Hello reader, Shopping for beauty products, at least for me, needs to be a personal experience. There's nothing like swatching multiple shades of lipstick on the back of your hand under the luminous lighting of beauty counters or the thrill of finding the right shade of concealer after countless tries. A friendly sales lady who has a good eye for color and style makes the stop on a beauty counter all the better. Turns out, I'm not alone in thinking that way. For our first top story, I learned from Konvy CEO QingGui Huang that no matter how good a deal is online, beauty shoppers still gravitate toward shopping in stores. So in 2023, his Thailand-based ecommerce platform Konvy began opening retail shops in malls. It's a curious move at a time when TikTok Shop is fast becoming one of the leading sales channels of beauty brands across Southeast Asia. Konvy isn't the only one adopting this online-to-offline approach. Its regional counterpart, Indonesia's Sociolla, also has more than 150 offline stores across Southeast Asia. Sociolla is now flirting with the idea of going public in its home country. My colleague Jofie has more in his interview with the company's CEO. Both firms are pursuing growth as their home countries grapple with a slowing economy and softer consumer demand. Is their success the lipstick effect at work? It's a term coined by Estee Lauder founder Leonard Lauder who reported that sales continued to grow for his beauty empire even during the 2001 recession. For a region that loves to shop everything beauty, I wouldn't be surprised if it is. Elyssa Lopez, journalist | 
