An interview with Mr. Kenneth Zhang, President of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY
PARAMOUNT BEAUTY was founded in 2004. After 18 years’ stable development and industry study, it has launched the international standard “Soul Spa System”, a comprehensive and ground-breaking system that provides beauty salons and spas with holistic solutions to help them fulfill all-round upgrades and stand out among the market competition. The creator of this highly praised system is Mr. Kenneth Zhang, the President of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY. He led his team to carry out profound and wide research and exploration before finally launching the Soul Spa System.
Mr. Kenneth Zhang is not only the founder and leader of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY, but also a marketing strategy consultant and a life instructor with 15 years’ experience of giving guidance to senior trainers. He has developed a range of courses including “Reverse Thinking Marketing Mode”, “Excellent Leadership”, “Position Obligations”, “Training for Chief Operating Officer”, and “Instruction Style and Corporate Cultural Innovation”. SpaChina interviewed Kenneth.
Please introduce PARAMOUNT BEAUTY to us, including the foundation story, development track, current business, and etc.
Founded in 2004, the headquarters of PARAMOUNT BEAUTY is in Shenzhen, China. After 18 years of continual development, we are now positioned as the Soul Spa Standard System provider. With Soul Spa System, we design different courses and training programs to offer spas holistic upgrade solutions and to enhance their core competitiveness. The result is they will establish a standard system that is 5 years ahead of their competitors.
PARAMOUNT BEAUTY carried out in-depth talks with senior spa consultants in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand before finally forming the professional and rigorous Soul Spa System with a total investment of over 100 million yuan. Before the pandemic, PARAMOUNT BEAUTY sent staff abroad to visit and conduct research at five-star hotels and high-end clubs for 3 months every year. Domestically, PARAMOUNT BEAUTY carries out field research at more than 5 spas every month. Each quarter, a 7-day internal technique PK is conducted. Over the past 18 years, PARAMOUNT BEAUTY has organized over 260 study tours both abroad and home for over 100,000 senior executives.
Why did you develop Soul Spa System? Who are your target clients? What kind of solutions do you offer to the clients? Are there any cases to share with us?
When I personally stepped to the operation level of spas, I realized there was a lack of standards and attention to detail. The days when spas could attract customers and make a profit by merely selling products have gone. It was at that time I made a decision to develop a holistic solution to help spas improve their competitiveness. So Soul Spa System was born.
I share my research results and operation experience of the past 25 years with the industry and am dedicated to helping spas which desire to capture the local market enhance their regional competitiveness from five aspects: strategy, program, service, setting and sales.
I’d like to share a case with you. Not long ago, a beauty club in Shanghai was attracted by our Soul Spa System. We carried out many discussions via the phone and we also went to their site for a further exploration. Then the club owner, together with their management level personnel, came to join our Soul Spa courses and adopted our comprehensive Soul Spa solutions. They also introduced our Ericson products into their club. Then we conducted an intensive staff training for their club. The result is that, not only their brand quality has been upgraded, an overall improvement is obviously seen in personnel techniques, professionalism, services and procedure standards.
Please talk more about Soul Spa courses. Who participates in the courses? What can be learned from the course?
The Soul Spa course system is comprised of three levels. For the first level, also the basic, we developed the “professional technique service” course. For the second level, we have the “operation and execution guidance” course and “mentor talk” course. Then for the supreme third level, we have the “strategic design” course and “study tour for CEOs”.
All our courses are end-customer oriented and center around the idea of how to improve customers’ satisfaction, and increase their repurchase rate and the willingness to introduce the spa to others. All the courses keep a high consistency in the content and goals. We also require the spa owners to bring their team members together to the courses. This will make it more efficient for the spas to have upgrades systematically.
Below are the benefits they can reap from the courses.
1. Organization upgrade
We suggest advanced systems, mechanisms, and policies to the spa so that they can operate in a more autonomous way. It will save millions of management costs for the spa owners and improve working efficiency.
2. Product upgrade
We do reasonable planning of competitive product categories for the spas, and help them to create star products and enhance customer repurchasing.
