KraveBeauty Hit 5% Total Revenue from Subscriptions in 30 Days with Skio

Beauty Influencer Brand Built on Intentional Growth

KraveBeauty launched in 2017 when founder Liah Yoo leveraged her large YouTube following to "#PressReset" on skincare with simplified, intentional approach. Based in New York and targeting $6.2M+ annual revenue, the brand quickly became one of the fastest-growing indie skincare companies.

Andy Chiu joined as VP of Finance & Operations with clear mandate: implement "intentional growth" strategy focused on sustainable customer relationships rather than SKU proliferation. Instead of selling 10 different products to one person, focus on selling few great products as recurring routine to many people.

Subscriptions fit this philosophy perfectly by increasing customer lifetime value and fostering loyalty through consistent reorders. But Andy knew from previous company experience that wrong subscription platform could become operational and financial nightmare.

Recharge Created Accounting Nightmare and Data Chaos

KraveBeauty's Recharge setup was fragmenting payments and cluttering data systems through forced architectural limitations. Recharge required separate payment processor for subscription orders rather than unified Shopify Payments, creating accounting nightmare that complicated month-end close procedures.

Transactions that should have been seamless were fragmented across multiple systems, leading to extra reconciliation work and potential errors that consumed finance team bandwidth.

Recharge automatically created duplicate products (separate SKUs) for subscription items, resulting in cluttered database that made inventory tracking and sales analysis cumbersome. The team struggled to get single source of truth for product performance because data split between one-time and subscription SKU records.

Poor support compounded technical issues. Andy had suffered through Recharge at previous company and suspected it would create more headaches than solutions for KraveBeauty's small, agile team.

"You're at the bottom of their priority list" as a client with subscription platforms like Recharge. KraveBeauty felt like small fish ignored by vendor focused elsewhere, with combination of poor tooling and poor support becoming untenable.

Skio Migration Completed in Weeks Not Months

Andy decided to migrate KraveBeauty to Skio and was pleasantly surprised by painless onboarding that fully completed within weeks of first conversation—far faster than expected given past e-commerce tool experiences.

Skio's proactive planning identified potential onboarding hiccups in advance, addressing them before migration execution. The team spotted optimal approach for migrating existing subscriber data and payment information before switching platforms.

Clear migration game plan coordinated data export and seamless import into Skio with no surprises—everyone knew steps and timeline. Skio handled heavy lifting, freeing KraveBeauty's team to focus on growth through customer acquisition and product upselling during transition.

"Skio's CX team is top-notch. They're responsive to all our needs—whether it's getting advice on product tweaks or fixing bugs. Skio's team gives us the white-glove treatment at every turn."

This contrasted sharply with Recharge's 72-hour email waits, providing near-instant help and team that treated their business like priority rather than afterthought.

Unified Payments and Clean Data Eliminated Finance Headaches

Skio's native Shopify integration eliminated payment fragmentation and duplicate SKU problems entirely. All subscription payments now process through Shopify, making reconciling revenue effortless and vanishing accounting nightmares.

"All payments are processed seamlessly with Shopify, which relieves stress on accounting later on."

Platform flexibility enabled quick tweaks to subscription offerings without custom code. Team could easily add or modify features like subscriber discounts, prepaid plans, or gifting options, allowing rapid experimentation with marketing ideas.

Clean data integration meant accurate analysis of customer behavior including subscription retention rates and cohort performance, enabling smarter decision-making for growth initiatives.

Logistics integration ensured 3PL receives all orders uniformly through Shopify, simplifying fulfillment and reducing errors without awkward workarounds for subscription orders.

First Month Hit 5% Revenue Milestone

5% of total revenue from subscriptions in month one

Far fewer support issues despite increased order volume

Positive customer feedback about subscription interface

Unified payment processing eliminating reconciliation headaches

The immediate revenue stream proved that with right platform, subscribers would sign up and stick around, providing solid baseline to grow toward 10-20% subscription revenue target.

Support ticket volume barely grew despite increased orders as customers had little trouble managing subscriptions on Skio. The team received positive customer feedback about new subscription interface—stark contrast to Recharge confusion.

Finance team stopped wasting hours reconciling payment data or cleaning duplicate entries, providing efficiency boost that's extremely valuable for lean operations.

"Working with Skio is too easy. From a customer experience and dashboard standpoint, everything is seamless for our customers and us."

Subscription Foundation for Beauty Brand Growth

KraveBeauty gained peace of mind that subscription infrastructure won't collapse under growth or create operational surprises. Confidence enables aggressive subscription promotion through marketing campaigns encouraging replenishment bundle subscriptions.

"We are excited about the features that Skio is rolling out... it will impact our business for the better."

With rock-solid foundation and continuous platform enhancements, Andy can pursue strategic initiatives like subscription-focused product launches and collaborations while maintaining intentional growth philosophy that builds loyal customer community.