Category: Interview

Interview with Mr. Michael Gao, General Manager of Universal SpaEquip Asia

Michael Gao studied in Wuhan University, the Wharton School of Business, and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Since graduation, Michael has accumulated rich work experience at top Global 500 companies including Johnson & Johnson and Adidas. At the end of 2013, he joined the spa industry and founded SpaEquip Shanghai Ltd. Now as the Founding General Manager of Universal Companies Asia, the biggest one-stop solution provider to spa and wellness sector of five-star hotels worldwide, Michael is in charge of the operations and business development of the company’s business in the Asia-Pacific area. SpaChina interviewed him concerning the current spa market demand and situation and how to follow the latest market trends.

What’s the relationship between Universal Companies and Universal SpaEquip Asia?

Universal SpaEquip Asia is the Asia Pacific headquarter office of Universal Companies Inc, whose business covers the whole APAC area from India in the west to New Zealand in the east. Universal Companies is headquartered in Virginia, in the U.S.. As a trusted supplier of global spas and professionals for over 30 years, it has been dedicated to providing professional and high quality spa products, equipment, facilities, accessories and retails goods to partners. It has also provided retail consultancy and training programs. Besides, The Wellness & Beauty Learning Center by Universal Companies in Southern California is offering training sessions and site instructions to multitudes of professionals in the wellness and beauty industry.

How is China’s spas’ demand to spa products?

With the continual increasing number of spas, spa operators have higher demand for differentiation of products. Meanwhile, due to the long-term strict product registration system, including animal testing, in mainland China, the products must possess complete registration certificates to enter hotels, different from beauty salons and medical spas. Naturally, it becomes even harder for the high-end brands to render exclusive offerings at the spas. Since it is illegal for hotel spas to use invasive equipment, they become more in need of professional products with obvious quick effects.

How is China’s spas’ demand for spa equipment?

Firstly, the hotel spas can get the latest spa equipment innovations first hand due to the group’s consistent high standards on quality and their attendance to global and regional industry summits. Meanwhile, beauty salons and medical spas have quicker spa equipment upgrade than before. They show advantages over pre-opening hotels in this aspect because the hotels normally have a longer budget and CAPEX application process. On the contrary, with faster approval process, beauty salons and medical spas are able to purchase and renew more quickly to follow the latest trends of the industry.

Based on my experience, imported products or the true global brands (instead of “export-oriented commodities sold at home”) usually feature better quality and updated design and are therefore win more applause in the market. To sum up, hotel spas consistently maintain their high standard while beauty salons and medical spas are undergoing equipment upgrades.

How to select the right equipment is the key. Many suppliers were originally transferred from the spa operation, F&B or other sectors, so they lack knowledge of spa equipment or even defraud customers. They fail to give qualified after-sales services or maintenance and thus raise the spa operation risks.

How big is the influence of spa products and equipment on spa operations and revenues?

Just like good spa products, good spa equipment can help spa operators offer better service and also enable more flexible price adjustments to result in higher profit. The Rosewood Beijing, one of the best high-end hotels in Beijing, is a good example. As soon as taking up the post, the new spa director immediately upgraded spa products and equipment by using results-proven skincare ranges and updating massages tables. Besides, an adjustment of the spa menu further fends off part of group purchase customers who bring very low profit. After all these reformations, the spa witnessed an obvious revenue increase of over 100%. The new edition also better suits the hotel positioning. As a result, it now has become one of the spa landmarks in Beijing.

What is the percentage of spas that have retail area? Do they reach expectations?

As I observe, more than half of all spas have set a retail area. High-end brands like Marriott Group have retail areas at all their spas. The main categories sold at the retail area are spa products, complemented by brand labelled accessories, just like the display shelves by the counters in the supermarkets and shopping malls. To improve transaction per customer is surely a good option for spas. A La Mode, a subsidiary corporation of Universal Companies, provides professional retail guidance and training to spa people. Honestly speaking, the retail area of hotel spas normally doesn’t have truly satisfying results mainly due to poor sales skills.

What are the shortcomings of China’s spa and wellness industry at present?

Human resources. Personnel shortage will hinder the further development of the industry. Moreover, it seems this problem cannot be solved in the short term. This is indeed a global issue yet appears especially severe in China. To make it worse, some professional therapists are becoming fickle, negative and keep seeking new employers, which causes a high turnover rate and talent outflow.

