All I do is buy stuff, I swear. I should really sit down and write an in depth review of all the crap that I buy, but instead I just keep accumulating more stuff!
I’ve never used Jolse before, but I’ve heard great things about it, so I wanted to try it out. It also has Etude House and innisfree, two of my favorite brands, which YesStyle has, I believe? But they don’t ship to the USA from what I understand.
Anyways, I purchased a number of items from Jolse during Mid-Autumn Festival/the Chuseok sale, which obviously didn’t get shipped out until after the end of the holiday.
I placed my order on the 4th of October, my package shipped on October 19th, and I received it on October 20th.
Here’s an inventory of what I purchased in no particular order:
- moonshot – reve de Paris Eyeshadow Palette
- MISSHA – MISA Golden Snow BB Cake SPF 40
- HOLIKA HOLIKA – Sweet Peko Edition Hard Cover Perfect Cushion in #02 Petal
- A’PIEU – Cover-Pang Long Wear Cushion SPF 50 in #3 Beige
- A’PIEU – Cover-Pang Glow Cushion SPF 45 in #3 Beige
- A’PIEU – Wonder Tension Pact Madecassoside in #23
- ETUDE HOUSE – Play Color Eyes Heart Blossom in #1 Beige Blossom
- ETUDE HOUSE – Play Color Eyes Heart Blossom in #2 Coral Blossom
- ETUDE HOUSE – Play Color Eyes Heart Blossom in #3 Pink Blossom
- ETUDE HOUSE – Play Color Eyes Heart Blossom in #4 Dry Blossom
- peripera – All Take Mood Palette in #2 Lala Coralmingo
- ETUDE HOUSE – Heart Blossom Lash Perm Volume Mascara in #Black
- ETUDE HOUSE – Heart Blossom Better Lips Talk in #PK013
- ETUDE HOUSE – Heart Blossom Better Lips Talk in #RD301
- innisfree – No Sebum Mineral Pact
In total, I paid around $180 USD after all my discounts, coupons, and so on. This was my first order with Jolse and there were coupons for Chuseok and I had a 3.00 sign-up bonus credit. I chose the cheapest shipping method for $2.50.
So, I know that both Etude House and innisfree have USA shops however in regards to the Etude House items, I found that most of the base prices were cheaper than the USA shop let alone with discounts and sales and coupons, so I ultimately just decided to buy them off of Jolse rather than order them from their USA websites.
That being said, the base price for the innisfree No Sebum Mineral Pact was like 18 cents more than the price on the USA website, but with discounts it was cheaper by a few bucks on the Jolse website.
Ultimately though Jolse doesn’t have a comprehensive collection of everything innisfree and Etude House has to offer, so honestly, if I really wanted say the Muhly Romance collection (which I didn’t see on the Jolse website) I’d have to purchase it off the Etude House website or somewhere else. So, although it has some things, it doesn’t have everything.
I also found that while I didn’t hate Jolse’s website, I also didn’t particularly love it. Maybe I’m just too used to how the YesStyle website is formatted which is why it was weird to work out Jolse’s website. But secondly, the website sometimes just goes wonky on me. I’ll load a page, try to select items, but nothing happens. Even if it’s a page where there’s no options, it still won’t add to my cart. It happens often enough that it really annoys me. Refreshing the page doesn’t seem to work so I don’t really understand how to fix that issue. That being said, Jolse’s website does have some benefits compared to the YesStyle website.
I do like the look of Jolse’s website and I do like the option that when you go to an item that has more than one option, you can select all of the options and that gets added to a ‘counter’ of sorts underneath and then after you can choose to buy it all immediately, or add it to your cart. You can see an example below.
So one of my least favorite things about YesStyle is adding more than one item to my cart. Although YesStyle’s website doesn’t move you to the cart every time you add an item (like innisfree’s website does UGH) but if I’m shopping in the app (which I occasionally do) every time you add an item to the cart, a screen pops up with recommendations to other items. It’s extremely annoying because it pops up every. damn. time. you add an item. I despise it, especially if I’m adding 3 or 4 shades of a lipstick or something into my cart at the same time.
But in general, adding more than one item is kind of time consuming even on the website. When you add an item, the selection screen disappears, which means you have to re-open the selection screen, select the color you want, add it, then repeat once again if you want to add any other colors. It’d be fine if the selection screen just stayed up, but it doesn’t unfortunately.
I know, first world problems.
I also like that there’s a ‘quick cart’ and ‘quick favorites’ option when you’re searching through a bunch of items. It’s under the image of the item, and at first it took me a while to notice it because it’s so lightly colored, but I do enjoy that for single items that have no options because it’s quick and I don’t have to go through a bunch of pages to add it. You can also use it to quickly add items with options (it’ll bring up a little box where you can select the different options you want and add them all at once to your cart) but I always want to look at the photos for the different color options, so I tend to open up the page directly to take a look at it.
YesStyle has a favorites button on all the items when you’re looking through them, but I haven’t noticed a ‘quick cart add’ button or anything. Maybe I’m just blind, but I’ve made like seven orders with YesStyle now and I’ve never noticed it.
In terms of pricing, I feel like the prices are pretty similar to YesStyle’s pricing – some things are a little more expensive by a buck or two depending on if there’s a sale going on, while others are cheaper by a buck or two. Honestly, I didn’t notice a huge difference in terms of pricing, but I’m looking at my final discounted price and not original pricing for some of these items. Specifically, the A’Pieu cushions because YesStyle also sells those.
