Close-Up: Driven by Data

OsakaKuma co-founder and CEO Tony Wang shares how the omnichannel beauty retail brand is leveraging data and analytics for its curated product offerings

- Hashirin Nurin Hashimi

We live in a world surrounded by data, but too much data, when not turned into useful information, can get overwhelming. For OsakaKuma co-founder and CEO Tony Wang, the information he gathers from the data the beauty retail brand collects tells him what its customers want, so “we can curate the best products for their needs and keep them engaged through hyper-tailored content and distribution channels”. He launched OsakaKuma in 2020 and seeks to position the brand as the first store in Singapore that offers a selection of curated Japanese beauty and personal care brands, including SK-II, Shiseido, Pola, The Ginza and Fancl, with a range of more than 1,000 collections based on over 10,000 surveyed customers.

While it is a comprehensive process, Wang puts it in simpler terms: “We look at two types of data. One is to understand the products, the ingredients used and their attributes; the other is to understand the customers through patterns (with their confidential information removed) such as purchase and browsing history, or even skin types. The more data we have, the better we can try to match the customer to the product.”