‘The figures are mind-blowing’: Aussie skincare brand Du’It brings in $2.5m on Singles Day

This tiny, family-owned, Sydney company which has just 15 employees has raked in $2.5 million in 24 hours.

A tiny Aussie company with just 15 employees raked in $2.5 million in one “mind-blowing” day over the weekend.

Husband and wife team Zina Richter and Pynith Char created the Du’It range of skincare products two decades ago, starting out from their garage in Sydney’s Bella Vista.

Today, Du’It’s range of “dry skin” creams are among the top-selling products on China’s Alibaba e-commerce network, ranking in the top 5 per cent of Australian-made brands.

This weekend’s “Singles Day” shopping event shattered last year’s record, with shoppers making more than $42 billion in purchases in 24 hours — and Du’It cashed in.

“This is a milestone for us; $2.5 million over Singles Day is really good,” said Zina and Pynith’s son Jared Char, chief business development officer at the company.

What began as a joke holiday celebrated on November 11 by unattached Chinese university students in the late 1990s was adopted as a sales event by online retailers in 2009.

It has since grown to eclipse America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales to become the world’s biggest online shopping event.

More than 2000 local brands were on offer this Singles Day, with Australia the third largest source country behind only the US and Japan.

Since entering the Chinese market six years ago, Du’It has grown by 900 per cent, requiring a new factory to cope with the demand. Last year Du’It sold more than 1.5 million tubes of its Tough Hands in China, or one tube every 20 seconds.

“It comes down to being Australian owned and made, high standards and quality active ingredients. I guess why we’re so successful in China is because our products are very different,” Mr Char said.

“A lot of products sold into China are beauty. Ours are more functional. They’re for practical, intensive repair; they actually work. We’re very results-driven in terms of the products doing what they say they do.”

Mr Char said Du’It initially gained popularity in China through daigou, or personal shoppers, who buy products and sell them to customers via social media apps like WeChat.

“In the early days they picked up all the quality products that Aussies or people from New Zealand use. Our success has come from word-of-mouth through the daigou — we’ve got a really strong following,” he said.

“In China we’re sort of known as the dry skin specialists. For heel balm we’re ranked number one on Alibaba, in the hand care category we’re just a couple of thousand units off the number one spot behind a Chinese domestic brand.”

NSW trade minister Niall Blair said over the weekend that with hundreds of thousands of Australian-made products selling in minutes, with the right exposure a local manufacturer “can become an exporting powerhouse in a matter of seconds”.

“Chinese consumers can’t get enough of our quality, reliable Aussie-made products,” Mr Blair said.

Popular categories include baby and maternity, health and nutrition, cosmetics, food and beverages, while the fastest growth is in oats and cereal, beef, dairy, all-natural skincare and activewear.

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