Ms. Liu Qianfei, Founder & CEO of Zhuben
MC Fifi: Please introduce Zhuben to us. What are your main sales channels?
Zhuben is a newly emerged online brand. We are a start-up company with a very hard-working team. In the first year after our first product was officially launched, we achieved RMB 100 million in online sales with a team of 20 people, and we managed to sell RMB 1 billion this year.
MC Fifi: I heard that all your products were sold out during the last Double 11. Could you share more details?
That’s true. Our products were sold out of stock during the last Double 11 sales festival. All of the 1.2 million product units were sold out in one hour on the first day of Double 11 on October 20, and we rushed to transfer the goods from other places, but still couldn’t meet the overwhelming demand for over 1.5 million products. During the entire period of the Double 11, our online sales were RMB 280 million.
MC Fifi: Why do you shift to offline when you’re doing such an amazing work online?
In fact, my initial inspiration for establishing Zhuben came from the offline scene – the extreme sense of experience and craftsmanship I enjoyed from the spa world. The delicate lifestyles that spa people have created with all their hearts have deeply moved me.
So at that time, I already had the desire to bring an Oriental healing lifestyle to all women, without causing any financial burden to them. But it was not easy. It took me five years to do in-house research and development, trace the global supply chain sources, and cut out all middlemen, which made it possible for young women to enjoy high quality aromatherapy products at a price of around 100 to 200 yuan. However, I realized the limitations of doing online business alone. I want to deliver the concept of Oriental healing, pass on the philosophy of Oriental aesthetics and bring this lifestyle to young people, and in order to fulfill this, it’s impossible to stay just online.
So, last year, I spent over RMB 3 million on launching a small art exhibition and then I found that it was really different to do it offline. Many of my clients said to me, “I have been working with you for so many years and haven’t really understood what the Oriental healing you have been talking about until today.” Before that, they didn’t exactly know what healing was or what Oriental healing was. This trial enhances my determination to shift to the offline.
I plan to use about one year’s time to explore. I will select up to 3-5 hotels or spas that are in line with the Oriental healing philosophy to collaborate with. In these collaborations, we will make full use of our supply chain resources of essential oils with Oriental characteristics, our ability of integrated marketing, and our capability to provide various types of differentiated and customized services free of charge to see how we can better meet the needs of offline consumers and do some further innovations.
At the moment, I don’t actually know what offline consumers truly need, as I am not yet so familiar with the spa industry. But I am willing to share all our supply chain resources and marketing resources for free, and I am also willing to provide services in a customized and differentiated way, purely as an experimental exploration. My capacity is limited and I may only be able to serve a couple of hotels or spas in a year’s time. But I want to try and see how we can go offline and get our ideas across.
MC Fifi: The online and the offline teams are actually two completely different teams. Did your current online team feel challenged when they started doing offline business? Have you thought of any ways to solve the problem?
On the one hand, we’re now rolling out the traditional offline retail channel, with the plan to open over 10,000 outlets by the Chinese New Year 2022. But that’s not a major part of our strategy. I mainly want to spend a year’s time approaching and understanding clients who are interested in Oriental healing, whether they are groups, hotels or spas. I want to know what kind of solutions they are seeking, what kind of new value they need, and based on that insight, I’ll decide how I’m going to deliver the services. I can recruit people, and I can set up a specialized team to serve the industry. My intention is not to make a profit from it, but it’s something I have to do.
MC Fifi: You say that you want to work with hotel spas. Hotel spas surely have their advantages in terms of brand awareness. But, the disadvantage is that you may not be able to receive a large volume of customers. Maybe you can also consider some quality day spas?
That’s right. After we establish partnership with offline spas, our online traffic can be converted to the offline scenes, and at the same time the offline business can provide better services for customers to complement the online business. In this way, we can truly connect the online with offline, rather than just having our products shown in a few hotel spas as an image promotion. Because if the products don’t sell well, the hotel spas will choose another brand. Now that we have huge online traffic, we can channel the online traffic to our offline spa partners, and this is our strength.
MC Fifi: We know that online and offline product lines are different. For online business, you may just need to have 1-2 star products and then you can gain the traffic and make good sales. But in terms of offline business, consumers will demand very comprehensive ranges of products. Do you feel any challenges or have any future plans for this?
There is surely a difference between doing online and offline business. Since Zhuben has been mainly doing online business since its foundation, many people may think that Zhuben only develops basic products like make-up remover and facial serum. But that’s not really the case. First of all, I would like to talk about our supply chain capabilities. It’s generally difficult for aromatherapy brands to deliver very high-tech facial treatments. However, we have spent five years integrating all the active ingredients, bio-technology, plant stem cells, and 3D skin models and so on used by the global top brands. We can customize all of these for you, regardless of the size of the minimum order. The other unique aspect for us is our Oriental healing concept. Traditionally, it is the essential oil brands from abroad that dominate the market. So we have spent a few years studying how to transform Chinese prescriptions, with more than 4,000 herbs and plants, into essential oils with Chinese characteristics. In addition, we have also done a lot in terms of school-enterprise cooperation.
