An interview with Mr. Aaron Ying,
Co-Founder and CEO of Mammy Best Care Center
A graduate of the Fashion Design and Marketing Department of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Mr. Aaron Ying has been familiar with the beauty industry since childhood because of his mother’s own health management company. In 2014, Aaron founded Mammy Best Care Center, the first comprehensive Taiwan-style maternity center in Zhejiang and introduced Taiwan scientific nursing concepts and dietary approaches to mainland China. In addition, with his knowledge in fashion design, he introduced a new lifestyle to Chinese families who are welcoming their new babies. Mammy Best has now become the largest chain brand of its kind in East China with eight branches each extending over 3,500 square meters. The brand has now expanded into the fields of postpartum rehabilitation, nurseries, nutrition meals, industry information spreading, etc., and aims to become a leading enterprise in the new mom & infant care industry in China.
SpaChina interviewed this young entrepreneur. He will share with us how he wisely made Mammy Best Care Center into a portal to gather high-end customer resources, expand related upstream and downstream business models and manage his team composed of young people.
What is the background to your business?
I come from Hangzhou, Zhejiang. I am not engaged in the beauty business, but my mother has been in the industry for almost 20 years. I am involved in the mom & infant care services, including what you may hear in recent years as the new mom care center, postpartum rehabilitation center and nutrition meals. Currently, we have opened eight Mammy Best Care Center branches. Different from traditional new mom care centers, we are not in hotels. We independently rent or buy properties and decorate them ourselves. Each property ranges from 3,000 to 4,000 square meters. In addition, we have also opened postpartum rehabilitation centers and launched delivery services of new mom meals and nutrition meals. We have almost 400 staff in total. This year is the sixth year since I started my business. I still need to learn a lot from our industry peers.
What differences are there between you and your mother’s generation when running business?
I was born in 1992. Firstly, I want to say there are some similarities between me and my mother. For example, we both pay much attention to the feelings of every customer since we regard this as the most important thing in the service industry. In addition, we are always thinking what kind of professional services we can provide to our customers in terms of our products, equipment and programs. But we do have some differences in running the business. My mother and others of her generation undoubtedly have a more profound understanding of customers’ needs due to their rich experience and longtime involvement in the business. But younger operators like me definitely know better what younger customers want, especially those born after 1995. We meet many new moms who are born in 1994, 1995, 1996 or even 1997. What they want may be totally different from their parents’ generation because they have seen more and experienced more. Moreover, young business operators today will emphasize more on the usage of new technologies. For instance, we use smart devices to collect customers’ data which my mother’s generation would never do.
Mammy Best began as a new mom care center. But in fact we operate it as a portal to gather in high-end customer resources. We don’t mean to make a profit through the center rooms. This consist of only our basic income. The true customer value that draws our attention is the whole family of the new mom, including her husband, her parents and parents-in-law. There is seldom another business model like ours that can enable the business operators to stay in communication with the whole family of the customers so closely for such a long time, like 28 days, 56 days or even half a year. So we just view the new mom care center as a portal to draw in high-end customers. Afterwards, we will develop upstream and downstream businesses such as the postpartum repair centers, nutrition meals and early education. We focus on the long-range value of the brand.
When doing our business plans, we are thinking about what the future needs of our customers and of their family members are. We are trying to meet their needs in every aspect after they give birth to the child through our new mom care center, postpartum repair center and more. In terms of health management, we will launch nutrition meal delivery services. We are also considering introducing aromatherapy and spa programs to our new mom care centers. Meanwhile, we will surely upgrade our online services. I am convinced that the internet will influence all walks of life though at present its impact on the service industry is comparatively slow. We can see it from this pandemic period when all the services and business were put online. So this is also an important part of our future planning.
What are your thoughts on managing a team of young people?
There are two things I want to say. Firstly, you must try to empathize with them, to understand what their interests are and why. In our team, there are people even younger than me. They are interested in things like anime and cosplay. We should try to empathize with them instead of casually showing contempt for it. Secondly, you must let them have a sense of meaning and sense value. That means that during work, when you ask them to do something, you should tell them what the value is for doing it.