Therefore, it is important for the employers to build better team culture, offer better salaries and emphasize professional training. The hotel spas, in particular, should also think of seeking good outsourcing partners so that they can quickly fill the post vacancies with the help of the partners’ network. How to choose a good operation partner? Professionalism is the priority. It is of great significance to ensure legal performance and avoid violating laws by rendering unacceptable business. On the other hand, the outsourcing operators need to fully understand the operation process and manners of the hotels lest they fail to be well adapted and give up halfway. Meanwhile, professional training is a great necessity, including both introductory training and advanced training.

What is your opinion on the training programs and personal cultivation in China’s spa and wellness industry?

Two words: Huge Potential. As Peter Thiel, the business legend at Silicon Valley and the icon of PayPal Mafia, commented in his book From Zero to One: Be it an industry or a company, it is extremely hard to change from zero to one. It is in fact easier to turn from one to hundred. Many of the training programs in China’s spa industry are in the phase of “from zero to one”. So there is a huge potential. The personnel shortage should be regarded as a great chance. While communicating with some training schools, I discovered that the most difficult part is student enrollment. The one child policy in the past 40 years has resulted in the fact that young people today are so spoiled by their parents that they are not willing to do service jobs. Meanwhile, the second and third-tier cities still have their biased and incorrect view about massage. All these factors contribute to a great difficulty in personnel recruitment.

We need to also notice that the training scale is still far from meeting the market’s demands. Nevertheless, this is not an industry that will promise you money overnight. Slow and steady wins the race. Furthermore, since there is not a national or regional industry standard for spa training, all kinds of people, professional or not, can easily set up a training institute. The final results of course cannot be guaranteed. The unsatisfactory trainees are more likely to shift from one work place to another and thus cause an increase in labor costs for the employers. For this reason, it is advisable for training schools to partner with global industry training giants. We are thinking of bringing our Wellness & Beauty Learning Center in California to China by adapting ourselves and more deeply exploring the local market. We believe it would be a fantastic chance. Yet we are also considering the possibility of applying the global standard training fee and employment here. Besides, it would be decisively helpful to the long-term healthy development of the industry’s training system if relevant national departments such as the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security can establish a unified industry standard.

What are the top three star products or equipment of Universal Companies?

We have many star products and equipment which we are longing to introduce to spa professionals. If we can only choose three, then they would be the Sposh linen range, which wins numerous high-end spas with its super soft texture; the Babor range, as the creator of Ampoules, well-known for its German quality; and our customized massage tables, which we tailor according to the demands of hotel groups and end projects, such as Marriott Customization.

Why is Universal Companies so trusted by its customers?

As the biggest spa solution provider in the world, our company possesses a gigantic customer database. With the help of big data analysis using Oracle’s ERP system, we can, through training and after-sales service, share with industry people the information we get on the global and key area summits such as APAC and China concerning end-user feedback and market demand, so as to help operators meet the requirements of customers and establish top-ranking spas.

At the same time, as the biggest spa product and equipment supplier, we firmly hold to “One Source Spa Solution”. We strictly select quality suppliers and offer supreme spa equipment, products and consumables to our customers all around the world including Greater China, East Asia, ASEAN, South Asia and Oceania.

Interview with Mr. Billy Zhao, CEO and General Manager of O’Nine Beauty Technology

Prior to O’Nine Beauty Technology, Billy was a veteran in the IT and internet sectors, working as Sales and Marketing head for global leading IT companies such as Oracle, SAP (the world’s top enterprise software company) and PTC (leading product design and life cycle management firm) for over 15 years. Then Billy established O’Nine Beauty Technology, dedicated to bringing innovations and breakthroughs to the nail field. As a leading healthy nail brand based in France, it is the first innovator in the industry to release the solvent-free, odorless and cosmetic grade nail gel polish and nail polish formula and products, under the name of “Jardin Global”. O’Nine also launches online and offline training to help more people start their business. As an IT guy in the beauty and SPA industry, Mr. Zhao possesses creative business perceptions. SpaChina interviewed him.

When did you found your company?

