Ogee Scaled International Sales 10X During Peak Season with Passport Global

Ogee, a luxury organic skincare and makeup brand, specializes in clean beauty with sustainable, cruelty-free products for both women and men. Their contour collections, night creams, and elixirs have gained a loyal customer base in the United States. Seeking to bring their high-quality personal care solutions to a global audience, Ogee aimed to expand into international markets by selling directly to consumers. 

However, they faced several challenges, most notably with accurate duty and tax calculations and complex compliance requirements, which hindered their growth. To enhance customer satisfaction and achieve sustainable success abroad, Ogee and their 3PL partner, Outerspace, turned to Passport to ensure efficient and profitable delivery of their premium products worldwide.

International Challenges and Pain Points

Before partnering with Passport, Ogee struggled to expand internationally due to operational constraints, impacting their ability to provide a consistent customer experience globally. The primary hurdles they encountered included:

Duty & Tax Reconciliation Discrepancies
Delays in billing and reconciling duties and taxes led to discrepancies, and accurately matching declared values for customs with order values was difficult. Additionally, integration issues across multiple platforms caused data inconsistencies.

Complex International Compliance Requirements
Navigating compliance requirements as a beauty brand – including chemical and ingredient restrictions and country-specific standards – was resource-intensive and complex. For example, when Ogee launched their first OTC blemish product, they encountered strict regulations due to its drug claims. These kinds of regulatory challenges can lead to customs delays, frustrating buyers.

High Shipping Costs
Cross-border shipping can be very expensive if you don’t have the volume to negotiate discounted rates with the right international carriers. Ogee found that their shipping costs were often higher than the product price, which deterred potential international customers from completing their purchases.

Limited Resources
As a small team, Ogee struggled to manage the intricacies of international logistics, making it challenging to scale efficiently.

Ogee wanted to grow globally, but they needed an experienced international shipping partner to help them sustainably expand. To do that, their partner would need to simplify cross-border logistics and compliance processes, and reliably support their international operations for a better customer experience.

Passport Shipping Wins

Ogee initially partnered with Passport in July 2021 to provide reliable international parcel shipping for their global customers through Passport Shipping. This turnkey solution not only provided reliable deliveries but also addressed Ogee’s international shipping challenges.

Seamless Tech & 3PL Integrations
Passport is integrated with Shopify, Ogee’s ecommerce platform, and partners with their 3PL, Outerspace, to easily facilitate international shipping.

International Compliance Management
Passport’s in-house compliance experts guided Ogee through country-specific regulations, identifying where their products could be sold while avoiding markets with stringent cosmetic restrictions. Passport also managed customs clearance and other regulatory challenges, significantly reducing the strain on Ogee’s internal resources.

International Tax Management
Ogee’s growth led to them surpassing revenue thresholds in five markets, requiring them to register for tax IDs and remit taxes. Passport Seller of Record® seamlessly handled this on Ogee’s behalf, eliminating the need for Ogee to register for tax IDs and remit taxes on their own. Instead, Passport did all of the heavy lifting of tax remittance and reporting for them.

Accurate Duty & Taxes
Using Passport’s landed cost calculator, Ogee improved the accuracy of calculating duties, taxes, and shipping costs. This resolved previous discrepancies, simplified billing, and enabled more precise financial management. Passport also optimized their commodity codes to maximize duty and tariff savings and eliminate duties in Free Trade Agreement markets.

We also introduced a precise product bundling system to ensure each component is accurately valued to reduce customs delays and duties costs. 

Timely Data Sharing
In addition to accurate duty & tax calculation, we partnered with Ogee’s 3PL, Outerspace, to streamline and expedite invoice processing to provide closer to real-time data. This enabled Ogee to pivot more quickly on their international strategies.

Brand & Customer Support
With Passport’s support, Ogee enhanced their customer experience and saw increased sales and profitability in new global markets. 

Passport Shipping drove significant wins for Ogee, including:
(data referenced below compares January – June 2023 vs. January – June 2024)

• Sales & Revenue Growth – Ogee achieved a 95% increase in GMV from international sales within one year and a 31% quarter-over-quarter revenue increase, highlighting the financial impact of improved international solutions and customer satisfaction.

• Boost in Shipping Volume – In Q1 2024, Ogee saw a 45% increase in shipping volume compared to Q4 2023, reflecting their successful international growth.

• Expanded Global Reach – Ogee significantly boosted their market presence by increasing the number of markets they ship to by 22% year-over-year, now reaching over 42 countries. 
• Optimized Delivery Performance – Transit times were reduced by 24% year-over-year while maintaining a 99.84% delivery success rate, ensuring timely deliveries to customers worldwide.

Unlocking Ogee’s Global Potential with Passport Global

Passport Shipping enabled Ogee to confidently deliver to customers worldwide. With a reliable international logistics strategy in place, they were ready to scale their global business and upgraded to Passport Global in the final days of October 2024.

Passport Global is our end-to-end international growth service, designed to drive profitable expansion for brands in any market. Each country’s buyers have unique expectations when shopping online, and Passport Global ensures a seamless alignment between those expectations and a brand’s digital experience. The result? Higher conversions, improved margins, and sustainable international growth. That’s exactly what we’ve achieved for Ogee.

Ogee upgraded to Passport Global to accomplish three key business objectives:

1. Expand into new markets the right way
2. Acquire new customers
3. Increase sales & profitability

Here’s how our team refined their buying experience globally:

Market Expansion
Activated new countries and enabled local currencies across all international markets, creating a localized buying experience wherever Ogee sells.

Duty & Tax Optimization
Recommended key markets to introduce duty and VAT-inclusive pricing to better meet buyer expectations, and optimized the pricing coefficients to both increase conversions and grow margin. This included partnering with Ogee’s third-party tools and integrated platforms to implement changes.

Shipping Rate Optimization
Introduced expedited shipping for all international regions, along with free Priority Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) shipping for customers who meet order value thresholds. For Canada, the UK, EU, and Australia, we implemented a more targeted approach by recommending a flat-rate priority and flat-rate expedited shipping strategy.

Ogee’s Explosive Passport Global Growth

The growth advisory recommendations and buying experience optimizations quickly drove significant results for Ogee, leading to 10X growth during the months of November and December.

Compared to Q4 2023, the same period in 2024 yielded:

• 370% growth in gross merchandise value (GMV)
• 632% growth in shipments delivered
• 2x growth in markets served

Their higher-converting store and rapid growth gave Ogee the confidence to invest in international advertising, further unlocking incremental revenue worldwide.

And the investment is paying off – Ogee’s international return on ad spend (ROAS) is 19% higher than in the United States. Likewise, the contribution margin for international customers is 25% higher than their U.S. counterparts.

“We’ve been able to scale our sales 10X during a peak period year-over-year. Being able to bring in incremental revenue as a result of leveraging Passport’s knowledge of what’s the lowest hanging fruit and moving into a strategy for ongoing improvement and expansion has been incredibly valuable to us. With Passport Global in place, we’ve proven that our next advertising dollar spent internationally is more impactful than in the U.S.”
Jonathan Revah | Senior Manager, Growth Marketing at Ogee

Tap Into Your Global Potential with Passport

Partnering with Passport has driven significant growth for Ogee, positioning them for a successful holiday season and identifying key opportunities for continued expansion. 

Are you ready to reach your global potential? Set up a discovery call with our team today to see how Passport can fuel your growth.