his mission to “solve this problem in a much more efficient manner.” 

While Reis was aware of the many marketing agencies and “trade partners” present in China, “No one was bringing all this together under one roof to provide a full service,” said Reis of distribution, marketing and influencer relationships.

Reis has begun to fill this gap with SuperOrdinary, which has brought buzz-worthy U.S. brands like Farmacy and Drunk Elephant into China via TMall. The company hit $90 million in revenue alone this past year, but Reis asserts that there is still room for growth. 

SuperOrdinary comes into play in this area by serving as an “extension of the brands’ arms, eyes, [and] ears,” said Reis. “What we did is focus on each and every brand that we work with to make sure we understand the DNA of the brand and to see whether it would translate in the local market.”

Now, Reis is taking that same expertise and applying it to another mega-market and platform: the U.S. and Amazon.