It has been nearly six years since I left the IT industry and began nail business with other partners. Facing a brand new market, we have gone through several twists and turns, from the early phase when we painstakingly groped and adapted, to later when we can more deeply understand the market and establish an operation strategy for the company. In short, the best way to understand the market is to directly go to the front lines to meet the consumers and listen to their voices. I have visited almost 500 outlets to talk with the owners, directors, therapists and consumers to understand their conditions, confusions and development states. Our first group of clients, including big chain stores and influential independent outlets, have been gained in this way.

What changes have you experienced concerning the market and target group?

The nail business is a rising industry. As I always say, it is never too late to enter this industry. With the continual boom in domestic consumption and service industries, the nail business has enjoyed rapid growth. You can now find nail stores on nearly every street. There are 370,000 independent nail stores (excluding those within salons) in China with 2.6 million personnel and a market size of RMB 120 billion. It maintains an annual growth of 25%. In Europe and America, over 60% females are beauty nail wearers while the proportion is less than 20% in China. There are 215 million post 80s and 90s females in China, so there is huge potential in the nail market here.

At present, the cases are consumers who go to nail stores for services. However, due to low investment and a high return rate, there are numerous nail stores of different scales and quality in the market. There is not yet a chain brand that can take up more than 1% of market share. 90.3% of all nail brands have no chain stores. Moreover, the comparatively big chain stores show obvious favor to only first-tier and second-tier cities.

In the nail industry, the market size of nail products and tools is about RMB 12 billion, training schools RMB 2 billion and nail services RMB 100 billion. There is a high degree of market decentralization. Concerning the upstream supply chain, there are over 2,000 manufacturers and training institutes of various sizes, each of which has exceedingly low market share. There is not yet a leading brand with due scale and influence in the market. It is against this background that O’Nine and Jardin Global makes a strong debut and shows rapid development in the market. I firmly believe that we will stand out as a national leading brand regarding both market share and brand influence.

To gain long term customer loyalty and trust, quality is surely a core. What’s your opinion?

The product itself is the best advertisement and the company founder is the best product manager. We entered this confusing market in order to make innovations and revolutions. Beforehand, the nail products in the market are mostly produced at small poorly-qualified workshops, with paint coating-like manufacturing methods and formulas, which means massive amounts of chemical solvent, pungent smell and clichéd industrial formulas.

From the very beginning, we have been dedicated to producing safe, healthy and environment-friendly products that combine technology and art. We stick to the strict EU Cosmetics Regulation in the research and development process. Thanks to the plant extraction technique from our French partner, as well as our own advanced material synthesis technology, we launched the first completely solvent-free nail gel in the world in 2012. To avoid damage to the skin caused by acetone that is found in traditional nail polish remover, we later launched a new nail gel that can be removed by medical alcohol in 2016. We added in the gel beneficial ingredients such as myrrh and frankincense which are powerful to kill bacteria and inflammation and stimulate nail growth. We want to create a healthy working environment for the staff and truly safe nail services for consumers.

We strictly conform to national and EU production regulation of cosmetics. Our dust-free manufacturing plant in Pudong, Shanghai has reached the standard of producing infant-use skincare products. Besides, we have got system certifications of GMPC and ISO22716. So far, there is no other nail manufacturer in China that has obtained such high production and quality standards.

As a professional line brand, training and education is a significant sector. That’s why we have also founded a nail training school. We have more than 20 well-known experts in nail and service industry who teach nail shop owners and staff product knowledge, operation techniques, trendy nail styles, color matching, service etiquette and in-shop business management. We provide various training modes including in-shop training, assembly training and online training in order to improve the cohesion between clients and our company and help them achieve success.

How do you help your clients with marketing in order to gain more customers?

It is very easy to open a nail shop, but the nail industry also has a high demand for the techniques and service levels of the staff. So it requires huge effort and energy input to successfully run a nail shop. The staff generally lack sufficient knowledge and are poor in management and operation experience. Therefore, we not only provide products, but also a series of services to support clients’ shop openings, operations and training. In the aspect of marketing and customer expansion, we actively carry out training for our clients and guide them to take full advantages of online resources such Dian Ping and Mei Tuan. We also help them design proper consumption cards (by times) and value cards and in this way fix the online buying group to be regular customers. Furthermore, we support our clients to launch their we-media platform such as WeChat public account to form interactions with customers in time and carry out after-sale services. Our operation modes are as follows:

Online marketing: Attract customers via platforms such as Dian Ping and Mei Tuan. The biggest problem is that it is hard for the shops to maintain customers and improve their re-visit rate due to poor services and lack of standards. Besides, over-reliance on sales, on the contrary, also influences guests experience. Therefore, it is important for the shops to improve service standards, therapists’ skills and environment so that they can truly maintain the guests and increase their re-visit rate.

