Ms. Jaclyn Yan, General Manager of Swissline, China
MC Fifi: Swissline has done a lot online. Being a product brand and an offline service provider, why do you want to do so much online support?
As a brand owner, I know what is the most essential. I can’t do everything from upstream, midstream to downstream, otherwise I would lose the focus. We work with some big clients who may have more than 100-200 branches and one of the founders once told me that his general manager said to him: “We already have so many branches. We can actually develop products of our own, because it will help us save the cost.” But this founder said: It’s not difficult to develop products in China, but do you have enough brand awareness? Do you have enough research capacity? The biggest risk in China is that your product may be copied by others any time. Maybe it sells very well this year, but will it continue to sell well next year? For him, the important thing is to keep improving the services instead of creating a new product brand. He believes that it’s a wise option to completely entrust the product development work to a professional brand. And Swissline is such a brand that can be trusted.
When it comes to marketing, a lot of agencies come to me and say which celebrities are using our products and suggest me to spend more on the promotion of that. Is it necessary? I think it’s necessary and that’s what I’m doing. But I’m not trying to say how great we are because the stars choose our products. That’s not what I mean. I need to really find out the crucial point for marketing.
To improve sales performance, I have always put my emphasis on offline customers because my main focus is offline. I am not so much focusing on online sales. Then why do I still spend a lot of energy online? I always tell my clients that one of the benefits of working with Swissline is that you will have an extra marketing department. I am your marketing department and I can help you integrate resources from all sides. Taking Meituan for example, many small-scale companies keep struggling for a good rating on Meituan. But if you work with a trustable product brand, it will benefit you a lot. For instance, we will join forces with some service providers or equipment providers, such as Lumenis, to negotiate with Meituan on behalf of our clients about how to let you get more exposure. At that moment, we are in fact standing in the upstream position. So it means we are in charge of all the marketing and promotion work and the spas can concentrate on their own operations. This mode is especially applauded by some old spas because their strength lies in customer services.
MC Fifi: You have a very clear line of thought. It’s true that many spas lack experience in online marketing.
Right. So we need a division of labour. The spas can just focus on what they are good at, such as education and training, maintaining customer relations and building better social venues. And it’s for the brand like Swissline to consider how to guide customers to the partnering spas, how to help spas select quality customers, and how to combine the online with offline. Swissline has its own Tmall flagship shop, but we didn’t strongly promote it during Double 11. Nowadays, consumers are keen on searching through various online platforms. Especially when you introduce them to a new brand, they will go to Dianping, Xiaohongshu, TikTok, Taobao to get more information. So we have to have an online shop. But after that, our Taobao customer service comes across many women asking: “You are a professional brand. Where can I enjoy the Swissline facial?” And that’s what we’re going to do next. For the urban consumers, when she buys our products online, we will give her a treatment voucher free of charge. I often say that Swissline acts as a bridge, and many of our consumers are introduced to the spas through us. We will also do some supervision to ensure a standardized treatment experience at the spas so that they won’t change the treatment for cost’s sake. That is indeed a very good way of cooperation. So for Swissline, we will focus on the product development and updates, and at the same time, give our partnering spas enough marketing support, which comes in the form of being involved in certain online channels. Meanwhile, we will also provide clients with service and training support.
