Kodai Takahashi
We were featured on CBS and then Fox News and a lot of things. But if we didn't do anything with the team, this revenue is going up and down, maybe. But we try to keep the momentum with those features.
Chase Clymer
It's very similar to what you did with Vogue and something that keeps coming up with them. It's just once you get one, it makes it easier to get the others, and then you repurpose that content, never stop talking about it because your newest customer didn't know you were featured in Vogue, and that social proof might be the thing that drives them to make the purchase to try the product.
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today. Honest Ecommerce is proudly produced by Electric Eye, a Shopify Plus partner helping ecommerce brands sell more with strategic design and development. Visit electriceye.io for more information.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today I'm welcoming to the show Kodai Takahashi. He comes to us as the CEO of Silk The Rich USA. It is the US arm of a Japanese hair care brand. Kodai, welcome to the show.
Kodai Takahashi
Hey Chase. Good to see you.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, it's great to see you. We were just talking about it. We met a year ago at Shoptalk in Chicago. You were just at the Shoptalk in Nashville, literally yesterday as of recording. But let's dive in here. Now could you talk a bit about Silk The Rich and the types of products you and the team are bringing to market?
Kodai Takahashi
For sure. So Silk The Rich is a Japanese hair care product, mostly doing shampoo, conditioner, hair care product, and body care products using a liquid silk inside every single product, which is our unique point. We sew a liquid silk from the fabric silk in Japan, mix it, and then infuse it into the product we have, and sell it in over twenty countries now, making around twenty five million dollars annually. This is our fourth year, and getting ready to expand to the US.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Yeah. And I met you, I believe, right before you expanded. Maybe it was right around the same time.
Kodai Takahashi
Yes.
Chase Clymer
How did you guys plan... We've always talked about brands that are in America looking to branch into other markets. You had already launched, you were already finding success, obviously, in Japan. What would you say was most frustrating or difficult about breaking the product in the US market?
Kodai Takahashi
Chase, there are a lot of things I can talk about. So, first of all, by myself, I have never been to the States and it's the first time for me to stay in the US. So culture is a whole new thing. So how people buy things, how people find the things, how people want to see the products, especially in beauty, is totally different. So I met a lot of people here in LA and learned from them. So it's like life as a work kind of thing in the States now.
Chase Clymer
You had found success in, obviously, the Japanese market and you're like, "Well, this playbook just is not working here in America," and you had to throw that out the window and start over.
Kodai Takahashi
Yes, hundred percent. So after two years we hit ten million dollars in revenue in Japan, so we expanded to Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, over ten countries, including the Middle East. So we're ready to go, but in the States we're starting from zero, no team members and no revenue for sure. So yeah, everything is starting from zero last year. It's been a year.
Chase Clymer
Obviously, I feel like the transition from the Japanese market into these similar markets over on the other side of the world, did those work a lot better than this expansion into the States just because of similar demographics and cultures?
Kodai Takahashi
I think so, because other markets in Asia are pretty small compared to the States. But the States has, like, fifty countries, I can say. So right now we focus on California, New York, Seattle, especially the West Coast and Hawaii. But when we think about expanding to other states in retail, we have to think about the strategy again, because there are so diverse people out there and we have to reconsider how we talk to them, communicate with them.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And you guys aren't just selling on your dot com. You're also selling on some of these other marketplaces, including Amazon. You had a magazine feature, and obviously you saw some success from that on Amazon. You wanna talk a bit about that?
Kodai Takahashi
Yeah. So last December after launching Amazon, we were featured on Vogue as the best Japanese shampoo and conditioners. That was so sudden. There were no paid ads. That was an organic editorial post from Vogue. So I gave away some shampoo to the editor in LA and she literally liked our product and she posted about us in Vogue.
And then the next day after the publishing, I saw the tipping in Amazon. I saw really good growth. And that growth didn't go down, it didn't drop actually. So it stayed a little bit. We pushed a lot more about, "We featured here," and including other magazines, then we could make the kind of momentum in Amazon.
And we used that creative in D2C and Shopify and generated more sales and subscribers there. So yeah, last December we had a really good momentum.