Word-of-Mouth marketing: During the whole two hours from the guests’ arrival to departure, the shop needs to provide standard and cordial services in every detail such as reception courtesy, tool sterilization, operation skills, fruit and snack offering. It can also invite guests to introduce their friends to visit by offering discounts or free experiences. The main problem is that the shops solely focus on the therapists’ skills and ignore other details such as reception courtesy, interior tidiness and tool sterilization. However, it is always these factors that influence guests’ experience, yet there is hardly any unified standards.

Cross-field cooperation: Join hands with beauty salons, hair salons or high-end clothes shops and clubs nearby to offer services at their venues or organize workshops and salons together. However, most shops are not good at this and lack resources.

Do you agree with the saying “Education pushes industry development”? How do you organize your offline after sale services and training?

I couldn’t agree more. “Education pushes the industry development” is the founding concept for us. We have carried out well-organized online and offline education and training programs. Our online training platform – “Nail and Eyelash Beauty Class” – aims to provide shop owners and therapists with theme courses and lectures concerning skill training, color matching, shop management and industry trends. The platform has so far covered over 30,000 personnel in the nail industry. We gather the expertise from excellent teachers both inside and outside the industry and popular nail business directors and share it with shops through video, audio and letters so as to help them improve skills and management levels. So far, there are 40 professionals who have provided over 100 online classes. Meanwhile, we also have offline classes regularly in Shanghai as well as other cities, including short-term nail and eyelash therapists intensive advanced training, shop management, marketing and staff management.

What are your interests in spare time?

Sport is my favorite spare time activity. I run and swim once a week and keep to at least 10,000 walking steps daily. This is my best way to reduce pressure.

Interview with Mr. Vito Romeo, Managing Director of Rosewood Sanya

A native Italian, Mr. Romeo has more than 30 years’ hospitality experience and has held senior hotel manager positions all over the world, most recently as general manager at The Ritz-Carlton Chengdu and previously at Shangri-La Bosphorus Istanbul and Shangri-La Vancouver. Mr. Romeo has a degree in hospitality management from the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France, and is also a graduate of Cornell University’s general managers program. Aside from being a hospitality professional and well-travelled, Mr. Romeo loves architecture, golf, cooking and collecting cookbooks, and passionately follows Juventus Football Club. Recently Mr. Vito Romeo has been appointed managing director of Rosewood Sanya which opened in August 2017 as the first China resort for the ultra-luxury Rosewood Hotels & Resorts® brand. SpaChina talked with him about changes and development in the hospitality and wellness industry.

What are the significant changes and development in global high-end hospitality industry in recent years?

The hospitality industry has grown faster and faster. Customers pay more attention on a unique and personalized service experience. They are no longer satisfied with well-furnished facilities, they need to be impressed, touched and engaged. To build loyalty and trust for the brand has become an extremely important issue nowadays. Rosewood’s overall mission is to provide the most personal, original and authentic travel experience possible in today’s luxury space. Each property is a reflection of its location’s history, culture and geography. Thus, art and visual culture are essential components of a destination’s identity and are essential to our “A Sense of Place” philosophy and the Rosewood guest experience.   

Compared with five or ten years ago, is luxury hotel management and operation today easier or more difficult?

Luxury hotel management has definitely become more difficult nowadays. Besides the traditional hotel brands, there are more and more derivative boutique hotels from fashion brands such as Bvlgari and Versace. China has quite different market compared with other nations and regions. We need to build an impressive brand image to our target market and establish a long-term relationship which is based on trust and loyalty.

What kind of Chinese consumers tend to select luxury hotels here and abroad?