Most of the other items YesStyle doesn’t have/doesn’t ship to the USA so I can’t really comment on those products.
When I did go to check out, I found that checking out was mostly easy, except for when I was trying to choose my gift. I ordered during Chuseok when they were giving away a different free kit every single day, and I chose the Sulwhasoo Bloomstay kit.
At the very bottom when you’re checking out, there’s a ‘Gift’ option with a check box like you should be able to select it. Try as I might, I could not click on the check box but I could click on the check box of everything above. I was super confused; why was this check box option here when I couldn’t click it? I thought maybe my page froze or was wonky so I ended up exiting, reloading the cart and going through it once more only to find that I had the same issue. In the end, I just continued checking out.
Once you finish checking out and moving on, then a pop up will appear which gives you the option of selecting the gift. It was slow to load, and it isn’t a separate browser that pops up, but a notification box within the web page that pops up. If the pop up didn’t load, I’m not sure if I could have selected my gift kit? Honestly, it all seems extremely non-intuitive to me.
Anyways, moving on.
I actually did order one more item, a peripera Ink Color Cara mascara that was cancelled and refunded to me because they couldn’t find it anywhere. Wasn’t too upset with that, and I got an e-mail notification that it was cancelled.
However, I didn’t receive a shipping notification. I got three e-mails regarding cancelling the item, why it got cancelled and that I was being refunded, but I didn’t actually get a shipping notification?
The only notification I got was from DHL when they sent me a notification that my package was out for delivery.
Which, side note. I totally didn’t realize they would choose DHL to ship my package to me.
I chose the cheapest shipping method which was “Standard Mail” for $2.50. There were two other shipping methods that were like DHL and I think maybe EMS??? But they were like 30-40 dollars so I decided I’d just choose whatever the $2.50 shipping was and I assumed it would be like regular USPS post when it arrived in the USA and would take two weeks to get to me. It doesn’t say which shipping company it is, just that it’s “Standard Mail” for $2.50 with tracking.
So when I got the DHL notification I was kind of surprised? I think maybe I was just confused due to the wording on checkout.
But surprise, I got a sudden text and e-mail from DHL saying my package from Jolse was coming, so I guess that was a pleasant surprise for me.
Here’s a list of what they offer for ‘free gifts’ when you spend more money. I obviously hit everything. The Express Shipping you’d assume would be free, but it wasn’t, because I still paid $2.50 for it. When I tried to pick the other options, they listed a price for each one.
The above infographic this isn’t listed on their front page or anything, it’s usually listed at the bottom of an item’s page after all the promotional photos and stuff, right above the reviews. To be honest, I didn’t actually really read this, I just glanced over it and none of the information registered mostly because it’s at the very bottom. And this is all banking on whether or not I even scroll to the bottom of the page to begin with. I feel like maybe they should put this somewhere on the front page…? Although I’m not really sure where they should put it.
Anyways!
My package arrived in a brown box and, opening it up, everything was packed tightly inside.
I mean, look at that. They used SO much bubble wrap, how could anything possibly break in transit?
I’ll admit I was really pleased with how they packaged this. My YesStyle orders come with a thin amount of bubble wrap around like all my products which were stacked together. Although it’s neatly stacked, it still doesn’t leave me much comfort that my items won’t totally get jumbled around while in transit with FedEx.
But in this case, I felt extremely reassured when I opened the package up and found everything individually wrapped.
Some of the items, like the palettes, were bundled together and tightly wrapped twice. There wasn’t a single item that shifted within the bubble pack because they had taped and wrapped it so tightly.
When I first opened the package up, the top of it was covered in free samples.
I was kind of shocked to be honest. They gave so many samples!! YesStyle gives like, three or four typically, and it varies with whatever promotions they’re doing at the time. Sometimes you get one sample.
Other than the Bloomstay kit, everything else were just random samples Jolse gave me.
I feel like they gave a pretty… interesting? (I suppose is the correct feeling/word?) combination of free samples. I mean, I got a pair of socks. Kind of random, honestly. I also got a single, random, hair tie… just a plain black one. It’s not in the photo, but it’s just your standard black hair tie.
I also got a full sized hand cream, as well as an exfoliating mitt, a sheet mask, some A’PIEU cotton pads, blotting sheets and a host of other small single samples. So, everything that’s included in their “spend more get more gifts” advertisement but also other samples.
I’m pretty pleased with the sample collection, to be honest. I do really like getting samples, and while I do appreciate the samples that YesStyle offers, I think because it’s a company that orders around from more than just Korean companies that it isn’t too surprising it doesn’t give a lot of samples compared to Jolse, which specializes in Korean (and some Japanese I think) skincare products.
Overall, I’m very happy with my purchase.
I think my favorite parts about Jolse are the multi-select function on products with more than one option, the way they package my items and how many samples they give. The prices are also reasonable and although shipping typically isn’t free like YesStyle is, I don’t mind because I’m the type of person who doesn’t really mind waiting.
Keep in mind though for this order, it was done during Chuseok which is when people are off work, so when everybody came back they were probably inundated with orders and so I’m not too surprised at how long it took from placing my order to shipping it to me.
While I definitely want to use Jolse more in the future, I’ll admit that I do really enjoy YesStyle and like it just a tiiiiiiny bit more than Jolse.
But Jolse is still a solid choice when it comes to purchasing your favorite k-beauty products and I plan on continuing to use them in the future.
Thanks for reading!
{ Honey + Bunny } 