Skin Rocks was founded by Caroline Hirons, a globally qualified skincare expert with a well-established brand and a loyal customer base of 13 million visitors to her blog.

Having sold over 100,000 beauty kits sold worldwide, Skin Rocks first needed a curated e-commerce website. They also spotted an opportunity for an industry-first skincare app to make Caroline’s wealth of knowledge accessible to everyone.

With the Skin Rocks team, we developed their D2C product business, defined its value proposition and delivered the right digital product the first time around.

Together with Skin Rocks we qualified, designed and built the Skin Rocks app. It delivers bespoke product recommendations to help users navigate the complex world of skincare.

The Skin Rocks app launched with a search and explore function for 10,000+ skincare products, educational guides, product overviews and personalised skin profiles, on top of a database for 1000s of brands.

After the soft launch alone, the app had 16,000 downloads in the first 12 hours. It rocketed to the No.1 slot in the Health & Fitness app chart and No.4 in free App Store apps in the UK.

Building on Skin Rocks’ initial app idea, we helped them validate the value proposition and refine their strategy.

Together we developed a robust discovery phase – testing with 6000 individuals from Caroline’s community and others outside it – to identify the app’s key features and functionality from the customer’s POV.

Translating those findings into a prototype that users could play with provided us with the necessary feedback to refine the product and guarantee a successful launch.

Skin Rocks needed to feature constantly-changing product information and articles from 1000s of brands. We built a scalable CMS with a fully editable platform using Dato.

To save Skin Rocks the huge manual work needed to input thousands of products, we built a space for brands to submit their own product information to be validated by the Skin Rocks team.

From skin types to skin concerns, there are a lot of variables when it comes to skincare. Finding a product that’s right can feel quite overwhelming. This became evident during the testing phase, as the majority of users opted for filter over search.

With this feedback, we focused on developing a filter functionality that would help users better direct their enquiries and save their preferences for future searches.

We planned an initial soft launch for Caroline’s Facebook followers and Freaks group to test in a safe environment with their most dedicated users. We received 2000 feedback responses in the first week which helped us make any essential changes for the wider launch.

Soft launching gave Skin Rocks a roadmap of features that their customers really want. To deliver on this, we helped Skin Rocks hire a team to grow the product without us.

We helped identify the skills and individuals they needed across developers, product designers and managers, then supported with hiring and interviewing and getting the new team up to speed.

Skin Rocks now have their own tech product team set up in their business based on our recommendation. The app is still live in market reaching 1000 new downloads every day.