Chinese consumers who tend to select luxury hotel brands are getting younger, which means mainly millennium. As time goes by and society advances, people tend to have higher standards of living and individual worth. These young customer groups generally have high education and frequent travel or overseas living/studying experiences. For attracting this market, the display of social marketing seems to be a key for success. Despite the facilities and environments of the hotel, more and more customers focus on culture discovery and the personal journey during their stay, which means a requirement for a more engaged and interactive service vibe and exquisite experiences of culture, nature and personal service. Our hotels and resorts are intuitive expressions of the souls of their respective destinations.

How do you value a spa’s role in a luxury hotel?

Spa has a vital role in luxury hotel chains nowadays, and most of them manage their spa as an independent outlet with its distinctive identities and characters. Unlike in the past, Spa is not only for relaxation of the body, but also a revitalization of the soul and a revealing of inner radiance. More and more guests come to a hotel for a spa experience rather than one stay for a room night. This change leads to a new chapter in how guests position spa in their mind.

What are the benefits and challenges brought by the rise of social media to luxury hotels?

Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WeChat give opportunities for consumers to access to all types of information, generated not by commercial interests but by other consumers. Also, any consumers or potential consumers can express themselves with either positive or negative opinions, which is why social media is considered as a powerful tool. Social media platforms can simply reach consumers in a timely way and allow all promotions and advertisements to have a higher level of efficiency. However, social media is always a two-sided affair since it is difficult to control what happens in social networks. As the rapidly growth of social media, the Internet has changed the way that the public reacts with Internet celebrities. Popular Chinese social apps such as Wechat and Weibo can boast almost one billion active users. Hence, the impact of Internet celebrities is underestimated nowadays.

What are the forever unchanging things in hospitality and spa industry?

In my opinion, quality service and attention to detail are the soul of the hospitality industry.

Interview with Mr. Lee Mullins, Founder of Workshop Gymnasium

Lee Mullins is the Founder of Workshop Gymnasium, a personal training and lifestyle company located within the Bulgari Hotels in London, Milan, Bali, Beijing, Dubai and Shanghai, with future locations scheduled for Paris, Moscow and Tokyo. Workshop Gymnasium specializes in creating the most bespoke training and lifestyle programs in the world. Lee’s personal training journey began when he graduated with a degree in the Science of Sport and Exercise. With 12 years of experience, and an ever-expanding list of qualifications in fat loss, nutrition, strength training and exercise physiology Lee is one of the most sought-after health professionals in the world. In addition to his work with high-profile clients such as Victoria’s Secret models Adriana Lima and Josephine Skriver, and actors such as Huang Xiaoming, Lee has become a regular contributor to famous magazines and newspapers such as Vogue, Tatler, Grazia, The Telegraph and GQ. SpaChina talked with him about the development of and changes in the global wellness industry.

What are some of the new fitness and wellness trends you have noticed?

In recent years, the global fitness and wellness sector has indeed witnessed some new trends. For example, we are seeing a big rise globally in the popularity of people doing boxing and other styles of mixed martial arts as a way to get in shape, especially among females. There is also a big rise in group training that focuses on functional and resistance training, which I believe are better methods to help improve people’s body composition compared to the more traditional aerobics based group classes.

What are Chinese consumers’ preferences on fitness and wellness? How about their gender and social status?

Chinese consumers are still gravitating towards machine-based exercises, with a bodybuilding approach to the design of their training programs. There is a small group of skilled trainers who are beginning to take more of a movement-based approach to the exercises they are teaching consumers, which I expect to see grow in the coming years.

And, from what I have seen so far, the consumer who is most into fitness and well-being is in the 25 to 40-year-old age bracket. At present, from what I have seen fitness is predominantly loved by males, but we are beginning to see more and more females incorporating fitness and exercise into their lifestyle. The demographic that loves fitness the most is generally individuals who have either studied or traveled overseas a lot, and been exposed or educated to the importance of living an active lifestyle.

Generally, people who have been exercising and active for a few years are the consumers who are attending CrossFit and Yoga classes, but we are beginning to see more and more beginners coming to exercise and starting with these types of classes.

What is your view on fitness professionals and organizations cooperating with spas and hotels?

I believe Workshop is one of the first companies in China to be partnering with hotel spa to the extent that we operate, and it is something I expect to see more and more hotels/spa’s looking to replicate in the future. The cooperation benefits both parties equally and ensures a great customer experience to ensure they continue to return and achieve the results they are expecting to receive.