Chase Clymer
[Sponsor: Klaviyo]
Do you know what's going on with Klaviyo? When is the last time you explored what it can do? Klaviyo has been shipping tons of new AI data and automation features designed to help ecommerce teams move faster, personalize better, and automate more of the work that used to take entire teams. Most brands are only using a fraction of what is already inside their Klaviyo account.
Klaviyo is not just email and SMS anymore. It is your customer data platform, your lifecycle marketing engine, your analytics layer, and now your AI-assisted execution layer all in one place. That means your customer data updates in real time. Your segments stay current automatically. Your flows and campaigns all run off the same source of truth. And now AI can help predict churn risk, forecast spend, recommend next best products, generate campaign content, and optimize send timing across channels.
The big unlock is speed and efficiency. There are fewer tools to manage, less dependency on engineering, less time moving data between systems, and a lower total cost of ownership across your marketing stack. And brands are seeing real results from leaning further into Klaviyo.
Dollar Shave Club has reported over 30% reduction in total CRM stack costs after consolidating onto Klaviyo. Brands like ThirdLove have seen a 15x ROI from SMS after consolidating channels. And companies like Corkcicle have grown flow revenue over 90% after bringing email and SMS together inside Klaviyo. Across our customer base, almost every single brand we work with today is using Klaviyo.
That is just where serious ecommerce customer data and lifecycle infrastructures are living these days. If you're already on Klaviyo but you feel like you're not getting everything you can out of it, or you're just running multiple tools and want to simplify without losing power, I think this is worth your time. You should head on over to klaviyo.com/honest to learn more. That's K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com slash honest to learn more about what Klaviyo can do for you today.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. Did she tell you that it was posting or did you just wake up one day and it was posted?
Kodai Takahashi
Was posted after I woke up.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, yeah. So you had no warning, you're like, "Oh no." But also it's always fun to see that and then to scramble to make things work.
Kodai Takahashi
I think so. So it's not only about the magazine that works well, but our team worked really hard on how we can maintain this revenue or even make it grow even more with that fact. So we did a lot of things including magazines. We were featured on CBS and then Fox News and a lot of things. But if we didn't do anything with the team, this revenue would go up and down, maybe. But we try to keep the momentum with those features.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. We've had a lot of brands on here talk about how they got that initial traction for the brand through earned media, so PR features, editorials, very similar to what you did with the Vogue and something that keeps coming up with them. It's just once you get one, it makes it easier to get the others, and then you repurpose that content, never stop talking about it because your newest customer didn't know you were featured in Vogue, and that social proof might be the thing that drives them to make the purchase to try the product.
So again, for some of these people listening to the show, here's another example, Kodai and his team. They got featured and they repurposed it a bunch, and it's still helping them make more sales.
Kodai Takahashi
Yeah, I bet.
Chase Clymer
Now, you found that success and it was off. A lot of it was through Amazon, but you have two feet in both worlds. You've got Amazon, then you've got the Shopify dot com. I know that you spent some time streamlining the funnel and experimenting with landing pages for the dot com experience. Can you walk us through that thought process and how things worked or didn't work?
Kodai Takahashi
So we launched our Shopify pretty late after Amazon. We launched after the Vogue feature. We basically launched. And even before Vogue we had a website, but it didn't have any conversion. It's not any, but it's like we didn't push any ads. So we saw really small conversions, even though we pushed a lot of ads in there.
The conversion, like a CAC, was really high and expensive and I thought it didn't make sense. ROI-wise it doesn't make sense. So I stopped it and, post the Vogue feature, we pushed it again with the creative. And then it made our conversion rate really, really high, like you said, three times more. And then even more after that, after all the efforts of our teams.
And through those journeys, after launching the D2C channel, we can see how people behave and we can get more customer information. Because for Amazon, it's so hard to get the information of customers, but in the D2C channel, we can see what they like or how they find our product, we can ask them questions, we can send the email. So we found a small community kind of thing after the Vogue feature.
So through those communities, we can get good feedback about the product and we can change how we communicate with the customers and potential customers. So I feel like making the communities after Vogue makes sense for us now.
