Ebonyline accelerates international growth with guaranteed fraud protection

Being beautiful can be a lot of work. Just ask Dong Yi, CEO of Ione Inc. which owns Ebonyline. Yi started selling haircare products on eBay from his living room in 2000 and ran things by himself for two years before his first few employees joined the company. Jess Jamiyanjav, General Manager of Ione Inc, recalls those early days, “In the beginning, there were just a couple of us in a small office. Now the company owns a 30,000 sq ft building with over 35 employees.” Ebonyline has grown consistently every year for over a decade, selling over a dozen brands of hair extensions, wigs, and accessories. Popular brands include Outre, Shake N Go, Bobbi Boss, Bohyme, Sensationnel, and Vivica A Fox.

Manual order review

When she joined the company, Jamiyanjav reviewed every order herself and shipped them out the same day. But as sales grew, fraud and chargebacks started to rise. At the peak of their fraud losses, Jamiyanjav and another team member spent most of their time reviewing orders, which led to delayed shipments. To verify the buyer’s identity, “we became detectives, looking for any information we could find on social media and public records about the billing and shipping addresses.” explains Jamiyanjav. They would also check for criminal records to ensure they weren’t shipping to known fraudster.

Despite their best efforts the chargebacks kept coming and Jamiyanjav knew her review process wouldn’t scale as orders had grown to more than a few hundred each day. In particular, international orders were becoming especially challenging as an increasing number of salons started placing larger orders since their products were selling fast. “Some orders could be over $10,000 and it’s really painful to turn these down because we’re not sure if we’ll end up paying a chargeback next month,” says Jamiyanjav.

International growth

International orders represent a significant opportunity for Ebonyline since their pricing is competitive and they carry a wide range of products not available on many other sites. Ebonyline tries not to decline orders because apart from lost revenue, declined orders can lead to frustrated customers who won’t hesitate to leave nasty online reviews. Jamiyanjav recalls an order that fell through the cracks, “the order was for $500 and something didn’t seem right so we asked for a photocopy of identification, which we received, only to realize later it had been photoshopped.”

Jamiyanjav says the chargebacks and fraud losses finally came to an end when she deployed Signifyd. With Signifyd’s Guaranteed Fraud Protection, Jamiyanjav no longer reviews each order. Even a thousand orders can be shipped out the same day because Signifyd provides real-time machine learning backed by a 100% financial guarantee against fraud and prevents chargebacks. Signifyd is able to protect more than 10,000 merchants like Ebonyline because it leverages the world’s leading 3^rd party data sources as well as its own database of more than 10,000 global merchants. For most merchants, Signifyd has seen 60% of their future customers before they even place their first order with the merchant.

With Guaranteed Fraud Protection in place, Ebonyline has continued to grow sales and expand their international markets without fraud losses. By eliminating manual order reviews, they’ve freed two employees to focus on better customer service and faster shipping. After fighting fraudsters on her own for more than a decade, Jamiyanjav is grateful for a partner that takes financial responsibility for every order she ships, “I never imagined there was a company that could help us review orders instantly and eliminate our fraud. Thank you guys for doing this.”