3. Service upgrade
We help the spas to comprehensively improve their setting so as to more effectively touch the customers through the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. We teach the spas how to deliver services that can satisfy, surprise and touch the customers. As a result, the customers will have a higher satisfaction rate and be willing to introduce the spa to many others.
4. Setting upgrade
We offer guidance to the spas on cultural construction and brand image upgrade. We introduce sales tools for the front end departments and help them to do sales more effectively.
5. Marketing upgrade
We offer spas experiential marketing guidance for both online and offline settings so that they can attract more customers to come and stay. The spas will no longer be worried about their business performance.
You have recently launched the “employee partnership system”. Why did you introduce this system? What is the feedback from employees? How is the effect? Have you met any challenges during the process?
The core of enterprise reform lies in mechanism reform and structural reform. Concerning the personnel structure reform, we ask all the management level associates to go to the front line and serve the customers themselves. At the beginning, many employees had the feeling of uncertainty and had some worries. But this is very natural. When a new policy comes out, there must be someone who would wait and see, some would actively follow and some others would choose to leave.
But a month after the launch of the reforms, many employees see the benefits. In the second month, some employees got twice or three times higher salary then before. So more and more employees are willing to follow the new mechanism. During the pandemic last year, 40% of our employee partners got twice to four times higher salary. This is quite a lot. Meanwhile, their abilities improve, they grow more quickly, and they do things more efficiently. As a result, the customers’ satisfaction also improves.
Traditional modes can no longer solve the challenges nowadays. So our company carries out reforms every year. After each reform, excellent employees become even more excellent. Both their abilities and salary increase. And the quality of the whole team improves.
How do you judge China’s spa industry today? Are there any aspects that need to be adjusted and improved? What advantages and disadvantages do we have compared to the advanced spa market abroad?
I think there is still room for China’s spa industry to improve. One of the reasons is that most spas are not directly managed by the boss. So either operational strategies or employees’ mindsets haven’t been so satisfactory.
In fact, spas can learn from beauty salons in terms of service delivery, customer management, techniques and product category planning. Spas need to know how to design a holistic service procedure based on the goal of increasing customers’ satisfaction and experience.
China’s spas can learn from overseas advanced spas in terms of standard, setting and style. But we do have advantages in product development, service delivery and techniques. For example, we have our time-honored Chinese healing techniques and profound health theories like The Inner Canon of Emperor Huangdi.
After the pandemic broke out, spa owners and operators suddenly understood the great importance of online services. However, it is undoubtedly a challenge to traditional service industries like spa, both the operators and ordinary staff. Do you have any experience or advice to share with us on this topic?
It’s true. Since the pandemic broke out, people have spent much more time online. And this tendency will surely continue.
People in traditional service industries are usually reluctant to change. However, there are also many spas which begin to lay out online services and get a mindset for data-based services. These spas will surely keep up with the trend of the future. So spas which haven’t begun the reform should act quickly.
Now is the best time for starting online services. The far-sighted ones have already begun. We will clearly see the difference in three to five years.
What new needs can you see from the spa goers today? How do you see the development prospect of China’s spa industry? Does PARAMOUNT BEAUTY have any new plans to keep up with market trends?
In recent years, Chinese spa goers’ preferences and needs have changed. In the past, maybe they just wanted to seek relaxation in the spa, but now they wish to get real health benefits. After the pandemic, in particular, people’s health awareness has strongly increased. So traditional relaxing massages can no longer meet their needs. Furthermore, I can say today’s spa goers emphasize more on the cultural and spiritual content of the spa.
Targeting these two aspects, Soul Spa keeps adjusting its content with about 30% content renewal each year. Meanwhile, many spa-goers today have greater demand on spine care and aromatherapy. That’s why we have introduced Narogarden essential oil and Corpson spine care to the market.
Moreover, Soul Spa always pays attention to customers’ pursuit of ritual experience, and a unique setting. We work on these and endeavor to help the spas build their cultural content.