Chase Clymer
[Sponsor: Intelligems]
What is the next big idea that could change your business? A pricing change? A new bundling strategy? Adding subscriptions? Tweaking your shipping offer? Most brands make these decisions based on gut feel. They roll out the change, hope for the best, and have no real idea if it helped or hurt their business. Intelligems fixes that. It is an AI-powered testing platform that brings CRO-level clarity to the decisions that actually move the needle.
Not just button colors and headlines, but the big stuff. Pricing, offers, shipping, new apps, even major site changes. Brands like Ridge, Jones Road, and True Classic are using Intelligems to test their most important decisions and see exactly how each one of those impacts profit before they commit. Momofuku used it to test promotional offers ahead of Black Friday and found the version that increased profit by about 28%.
Mott & Bow ran structured pricing tests that drove roughly 30% more incremental profit. We use it at Electric Eye with almost every client we work with. And now Intelligems has a free AI-powered audit that gives you three specific ideas that you can test on your store today. No commitment, no credit card, just three opportunities worth exploring. Head to intelligems.io/audit and get your free audit in just a few minutes. That's intelligems.io slash audit. Intelligems.io slash audit.
Chase Clymer
Yes, I cannot agree with you more about just how much more information you can get from your own dot com. You get all the demographics and the best part is you can email them and ask them specific questions.
You can do surveying, you can do a lot more, not intrusive, but more explorative stuff with heat maps and user testing and whatnot on your own experience, where some of these other marketplaces really gate that stuff because at the end of the day, it's the marketplace's customer. It's not really your customer, even though they're just selling the product for you.
The owned experience and getting that customer feedback and data. You just take all that learning and you put it right back into that experience and you just see things grow and grow and grow. And it's amazing to see you guys doing that with such a small team. Do you want to talk about the team structure for the US company?
Kodai Takahashi
So on a global scale, we have 70 employees, mainly in Japan, but in the States we only have three or four. They are part-timers actually. So I'm the CEO, but some people are in charge of social media, that's one of them, then sales and shipping and admin and me. So it's basically four of us.
But we're heavily utilizing AI and stuff recently, especially AI agents. We see Muse and Dots coming up. So we try to utilize those agents too. But I personally am using AI and I let my team members use AI for whatever they can use AI. So that makes our work really efficient and we can really focus on what only we can do. So that's the structure.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, it's very interesting watching brands get built these days. Obviously, we love AI at the agency too, and we are very open with our clients that we're using AI. We're very... we share our wins or, like, "Hey, this is what I got Claude to do this week." We're very open about it within the team communication.
Chase Clymer
[Sponsor: eFulfillment Service]
You have prepped all year and all that hard work is paying off. Your store is converting, the ads are working, and this is shaping up to be your best holiday season. But your 3PL can't keep up. Orders are backing up, customers are asking where their stuff is, the reviews are starting to turn. All that hard work, all that momentum, undone by a fulfillment partner that can't scale with you. This is a nightmare scenario, and it happens to brands every holiday season.
Enter eFulfillment Service. eFulfillment Service is the 3PL that scales with you. They are family-owned, they've been in business for over 25 years, and they're built specifically for growing direct-to-consumer brands. There are no setup fees, no minimums, and no long-term contracts. You only pay for what you use.
If you're scared your 3PL can't keep up this holiday season, now is the time to reach out to eFulfillment Service. Go to efulfillmentservice.com/honest and get up to eight weeks of account fees completely waived. That's E-F-U-L-F-I-L-L-M-E-N-T-S-E-R-V-I-C-E dot com slash H-O-N-E-S-T. eFulfillment Service dot com slash honest.
Chase Clymer
I guess I have a question for you.
Kodai Takahashi
Yeah.
Chase Clymer
And we didn't prep this before and I'm gonna keep his answer in without any edits, everybody. But so I've had some conversations with folks where they think that AI is making things more efficient, so a service provider should charge less for those services. I'm not gonna try to muddy the waters of the question anymore. What do you think about that?
Kodai Takahashi
So you mean service provider, for sure, like OpenAI?