In what forms do they often cooperate? How can they ensure a win-win situation?

There are a number of ways that fitness professionals and organizations cooperate with hotels/spas. Traditionally hotels/spas would hire a fitness professional to operate full-time from their facility, which benefits both parties as the fitness professional has a facility to offer their services from and the hotel/spa is able to promote the fitness professional as being exclusively available at their location. Hotels/Spas also traditionally work with organizations by having them consult on the design of their facility and/or the programs available at their facilities.

The way Workshop cooperates with our hotel partners is to design the facilities, consult on the membership and programs/packages on offer, recruit staff, provide education to staff and manage and operate the facility on behalf of the hotel/spa. We also provide other wellness and nutrition solutions throughout the hotel/spa to ensure there are many touch points for guests to enhance their health and well-being. This benefits the hotel/spa from a marketing and PR side by offering a unique concept at their location, as well as having an evolving concept to their guests that enables continued PR activity around the offering.

What is the role of fitness equipment in spas, wellness centers and hotels?

The equipment available in spas, wellness centres and hotels are definitely an important component, but it is becoming less and less essential, particularly if a hotel/spa partners with a fitness organization. Traditionally hotels/spas marketing has all been focused on the equipment offering, and unfortunately this approach is limiting as their unique offering is no longer unique when a competitor installs the same equipment. A hotel/spa’s uniqueness should never be based on something that can be replicated by a competitor.

How can fitness services be combined with spa treatments to deliver perfect wellness experiences and results to guests?

Combining fitness services with restorative spa treatments is possibly one of the quickest ways to help guests achieve the results they are looking for. More often than not, the most neglected component of achieving results in wellness is managing your recovery from training and managing stress.

An example of this that we offer clients at Workshop is the combination of a 60-minute training session followed by a 60-minute deep tissue massage or facial stretching session, this combination helps put the client into a restorative state following their training session, whilst also helping to alleviate tightness and aches or pains they may be experiencing. This ensures that when the guest walks away, their last feeling from the experience is a feeling of less pain and rejuvenation, which entices them to want to rebook immediately.

When working as a trainer, how do you gain guests’ trust?

Fortunately for Workshop, we have established a great reputation for safely achieving incredible results for clients whilst creating a memorable experience. Unfortunately, it is common in our industry that guests have had bad experiences in gyms or working with trainers, so it isn’t uncommon that we encounter guests who are sceptical or cautious about trusting what we do. We quickly gain guests’ trust by taking them through our series of assessments. This shows to the guest that we are taking an analytical approach to what the guest is ready for and if there are any potential risk factors that we should be aware of. Because we take the time to assess a client, this automatically builds trust in the process for the client and ensures that it is a completely customised approach to their training, versus a generic program that every guest goes through.

How do you ensure fitness results?

By removing as much of the guess work as possible. We are now at a time where we can find out so much about the body, and can monitor what is going on in the body extremely quickly through the help of technology, making it easier than ever to progress or adapt programs to ensure a client achieves results as quickly and safely as possible.

100% of our guests prefer personalized, customised fitness and wellness experiences over generic, pre-made programs.

As a professional in the fitness sector, how do you ensure your own fitness and wellness in your daily life?

We spend a lot of time educating the trainers who work for us, and more often than not, I’m one of the subjects that our trainers practice teaching exercises on, so my job can be extremely active. Over the last couple of years, I have really got into boxing and yoga as ways of moving and helping with stress relief.

What is your view on the lifestyle of Chinese young people? Any advice for them to keep fit?

They are working hard and improving. Three simple pieces of advice that I would recommend is:

1. Find a way of exercising/training that is enjoyable. Unless you’re an athlete, if you’re exercising for a healthy lifestyle, choose a method of training that is enjoyable and not something that feels like a chore.
2. Avoid processed foods and drinks as much as possible. Consuming foods and drinks in their natural state that haven’t been heavily processed or deep fried will help ensure you’re getting nutrient rich foods into your diet.
3. Find one thing that you enjoy that helps you relax. This may include treatments such as a massage, taking a yoga class or going for a brisk walk, but find one thing you enjoy that relaxes you and build this into your weekly routine.