Category: Interview

An interview with Ms. Liu Qianfei, Founder & CEO of Zhuben

In 2019, a Chinese cleansing oil brand prevailed in the internet world. It gives customers an exceedingly impressive makeup cleansing experience with quite an affordable price. Behind this, it’s the persevering efforts made by Ms. Liu Qianfei and her team, especially their tenacious R&D journey and innovative online marketing approaches.

In 2015, Qianfei forsook her previous post in an investment bank which meant an annual salary of several millions. She started a research journey with her team, with a goal of offering Chinese young people natural products that their skin would most desire and they can easily afford. She integrates advanced science with aromatherapy to create products of top quality. Meanwhile, she wanted to cut out all intermediate steps and control all the supply chain resources in order to keep cost low and make products affordable to ordinary young people. She succeeded. SpaChina interviewed her to learn the story behind Zhuben.

What motivated you to set up this brand?

My brand is called Zhuben, meaning to trace the source and pursue the essence. During 2019 and 2020, our team with no more than 30 members created a sales volume of over one hundred million with a single type of cleansing oil. Customer impressions of us normally are: very impressive experience of usage with quite affordable price; a good aromatherapy concept; quite healing; and so on. In fact, my journey began from my passion to do wellness. I have been interested in healing, nutrition and spa for a long time and finally at the age of 26, I forsook my job in the investment bank, started my own business and I founded Zhuben. 

What challenges have you met in the process? And why did you decide to do business online?

I believe that every Chinese young woman in their twenties and thirties need to be healed. They are always under big pressure from work and life burdens and anxieties. They want to enjoy a high quality and healthy lifestyle, but they are not able to afford the expensive international brands in the long-term. This is a very real problem. So I began to think about how I could help them bring five-star SPA experience home. How can I enable them to easily afford the truly good things that I have enjoyed myself? How can I create for them a small spa world in their home where they can have a rest, listen to the inward voice and get refueled to boldly face tomorrow?

The biggest challenge is the price and quality. After two years’ continual endeavor, I finally control all the supply chain resources of international top brands in my own hands. Then it’s quality. I decided not to seek any ODM in order to keep the cost low. My team and I go to the factory ourselves to oversee the manufacturing so as to guarantee the product quality. All the ingredients we use are exactly the same as used by the international top brands. The essential oils in our products are top imported ones. And we sell the product at 100 yuan RMB, about one third of the price of the top brands with the same quality.

Afterwards, we do marketing online since online platforms demand less markup percentage and link us closer to our customers. With quite competitive product quality and pricing, our products are widely praised by young people. Through the users’ favorable remarks, more and more people come to know us. We often hear the customers say: “The healing experience is really amazing. It’s totally the same as the international top brand. Why do I spend three times of the price to buy those products?” In this way, repurchases are naturally generated.

We choose online platform because we feel it’s a highly effective way to make our products known and accessible to more people. It’s all for efficiency’s sake. We have joined the five top online platforms in China. In fact, we rush to wherever there are people.

How much time did you spend on R&D to successfully launch online marketing?

Firstly, I spent one year deeply studying aromatherapy myself and acquiring the supply chain resources. Then I spent eight months developing the first cleansing oil product that features “1-second emulsification”, “no synthetic lipid”, “remarkable essential oil fragrance”, “critical emulsification” and “no harm to the sebum membrane”. This means it takes away all your makeup without removing any of the natural lipid of your sebum membrane, namely no over-cleansing. Then I spent six more months upgrading the supply chain. For instance it took me six months to find out Zhuben’s signature “8” clip.

Marketing took me another year. In 2019, we were dedicated to doing marketing online and educating the public. We were joined with top online celebrities and KOL  of the major five online shopping platforms in China for a profound brand co-creation by listening to their voice. Since the beginning of this year, we have focused more on doing promotion via Tik Tok. This is our strategy: show our presence on popular online platforms, and keep enhancing the team’s marketing ability, content creation ability and promotion efficiency. So far, the monthly repurchase rate of our single type of cleansing oil is 20%.

What do you think is the most essential thing in team building?

I believe it’s important to keep “unity in diversity” and to willingly embrace changes. If we want to survive the ever-changing environment, we must open up our minds. We should put aside all our previous experience and listen to everybody. Then you will be surprised that a remark from an18-year-old intern on your product may overthrow your consistent thought process and give you inspiration. “Diversity” means the team should be composed of members of different backgrounds and specialties. But there is a “unity”, meaning we all stay in the same mind striving for the same goal.

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.