Somethinc Brand Guidelines: The Jakarta Serum Brand Launched in 2019

An online beauty retailer that became a brand owner.

Somethinc is an Indonesian skincare and make-up brand that came to market in 2019. Its founder is Irene Ursula, who, according to her profile in Tatler Asia’s Gen.T list, started out in 2014 with the beauty e-commerce business BeautyHaul and followed it five years later with a beauty brand of her own. The 2019 date is repeated in Indonesian press: IDX Channel named her as the owner of the brand in August 2022 and dated it to 2019, and Fimela gave the same year in September and October 2022.

The brand did not come from nowhere. Speaking to Fimela in October 2022, Irene Ursula said she had tried a skincare business three times before Somethinc, and that each attempt had failed; IDX Channel reported the same three earlier attempts. In her account, the difficulty was persuading Indonesian shoppers to trust a local product rather than an imported one, and she described studying ingredients, raw materials and technology before trying again. She also told Fimela that she worked by instinct, and that she had begun selling online before the large marketplaces were established in Indonesia.

By 2022 the business had grown into a small family of names. When Fimela covered a Somethinc launch event in September 2022, it introduced her as the founder of BeautyHaul, Somethinc and Glowinc Potion, and the Tatler Asia profile describes Glowinc Potion as a skincare brand aimed at Gen Z. The same profile says Somethinc expanded into cosmetics in 2021 with more than 120 products.

Somethinc’s own website, read in November 2026, describes it as a halal-certified local beauty brand selling skincare, make-up and beauty tools alongside official merchandise. detikJatim reported in September 2023 that Somethinc products had carried a halal certificate since 2019.

Serums first, then a cushion.

In its early years Somethinc was known above all for its face cleanser and serums, Fimela wrote in October 2022, even though its opening range also took in an eye cream, a chemical exfoliant, an essence, a toner and a moisturiser. The move into make-up began with the Copy Paste Cushion, which Fimela said was received warmly and spread widely online; eyeliner, an eyeshadow palette and lipsticks followed.

Serums remained the centre of the brand’s public image. On 1 September 2022 Somethinc unveiled a Menara Serum, or serum tower, at Sarinah on Jalan Thamrin in Central Jakarta. Fimela reported that the tower stood six metres tall, used 5,274 replica serum bottles and displayed all 25 of the brand’s serum variants at the time. At the press event the founder explained the tower as a way to show that the 25 serums were not meant to be used all at once, and that shoppers could pick the one that suited them.

The same event introduced a new serum, the Diamond Phyto Stem Cell, and a new ambassador. Fimela reported that the Indonesian singer Syahrini had been named a Somethinc brand ambassador in September 2022, joining Korean names the brand had already signed, among them the actress Han So Hee and members of the K-pop group NCT. In October 2022 Fimela named collaborations with Korean artists as one of the ways Somethinc reached local shoppers, and the brand’s own website, read in November 2026, still lists collaborations with Korean stars and local creators among its draws.

Its advertising has leaned on characters and humour. In March 2023, Marketech APAC reported, Somethinc released a 90-second film made with the agency TJT Creative Lab to introduce its Calmdown series, built around an angry skin cell causing havoc. The trade site credited the product idea to the founder and quoted Somethinc’s creative director, Calista Primalia, on the angry-cell concept; the campaign also ran on more than 30 billboard sites across Indonesia.

Indonesian beauty and modest fashion.

Indonesian beauty and modest-fashion brands tend to present themselves through people, packaging and the places they sell, and only occasionally through a published identity manual. Logos and colour codes are rarely documented in the press, so a design reading has to rest on what companies show in public: the pack, the campaign, the ambassador and the corporate page that names founders and owners.

Halal statements are part of that picture, but companies publish them in different ways. Liputan6 reported in 2022 that Wardah received a halal certificate from the Majelis Ulama Indonesia in 1999, while Wardah’s founder told The Jakarta Post in 2019 that the brand did not put its certificates at the centre of its advertising. A marketing analyst quoted by the same paper linked the growth of halal cosmetics to the spread of the hijab as everyday fashion from around 2009, saying that fashion and cosmetics moved together.

Campaigns lean on familiar faces. Singers, racing drivers and other public figures appear as named ambassadors in dated launches, from a 2014 Wardah event in Jakarta reported by Fimela to a 2026 lip campaign shot in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, covered by Marketing-Interactive. Marketplace launches matter as much as shops: Monocle reported in 2025 that Paragon Corp sells through livestreams on TikTok, Shopee, Lazada and Tokopedia, and Sinar Harian reported that Emina’s 2022 Malaysian launch named Shopee, TikTok Shop and Watsons as its outlets.

Group ownership shapes the field. Paragon Corp, founded in 1985 and renamed in 2011, runs a family of brands for different ages and budgets, and older houses with roots in the jamu tradition sit alongside it with their own founders and corporate histories. Each guide in this series describes those owners plainly, dates every ambassador and launch, and treats colour and type as our own unofficial interpretation.

A local brand that went abroad through a marketplace.

Somethinc launched abroad in 2023. The Malaysian site Hype reported on 19 April 2023 that Somethinc had launched in Malaysia, and that the launch came with the brand’s Calm Down! series: a Skinpair Bubble Cleanser, a PHA 3% Soothing Everyday Toner, a Skinpair Barrier Serum and a Skinpair R-Cover Cream. At launch the series was sold through Somethinc’s store on Shopee, Hype said.

The dated record shows a brand that grew out of online retail, kept its founder at the centre of its story, built recognition around a long range of serums, moved into cushions and colour make-up, and used Korean and Indonesian celebrities, a large installation in a Jakarta department store and a character-led advertising film to make itself visible. Across those sources the founder is the one constant voice, explaining products at launches and credited with the ideas behind new series.

For a design guide, Somethinc shows how an online-first beauty brand can build a recognisable look around one product type, using a wall of repeated bottles as both display and statement. Compare Azarine, another Indonesian skincare brand that signed Korean ambassadors, and Wardah, an older Indonesian beauty name with a group behind it. For this guide we use black, a warm charcoal and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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