Features October 19, 2023

Livestreaming the Dream: Building a Wellness Empire During the Pandemic, According to Jonah Sison-Ramos, CEO of Dear Face

Despite its debut during the pandemic, Dear Face hit the ground running—securing millions in revenue after just one live. CEO Jonah Sison-Ramos shares how.

As the jump-off point for entrepreneurs to reach a wide audience and grow their business, live selling has been the catalyst for many business success stories in this digital landscape. In fact, live selling—which joins the likes of digital transactions—contributes to PHP 2.08 trillion in 2022, or 9.4% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Through live selling, many online businesses have seen growth—not just in their sales, but also in their brand presence, following, reach, engagement, and customer base. A rare few, however, have seen monumental growth in the millions. Truly a case study of live selling success.

Take for example Dear Face, a beauty brand that once saw a PHP 16 million revenue after just one liveselling session. While known foremost for its skincare products, its fast-track ticket to success can be attributed to its flagship product: Beauty Milk—ready-to-drink collagen and glutathione-infused milk in a wide variety of flavors.

Leading the charge of this fast-growing brand is none other than Jonah Sison-Ramos. A registered nurse, multi-hyphenated entrepreneur, and a woman ahead of her time, Jonah saw an opportunity in an already-saturated beauty market to pioneer a new product that helped skyrocket her business to fame.

In an exclusive interview with The Business Manual, Jonah shares how it all began, her secret to earning millions after just one live selling session, and how she uses Dear Face to empower Filipinos to become entrepreneurs themselves.

Guided by a keen understanding of her audience, her skills as a registered nurse, and a live selling platform that she successfully leveraged, Jonah Sison-Ramos was able to secure her place in a highly competitive beauty industry with her multi-million peso business: Dear Face.

Turning a Passion Project Into a Business

Before becoming the successful entrepreneur that she is today, Jonah’s background includes being a registered hemodialysis nurse, a medical representative in a pharmaceutical company, and even an online casino dealer and even a seafarer at some point!

Eventually, she put that behind her as she started her own business, which she described as “not planned at all”—given that it started from a personal need.

“I had a really bad breakout and nothing in the drugstore and no dermatologist can actually cure my skin situation,” Jonah begins, explaining the origin story of her first brand, Skin Potions. “That’s why I really strived hard to learn about the ingredients of a skincare product. [Doing so] really sparked my interest in formulating my own skincare line.”

“I’ve done so much research. I’ve trained so much, and I even tried soap making. I tried so many different formulations for my own brand until I found one that worked,” she adds.

With her acne now cured and her skin clearer, Jonah caught the attention of friends and family, who wanted to buy the soaps for themselves. “My friends and my family asked, ‘What are you using on your face?’ because my acne breakout really cured. I said that I used my soap. I remembered that it was like a honey oatmeal soap, and it really treated my acne,” she recalls.

“They asked, ‘Magkano ba ‘yan? Magkano ko ba daw ibebenta yan kung sakali?‘ [And my first reaction was of shock.] ‘Ha? Ibebenta?‘” Jonah laughs, explaining how selling the soap was not even something she thought of—until she was asked to put a price on it.

She then told her family and friends, “Okay, I’m going to give you a discounted price, but you need to get this quantity.” And that started the whole idea of selling—of starting her own business.

This led to the birth of Skin Potions in 2015, where she started out with soap—eventually branching out into creams, toners, and skincare sets that were all made with natural and organic ingredients. Though in the initial stages, Jonah admits that she didn’t have any prior experience in running a business, let alone starting one. But what she didn’t have in knowledge (at least at that point), she made up with hard work.

“I don’t have a background in business,” the CEO admits. “That’s why I really studied everything from scratch. I wanted to study the whole business of distributorship, and then, I started researching. I started asking people. I started going to some mentors.”

“And then, I made a structure in which we will have distributorship tiers, like original distributor, provincial, and so on. So it started from there. And then, everyone was telling me that the soap was really good. After expanding to creams and toners and serums, everything went well from there,” she adds.

Pivoting From Setbacks and Starting New

However, challenges are part and parcel of entrepreneurs, and Skin Potions faced its hurdle: the pandemic.

