Annual sales of 1 billion yen in just one year after founding: What does the “customer‑first” approach behind this big hit really mean?

D2C has become something anyone can start with ease.
The market is expected to reach 3 trillion yen by 2025, and further growth is anticipated. (*)
Amid this “fiercely competitive D2C era,” there is a D2C brand that achieved annual sales of 1 billion yen just one year after its launch.
That product is “Hairmore.” It is a hair care (hair growth tonic) product specifically designed to address the concern of “hair loss in women.”

(Reference: Hairmore’sofficial website)

The company that developed Hairmore, RAVIPA Inc., is leveraging the BX (brand experience) platform “BOTCHAN” for its marketing initiatives. This time, we speak with two members of RAVIPA—Mr. Arai, the company’s representative, and Mr. Kenmochi, who also belongs to RAVIPA—about the key factors behind their decision to implement BOTCHAN and the results they have seen since adoption.
The interviewers are Fukuda and Hasegawa from wevnal Inc., the developer of BOTCHAN.

(*Source:“The digital D2C market is forecast to reach 3 trillion yen by 2025 (Ureru Net Advertising Inc.)”)

Table of Contents

The customer-first mindset at the core of introducing chat forms

(Left: Mr. Arai from RAVIPA Inc., right: Mr. Kenmochi, also from RAVIPA)━━ What led you to implement BOTCHAN?

Mr. Arai (hereafter, “Arai”)
Before we introduced BOTCHAN, we were actually using another company’s chat form. We started using that company’s chat form right after we launched Hairmore.

━━What made you interested in the chat form itself in the first place?

Arai
The trigger was that someone I know introduced it to me. We make a point of actively trying out new initiatives and tools to make our customers’ purchasing experience even slightly better. One of the things we value most is being “customer first” – always putting ourselves in the customer’s shoes and asking how we can truly delight them.

For example, when we deliver Hairmore, we make sure that you can’t tell it’s a hair growth product just by looking at the outside of the box. In the “contents” field on the shipping label, we write “cosmetics.” Some customers really do not want delivery staff or family members to know that they are buying products for hair loss or thinning hair.

I see you’ve also put that kind of detailed thought into it. At first you were using another company’s chat form, so what led you to switch over to BOTCHAN?

Mr. Kenmochi (hereafter: Kenmochi)
The chat form from another company delivered good CVR figures, but we were somewhat dissatisfied with their customer success support. Just at that timing, we received a proposal from your company and decided to switch to BOTCHAN.

(Left: Fukuda from wevnal Inc., right: Hasegawa, also from wevnal)

Was there any final deciding factor that led you to implement ━━BOTCHAN?

Arai
What really stood out was how quickly you implemented the “real-time credit check” feature we requested. If we couldn’t do real-time screening and there was a time lag between “purchase” and “screening result,” some customers might feel, “I was so excited because I thought I’d managed to buy it, but then I failed the screening and couldn’t after all…”. That’s exactly what we wanted to avoid, so by enabling real-time credit checks, we wanted to be able to communicate the screening result on the spot.

Tsurumochi:
“When I told them, ‘If you can add real-time credit screening functionality, we would very much like to implement BOTCHAN,’ they immediately started development. That ultimately became the deciding factor, and we switched over to BOTCHAN.”

A customer success team that delivers a “customer-first” experience through chat forms

━━As you actually use BOTCHAN, are there any features where you feel it is delivering results?

Arai:
The key point is that we can flexibly change the UI within the chat form. Our main customers tend to be in a relatively higher age group. As a result, some of them have difficulty reading small text. For those customers, it is very helpful that we can use the entire smartphone screen to display guidance for input fields in large text. With a standard input form, the text can be small and hard to read.

One of BOTCHAN’s strengths is that it enables you to communicate with customers using the entire screen and image-based creatives.

Arai
I also like how the questions proceed in a conversational style, and how the waiting animation before moving on to the next question gives you the sense that you’re actually being served by a real person. In fact, some customers who purchased products have even misunderstood and thought “there’s a person behind the system.” The fact that they can enter information through such a natural back-and-forth, to that extent, is really contributing to a better purchasing experience for our customers.

Tsurumochi
Above all, I really appreciate how quickly everyone on BOTCHAN’s customer success team responds. Even for requests that take a bit of effort or have tight deadlines, they immediately say, “We’ll take care of it right away,” and provide prompt support.

━━ Thank you very much. We always make a point of responding quickly and carefully, so I’m glad to hear that you see value in that as well.

After implementation, the average LP conversion rate reached 15%, and the upsell rate exceeded 20%.

What kind of numerical results have you seen since implementing BOTCHAN?

Tsurumochi
Even back when we were using a different company’s chat form, we were already seeing certain numbers. But now they’ve increased further, and the CVR after customers arrive at the landing page is currently around 15% on average.

━━A landing page CVR of around 15% is quite high, even by industry-wide standards, isn’t it?

Arai
Right. And from the perspective not only of CVR but also of LTV, we are currently focusing on upsell initiatives after purchase. Specifically, we had you implement in BOTCHAN a feature that carries over the information entered at the time of the first purchase.

After customers purchase a product, our thank-you page also serves as the upsell landing page. Thanks to the implementation of the data handover feature, when customers change their purchase plan on the thank-you page, they can reuse the information they entered for their first purchase as is. As a result, they can change plans easily with much less data entry. Our current upsell rate is over 20%.

We’re very pleased to be contributing to improvements in both CVR and LTV. Through today’s interview, we’ve come to feel that the huge success of Hairmore stems from RAVIPA’s strong desire to provide customers with a better purchasing experience. Finally, could you tell us about your future outlook?

Arai
Right now, in addition to Hairmore, we are releasing and planning new products. I would like to launch many more different brands going forward.

We also hope to continue supporting the development of your brand through BOTCHAN. Thank you very much for your time today.

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If you would like to confirm whether BOTCHAN can be implemented in your company, or if you would like advice tailored to your situation, please feel free to contact us with your questions or inquiries.

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