{"id":81843,"date":"2025-02-11T11:48:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T11:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/affiliate-marketing\/why-reach-is-selling-beauty-boxes-and-launched-online-marketplace-yimbly\/"},"modified":"2025-02-11T11:48:50","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T11:48:50","slug":"why-reach-is-selling-beauty-boxes-and-launched-online-marketplace-yimbly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=81843","title":{"rendered":"Why Reach is selling beauty boxes and launched online marketplace Yimbly"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\"A

Left: the kinds of products that come in one of Reach’s OK! Beauty Boxes; right: Reach commercial director Emma Oakley. Pictures: Reach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Mirror and Express publisher Reach<\/a> doesn\u2019t say it wants to be the next Amazon, but it would like to sell you an air fryer.<\/p>\n

The company has expanded from affiliate marketing (taking commission on click-throughs to buy products on sites like Amazon) into direct sales \u2013 first with a beauty box product and now with a more wide-ranging online shop called Yimbly.<\/p>\n

Launched in late 2020, the OK! Beauty Box is a package shipped each month to subscribers, each of which contains at least five beauty products with a claimed collective retail value of approximately \u00a3100. The subscription costs \u00a315 a month, and the boxes also contain a copy of the most recent issue of OK!<\/a> magazine. <\/p>\n

In Reach\u2019s half-year results in July<\/a>, it said revenue from the Beauty Box had grown 34% year-on-year. The product is profitable, although Emma Oakley, Reach\u2019s commercial director, told Press Gazette the margins are thin.<\/p>\n

Oakley said: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t launched to be a huge profit margin driver, it was launched for us as a new revenue stream\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBeauty Box has been a real success story for us, because it\u2019s an example of us diversifying revenue at Reach. I think we can get pigeonholed into being just a press publisher, and we\u2019re obviously a lot more than that, and this is a really good example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reach reported a strong last quarter of 2024<\/a> with full year financial results set to be ahead of expectations.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Reach OK! Beauty Box website, with promotional images spotlighting the sort of products that might arrive in each box.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To build on the success of the core subscription the company has since launched standalone, limited-edition Beauty Boxes that might spotlight specific brands, be curated in partnership with a celebrity or influencer or contain, in one case, healthy jams.<\/p>\n

However the largest standalone beauty box Reach has offered is its Christmas advent calendar box: after an initial trial run in 2023, when the company sold 2,000 units, it sold 10,000 in the run-up to Christmas 2024. Oakley said the company is looking to sell even more of its 2025 calendars.<\/p>\n

The boxes generally appear to be a success with customers. Oakley told Press Gazette: \u201cIf I\u2019m having a bad day I log into Trustpilot,\u201d where they have a score of 4.3 out of five from more than 7,000 reviews.<\/p>\n

Oakley said capitalising on the OK! brand was \u201creally useful in enabling us to launch. Launching an unknown brand is a lot harder. So that just gave us a couple of steps up, I think, at the beginning\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere it\u2019s really useful is the celebrities and the influencers that want to get involved, because we can offer them something in OK! mag as well.\u201d <\/p>\n

Oakley estimated 30% of Beauty Box customers are Reach readers, in particular readers of OK!, while 70% come from elsewhere. \u201cBut we use our audience very much to drive the awareness of the brand, and then we\u2019ll chase them around the internet, and they may convert elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re not necessarily used to purchasing on our site \u2014 we basically sow a seed with them on our network and then follow them around on Google Shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yimbly, Reach\u2019s new online marketplace<\/h2>\n

Last year Reach soft-launched Yimbly<\/a>, an online shop allowing people to buy \u201ccurated\u201d products across the home, furniture, electricals, garden, baby, toys, beauty, sport and pet accessories categories.<\/p>\n

Oakley said the company was \u201ctrying to be mass market, and not be limited to just one brand audience\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other publishers already operate similar propositions: DMG Media\u2019s Mailshop.co.uk<\/a>, for example, provides a portal for buying home goods from beds to sofas, plants and books.<\/p>\n

Oakley said that following on from earlier efforts in affiliate marketing, Reach had felt there was an opportunity to do more, so decided to create its own marketplace.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Yimbly front page, showing products including pressure washers, an air fryer, children\u2019s toys, a Smeg kitchen appliance and house plants.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reach uses its network of websites, and particularly their affiliate content, to direct people toward Yimbly. Oakley said \u201ca huge part of the proposition\u201d was that \u201cwe\u2019re just another supplier\u201d to Reach\u2019s affiliate content team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just another client, but they\u2019ll be incentivised to include us in any of their roundups because we own Yimbly, so we own the whole revenue line, rather than just a percentage of a commission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yimbly effectively acts a shop window for a number of suppliers selling everything from sheds to smartwatches. Because Reach is providing its partners with a completed order, rather than just a click, it can charge a far higher commission on sales than via the affiliate-marketing model. Reach also provides a customer service team to handle product queries and returns.<\/p>\n

Staff offered discount at Reach online shop<\/h2>\n

Staff have also been encouraged to use the site as customers: Press Gazette understands Reach employees were offered 15% off purchases made through the website ahead of Christmas.<\/p>\n

Reach plans to launch dedicated storefronts on Yimbly for its flagship newsbrands and awards event Pride of Britain.<\/p>\n

The name Yimbly was invented despite Reach originally hoping to use a name \u201cthat was related to what it does\u201d. Oakley said one suggestion was Stocked.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut unfortunately, with our trademark lawyers, we were just advised to come up with a brand new name, because as a PLC, if there were any links to any other smaller companies, we would just look like a meal ticket to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakley said there is a misconception in e-commerce that \u201cyou just throw something up online and it might sell. But it really, really doesn\u2019t \u2014 you\u2019ve got to really focus on the functionality and the user journey and how easy it is to manage the suppliers on the back end, because they\u2019re all different suppliers we\u2019ve got now\u201d.<\/p>\n

Oakley said she appreciated that for many people, their first question about Yimbly was whether Reach was trying to emulate Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to be the next Amazon,\u201d she said. \u201cBut equally, Amazon doesn\u2019t rule the world or control that whole market. There is a space for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

She likened Yimbly more to the websites of Next or Tesco, albeit without a focus on clothes or food. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are ensuring that there\u2019s good reviews on our products, or we won\u2019t be selling them,\u201d Oakley said. \u201cNor would we write affiliate content if they don\u2019t have good reviews. And we need to make sure we\u2019ve got a good, competitive price, or we won\u2019t feature them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for us, it\u2019s more about having a curated space that is good value for you. It\u2019s not about showing them every product that\u2019s available. It\u2019s actually saying: if you want an air fryer, here are the five ones that we would recommend. And because we\u2019re building that brand trust, we hope that they will like shopping from us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakley said of Amazon that she thought \u201cpeople have become disenfranchised with them anyway, as they [did] with Uber \u2014 they don\u2019t want to buy everything just from Amazon\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, yes, Amazon does sell some of what we sell. But e-commerce grows globally massively each year, so there\u2019s no reason we just can\u2019t have a little share of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n