“Everyone was affected by the pandemic, and Skin Potions was in SM Stores and other leading malls nationwide [back then],” Jonah shares. “We needed to close down because the malls were closed at that time. So when we closed down, we thought that the pandemic would last one month…two months, but it lasted for a long time.”

Even then, Skin Potions could not recover, as irreversible factors like overhead expenses and never-ending fees soon led to its demise. “Our finances are bleeding. So when we closed down Skin Potions, it also went down the hill. It really went down the hill,” she laments.

Jonah Sison-Ramos of Dear Face. Shot at Studio Simula — Not one to give up so easily, Jonah Sison-Ramos explored other options where she could make a living during the pandemic, which include selling alcohol, face masks, and even test kits. “It was very in demand at that time,” she admits.

The silver lining in all this, however, was that the pandemic gave Jonah insight into how people think. “We realized that people actually didn’t want to prioritize skincare. They want to prioritize their health. They wanted to prioritize their food and necessities. And that was the time when my mind was clear, and I wanted to launch a new brand.”

This meant first restructuring their current business model. “In the pandemic, everyone was getting retrenched. They didn’t have work. Lahat natatanggal sa trabaho—[people were getting laid off]—and we wanted to help the economy to rise up again,” Jonah explains. “With Skin Potions, we couldn’t do that because, at that time, we were on the retail structure.”

“We wanted to structure or build a new business in which the distributors can actually have their own businesses. So kahit nanay ka, kahit na natanggal ka sa trabaho, kahit nasa bahay ka (even if you’re a mom, you’ve lost your job, or you’re just at home)…you can sell online,” she adds.

With a business model in mind, the next step was to find a medium that they could leverage amid lockdowns and restrictions. The answer? E-commerce. “Online e-commerce platforms were booming during the pandemic, so we took advantage of that. We leveraged our distributorship in all of the platforms that were available—in TikTok, Shopee, Lazada…everything.”

“We also conducted training sessions for the distributors because most of our distributors didn’t have a background in business. So tinuruan namin sila kung paano gumawa ng mga accounts, [we taught them how to make accounts], how to sell proficiently, and everything.”

And so, at the height of the pandemic, Dear Face was born.

Creating a Product Based on a Pain Point

With a clear business model in mind and a new business—Dear Face—the next step was to know what to sell and who to sell it to. For this, Jonah went back to her roots. “In nursing, we were taught about caring for other people and validating their emotions. Actually, that’s one of the pain points of the skincare and cosmetics industry. You need to really understand the customers and the clients,” the entrepreneur shares.

“In Dear Face and Skin Potions, we develop when we listen to our customers,” she says proudly. “We develop the products according to what they need and what they want. I think that’s one of the major contributions of being a nurse.”

Given how the consumer mindset has changed during the pandemic, Jonah noted how people were, in her words, “very lazy about putting creams and putting toners and, washing their face every day and night.”

“We were very lazy at that time,” Jonah admits. “That’s why noong time na ‘yon, [at that time], we wanted to have skincare in a drink—a drink that has the same effects of what you are using on your skin, like those topical skincare solutions. That’s how we created Dear Face Beauty Milk.”

This, like learning how to start a business, required some research—which Jonah said she had plenty of time to do during the pandemic, being stuck at home and all. “The silver lining was…madami akong time to do my research. So when I did my research, I researched about the manufacturers who are available and can make collagen drinks and other supplements here in the Philippines,” she reveals.

“And that’s one that I really prioritized. ‘Yun ‘yung parang isa sa pinakatutukan ko—to choose the right manufacturer for my products.”

Jonah Sison-Ramos, CEO of Dear Face, in a tweed suit. — A pain point that Jonah noticed during the pandemic was how it has made people lazy when it comes to sticking to a skincare routine. That, paired with how food has become essential, inspired her to create Dear Face Beauty Milk: a ready-to-drink series with the same benefits as a topical skincare product.

