In the past few years, we often see advertisement of “Snail White” brand along the streets from faces of many celebrities. “Snail White” is among top brands who invested on a variety of presenters. Mr. Sarawut Pongpattanarat, Managing Director of Do Day Dream,  manufacturer of “Snail White” skincare products was invited to share their journey at “SCB SME SUCCESS Year 6# Strong Growth” event.

The brand “Snail White” skincare product, made a jump start with successful ramp-up revenues from 90 million THB to 450 million THB on its second year and hit the billion THB mark on their third year. 

Mr. Sarawut Pongpattanarat, Managing Director of Do Day Dream Co., Ltd, the manufacturer of “Snail White” skincare product explained how a business need a good market insight and vision. He observed that there were no well-known Thai brands in global market. Hence, he aims to be in the top 3 skincare brand of Asia. He emphasized businesses can better visualize their business plan from long-term goals, or in the next 20-30 years.

Seek experiences from OEM market

Do Day Dream Company was established since 2011 from joint efforts between friends who wished to take a journey on cosmetic industry. The decision made based on a study, which indicated how cosmetic businesses survived through all economic struggles. Cosmetic market has been perceived as a stable market and stable growth. However, stepping on to an untested territory would be risky, especially without sufficient market knowledge. Being an OEM was their first step and study from client’s marketing strategies and incorporate into their own brand. It was one of the interesting short-cuts for gaining market knowledge and expertise.  

Shaping the success with branding strategy

Throughout three years in the OEM business study, “Snail White” learned the name of the game and enter the arena with capability needed for success.

“We were fully prepared since the beginning . We know our own strengths and weaknesses. My forte is manufacturing and product development but I’m lacking in marketing field. Therefore, I need additional supports in order to progress forward. Whichever business you want to build, start from building capacity. If you can sell now, will this business continue to sell in the future? The most important driver of market contraction or expansion are consumer behaviour. For example, men and women are taking care of their skin. But the question is - how to attract them to buy our product?” said, Mr. Sarawut.


Mr. Sarawut emphasized the need to employ high caliber staffs in the field where you are lacking. Before you can do that, you need to identify your own weaknesses and strengths. Do not hire an expert in the area that you already know.  Once recruitment of management is settled, you need be driven by goals and principles. Once you own a brand you will own of market. Branding is crucial for building customer trusts and confidence and consumers would purchase products of the brand they trust. Hence, building up your own brand would be a good decision. 


The management of “Snail White” has set apart their business with 3Ds corporate value, which consists of:

•        Develop: The mindset of people within organization should aim for continuous development.
•        Different 
  
•        Dynamic 

 First year’s strategy: Brand Awareness

The Managing Director of Do Day Dream told us how branding budget was limited during the first year. Since, another portion was needed for manufacturing investment. Marketing spent for offline media advertising on the mainstream required a large amount of money. Alternatively, the remaining funds were put on online marketing or social media to increase brand awareness according to the first year’s strategy. The company relied on product reviews and word of mouth to promote its products. Gradually building up consumer confidence from 3^rd party reviews not from propaganda. A very high impact came from low-cost marketing effort, which generated over 95% of 90 million THB revenue from social media alone. 

The second leap from offline media

The total revenue of 90 million THB for Snail White brand during the first year had given Mr. Sarawut more confidence in the market. And the business growth should be in line with his visions. He leveraged 15% of the first-year revenue as offline marketing campaign budget for mainstream advertisement. The marketing plan was thoroughly analyzed for effective marketing spend to the right target market. To optimize the expensive offline advertising costs, customer segments other than target market won’t see the advertisement.

 

“Even with the success of social media marketing and revenue in the beginning. If we want to grow, we need to reflect on the areas for improvement or adjustments. Initially, we started with product quality, sales channel and new distribution networking technique. The nature of cosmetic product life cycle, every product has its own trend and cycle. We need to sell while we can, be cautious and stay with the principle – take it slow” said, Mr. Sarawut.

 

Maximizing Celebrity Influence

The success of the first-year revenue was followed by advertising plan, which turned out to be another achievement. The higher product flow in the market encouraged for more advertising campaign with celebrity as presenters.

“When the brand was unknown to the market, no one pay attention to our products. With the prowess and influence of celebrities, we received a good feedback. So, we use another celebrity as our presenter and the brand awareness has raisen up, similarly to the first year, TV advertisement helped increase 15% of revenue through selective customer segments. When we saw a jump in revenue growth and we became bold, and leverage from incremental margin to invest. Our revenue has reached the first billion THB.”said, Mr. Sarawut.

Enhance product quality to prevent copy-cats and taking on international market

Copy-cat product is one of the common problem for well-known and successful brands. “Snail White” resolve the problem by informing customer how to verify products by QR code scanning. The company use online media in promoting and creating customer awareness. Most of “Snail White” regular customers are able to tell apart original from fake products.

Apart from preventing copy products in the market, “Snail White” also stressed the importance of “maintaining product quality” to secure brand image.

“Since the beginning, we always thought low quality products never get repeat customers and make word of mouth impossible. Whereas, our key success factor was to encourage word of mouth. We have a separated marketing strategy objective, we use online media to build up the brand and use offline media to maintain it.” said, the owner of “Snail White”. 

In the future, Snail White will not stop only at domestic market. It would shift focus to AEC markets and other major markets in China and India. Fast forwarding Snail White brand into the top 3 Asian brands.

Mr. Sarawut concluded “There are many chances of success regardless of what business you are in. As an SME you have to find your own color, learn and be confident in that particular market. If the opportunity opens its door, seize them”.