aCommerce X Galderma: a Philippine Success Story

With a unique heritage in dermatology as well as decades of cutting-edge innovation, Galderma is the leading company solely dedicated to advancing dermatology and skincare solutions. Through trusted partnerships with healthcare professionals, Galderma ensures to meet individual consumer and patient needs with superior outcomes and offers cutting-edge, premium brands that fit people's individual needs, across the full spectrum of dermatology through aesthetics, consumer care, and prescription medications.

As the market leader in the Philippine-derived Sensitive Skincare Market, and its leading Consumer brand, Cetaphil was eyeing a move online. In addition to its range of classic best-sellers, including the cult-favorite Gentle Skin Cleanser, Cetaphil has introduced new ranges in recent years, including Cetaphil Baby, and Cetaphil Pro AD Derma, and Cetaphil Bright Healthy Radiance which was launched at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the emerging consumer trend for science-driven skincare, Galderma knew the potential of expanding its reach and introducing its brand benefits to a broader audience.

E-commerce Market Entry

Galderma was determined to establish a presence in the newly minted playground that is e-commerce. The opportunity presented itself when COVID-19 hit. E-commerce boomed and became a significant priority for the group's strategy. Being the market leader for sensitive skincare in the offline retail space, Galderma was determined also to secure its top position in the online marketplace leaderboards.

The Challenge

Galderma identified the strong presence of competition in the online market, and specifically in online marketplaces such as Lazada, Shopee, and Zalora. These competitors have been in e-commerce for a number of years now and knew how to operate in an online environment and win the market. This means that Galderma needed a rapid go-to-market strategy with the accumulated know-how and technology to utilize the major market shift.

Choosing aCommerce

The aCommerce account management team was able to recognize a gap in the market and proposed an innovative approach to enter a highly saturated market. Galderma entered a client partnership agreement with aCommerce for end-to-end services, including e-commerce platform design and development, performance marketing, order fulfillment and warehousing, delivery and logistics, customer service call centers, creative production, marketing planning, and strategy, and channel management.

With aCommerce as the largest end-to-end e-commerce enabler in the region, processes are more streamlined, reducing long-term unit costs operating under the economies of scale principle.The aCommerce team started formulating Galderma's strategy on multiple channels such as Lazada, Shopee, Zalora, Edamama, and now expanding outright services to Grab.

The Strategy

Using keyword and search data, the aCommerce analysis of the market has shown that consumers are shifting towards dermatologically-backed, and science-driven products in the skincare industry, where consumers are increasingly well informed and constantly looking for each and every ingredient in the product.

The online consumers are very well aware of ingredients and their benefits, and the aCommerce team highlighted Galderma's quality ingredients and supporting science in each campaign, assets, search ads, and throughout the brand's online presence. While focusing on educating consumers about Galderma's benefits, the team knew how to balance the premium brand positioning of Galderma together with the marketplaces promo-driven audience and created a strategy that complemented the brand's position in the market.

Collaboration, Technology, and Creative Thinking

Data presented by aCommerce allowed Galderma to execute bundling and sampling strategies shifting assortments that started with 50+ SKUs to a selection that is growing by the day. Using the analytics of consumer behavior, the team's analysis detected that consumers usually purchase specific items together, allowing Galderma to respond quickly to the shifting demands by creating the right bundles.

Success and Achievements

The aCommerce team achieved success for Galderma, utilizing their extensive market experience working with the top brands from various industries, relationships with platforms and marketplaces, understanding of the market, focus on innovating their own systems and technologies, and a dedicated team that embodies the aCommerce DNA.