The Importance of Educating the Market

Entrepreneurs—being the pioneers behind a new product—face the risk of whether said products will be well-received or even liked by the market. And as one of the first to launch her very own skincare in a drink, Jonah faced that dilemma. “Sales were really not booming at the start because people are not used to drinking skincare in a drink.”

“We needed to educate them. We needed to introduce everything to them—about the collagen, the vitamins, and the minerals that you should be drinking because you don’t want to age fast or you don’t want to get sick,” she declares.

How? She leveraged the use of social media. “We actually onboarded on TikTok,” she reveals, adding that joining TikTok was the last thing on her mind back then, as it was mostly full of dancing videos. “It was booming during the pandemic and sabi ko nga dati na yung pinakalast kong gagawin is to join TikTok because at that time during the pandemic, lahat sila sumasayaw.”

But that was before she saw its money-making capabilities—or how it can be used to educate viewers. “Hindi namin alam that it can actually also be a platform where you can educate people about your products and that you can actually promote and have your own shop in TikTok.”

“Actually, we started with three viewers in our lives,” Jonah recalls. “Whenever we’re live, we’d just have, like, three to five viewers, and I wondered, ‘Ah, bakit ganito ‘yung viewers lang namin?’ [Why did we have less viewers?] But then, I had no choice. I asked myself, ‘Kung titigil ba kami [If we stopped], would I win?’ If the answer is no, why should I stop?”

Persistence eventually led to results. “I kept trying until the TikTok team tapped us and helped us to grow in their TikTok platform. So I think the life-changing event talaga for me as of now is how we had a revenue of PHP 16 million in a day…for just one live!”

“‘Yun talaga ‘yung feeling ko, like, wow. I have never done this to any other of my brands, and this is the first time I’ve done it. So I think it’s really going well,” Jonah notes gleefully.

To date, Dear Face boasts a strong following of nearly 57,000 followers on TikTok, over 53,000 likes on Facebook, and almost 24,000 followers on Instagram since its inception in 2020. With just 3 years in business, this is a win for the beauty CEO!

Jonah Sison-Ramos on Her Secrets to Success

Although live selling is a strong driver of the overall growth of Dear Face, Jonah’s secret sauce to success can be summed up into four distinct pillars: ensuring product exclusivity, listening to the customer, educating partner distributors, and creating a wide range of products.

“So number one, I wanted to secure a contract with our manufacturer that [the products produced are] going to be patented and exclusive for us,” she reveals. “So that even though other brands are launching their own, it’s not going to be the same as ours.”

“Number two, we listen to our customers. We believe that if we listen to them, we can create the products that they want and need, and it’s gonna sell because it’s from their voice.”

The third pillar stems from her longtime dream of being able to empower Filipinos to become entrepreneurs themselves. “We conduct training sessions for our partner distributors because we want them to grow as entrepreneurs themselves,” Jonah reiterates.

“We produce and launch products that have a different focus—not only collagen,” she adds. “There is something that can boost your immune system, something that can make you have brighter skin, and something that can boost your memory. We have so many variants so we can target many people in our market.”

Finally, she reveals her winning strategy, which centers around how she used social media platforms to grow her following—thus turning them into loyal customers and in most cases, partner distributors.

“Actually, I think people need to know their niche because if they know their niche, they will know their direction and goal,” she shares candidly. “Number two is you really need to know what you’re doing. Always be authentic because people know if you’re authentic or not—and if you love what you’re doing or not.”

As for the most important thing to note? “Be consistent. Because sometimes, it’s not always like you’ll have so many viewers or so many engagements in your videos or lives. You just need to be consistent every day.”

To end, Jonah shares what she has learned as an entrepreneur—which she wishes to impart to her partner distributors, as well as aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start businesses of their own. “Number one. You need to know your passion,” she declares firmly. “It’s always been said that you need to know your passion, but that’s because entrepreneurship is not easy. You also need to work long hours—more than the average employee.”

“Another one is that you need to know your business. Di ka pwede mag-jump in into something na hindi mo alam kung ano yung nangyayari sa loob. [You can’t jump into something that you’re not familiar with or that you don’t know about.] You should also be clear about the road map and the pipeline that you are doing,” the CEO ends.