Chase Clymer
Like building a website, right? Yeah. Someone's... or basically the agencies are using AI and brands are hiring agencies.
Kodai Takahashi
Okay. I got what you mean.
Chase Clymer
Some people, I have had conversations where folks are like, "You should not be charging that anymore because AI makes it easier." That's what they say. I have my own answer, but...
Kodai Takahashi
Interesting. I feel like it all depends on brand owners. Or even the CMO decides whether they're gonna use an agency or they're gonna do in-house. And recently I feel like even our company is doing a lot of things in-house because of AI. So some brands which can utilize AI are gonna get into an in-house team with AI and there are service providers which can utilize AI for sure because they are professional and they have to understand how brands think, because if the brand figures out the way to utilize AI in their work, brands don't have a reason to work with service providers.
So I think it's more important for brands and service providers to talk more. To talk more about how we can work together, even with AI, and through those conversations, I feel like there's some... there might be some opportunities for discounting or we should discuss more about that.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. I think that some stuff perhaps, but it's just a tool. And I like to make the comparison to... “AI can tell you how to build a house. Why aren't you building your own house?” It still takes people with skill and experience and strategy to harness a tool to do it the right way. And I actually am almost on the opposite side of things where I'm like, we should actually be charging more because we're harnessing AI.
Because of the speed to market and the speed to value that you are getting, having experts on top of these cutting-edge technologies, we're building things faster with less bugs, with more specific functionality to the end customers' needs, i.e. your customers' needs as a brand. I feel like that is the power of AI to get things that are... we're... everything is getting less templated and cookie cutter and it's getting more specific because AI is allowing us to build towards these specific use cases of all of your little customer avatars. I think that's the power of AI.
Kodai Takahashi
I agree with you in terms of agency service providers have to understand AI more than ever and they have to deeply understand how they can utilize AI for brands. So I agree with you on that.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience today?
Kodai Takahashi
So after a year, we are heavily on online selling right now because I don't want to expand too much to retail stores without any awareness of the brand. But we're selling in fifty locations, mainly on the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego, heavily in LA because I'm located there, and Hawaii. But towards the end of the year we're gonna open more doors, including the major retailers in the States.
And so I feel like after seeing all the data on Amazon or D2C, or we started TikTok Shop recently, I feel like we can start expanding more in retail. But going to... expanding to retail took a really long time, over a year for me. So it was a long, long process. Yes.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, I think that especially for somebody, I don't know if we really specifically said it. You got to the States in twenty twenty four and you didn't know anybody here. It's not like you had been here before and you had a big, big network. So you got here roughly a little over two years ago and you had to build this network out and find these wholesale partners while juggling everything else, launching the Amazon, launching the Shopify, TikTok Shop.
So a lot of hats that you are wearing and obviously AI helping you manage that stuff. But at this point, I guess you could argue that Silk The Rich is now omnichannel. That was a big term five years ago.
Kodai Takahashi
Yeah, I know. Yeah, we can say that. We're already selling in fifty locations. Fifty is really small in terms of thousands of stores in Japan. We are selling in twelve thousand stores globally. So compared to that, fifty is small, but still we can get some data, like POS, which store is selling better than other stores, and what kind of customers are purchasing.
So we gather the data and connect the data with Shopify and compare those data and we can deepen down into our target customers more than ever. So it's good to do both.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. You can learn from everywhere. Now, if I'm listening to this podcast and I'm curious to learn more about the product, and maybe I even want to try the product, where should I go? What should I do?
Kodai Takahashi
Yeah. You can just search Silk The Rich online and you can get the best deal in our D2C channel. So if you have any concerns about frizzy hair... frizzy hair is the biggest concern of our customers. Because if you injure somewhere on the street and when you go to the hospital, the doctor is gonna use silk strings to cure you. And the strings get into yourself because silk is the closest protein structure to human beings. So silk has to be closer to you, to human beings, and we are utilizing that silk in beauty products.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. We'll make sure to link to that in the show notes. Kodai, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Kodai Takahashi
Thank you, Chase.
