Retail in Asia

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CEO Talking Shop: From Taiwan to Asia, lingerie retailer draws the online shopper

How do you shop for lingerie online? How do you shop body-hugging shape-fitting intimate apparel online or through mobile? Are photos and measurement guides enough? In the e-commerce space, brand awareness and reputation, good customer experience and feedback and the power of recommendations count a lot.

In Taiwan, lingerie brand áLOVIN’ is known for an entire product line of top-of-the-line intimate apparel, especially body shaping corsets. It has a stable customer base who knew the products and the brands even before they saw it online.

Founded by Whitney Wang, the company started as a distributor before it started creating its own brand of apparel. With business acumen, knowledge in lingerie fashion and trying out innovative knitting patterns that improved products, the venture succeeded well in the country and soon, Wang and her husband found themselves setting up a new company to sell to other markets in Asia.

The newly formed company, Lovely International Corp., set out to target China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

The leap into a bigger market space outside Taiwan’s borders gave the company an opportunity to tap a much bigger market for its products. Online shopping platforms provide brands like áLOVIN’ with the opportunity to increases sales opportunity. A key challenge, however, is how to get noticed in literally an ocean of competing products from across the region.

Crossing Taiwan’s borders meant the company is facing a sea of customers who have never heard of the brand or knew someone who could attest for the products’ quality. If customers can differentiate between touch and feel, price and quality, functionality and craftsmanship, it could move products more, but the first step is really to get potential customers to notice.

After a year of selling to various online platforms, including auction sites and online shopping malls, áLOVIN’ realized it had to expand product visibility and build a global brand. With intimate apparel, it is relatively difficult for customers to appreciate products just through photos and images online. Creating more brand visibility is a big challenge; knowing what customers from these other markets want is another.

Wang, now General Manager, Lovely International Corp., said like most consumer brands, it has an official website and its own Facebook page.

"Taiwanese people are heavy users of Facebook. We saw the need to set up our own Facebook page as a necessary marketing strategy to get more people to know our brand. Many consumer brands in Taiwan have set up their own Facebook pages to communicate with customers and share the latest news about the brand," she said.

Starting out with a $50 coupon from Facebook to try it out, Wang said áLOVIN’ saw a 60 percent increase in sales growth and a 150 percent increase in advertising-to-sales ratio in three months. Moreover, it achieved 50 percent more profits from Facebook visitors.

"We believe that our fans on our Facebook page help entice other people to purchase when they share positive feedbacks, their genuine experience or some useful comments. Sometimes these customers post photos of themselves with áLOVIN’s products on our Facebook page which encourages others to buy as well," she explained.

By engaging with fans in different countries, the company observed that customers outside Taiwan have different demands. Wang said customers from Malaysia, for example, are more passionate than those from Taiwan, in terms of purchase intent and the number of comments they post on Facebook page. The advertising-to-sales ratio is also much higher outside Taiwan.

"We learn from our customers’ feedback every day. For example, early on we studied the problems customers had during the purchasing process and this helped us improved our customer service. We also learned through customers’ feedback how to improve our size guide. This helps reduce the chance of customers misunderstanding our product descriptions. It also help us to make the size guide less complicated making it easier for customers to find the right size," she said.

Across all markets they nowserve, Wang said products that make women look slimmer and more beautiful sell very well. áLOVIN’ also sell complementary production their own website, including shampoo and skin-care products.

"We don’t really have a product unique or specifically made for one market. Since the needs of Asians are very similar, there is no difference between our products sold in different markets," she said. "However, we have greater product diversity for our customers in Taiwan."

Today, the áLOVIN’ executive said the company still advertises in other online shopping or advertising platforms. However, Facebook advertisement accounts for 99 percent of its ad budget. This is because the platform offers opportunity for consumers to interact directly with the sales team.

"Facebook is the only place we advertise for overseas market because the advertising model on Facebook is universal and easier to understand," she added.

It is a key rule in advertising that for advertising to be effective, the product must be good. Wang said the company believes that it has something unique to offer to the Asian market.

"We use advanced technology to make products of very high quality. Second, we maintain high standards of quality control. This is particularly appealing to the Chinese consumers who are worried about the quality of products made in Mainland China where we see a large demand for the body-shaping lingerie. Third, we have a simple size guide, which is easy to understand. Customers can find their sizes easily thus making purchase less complicated. The outcome is also better when customers choose the right size of body shaping lingerie," she said.

Wang added that the body shapes of Asian women are very similar and áLOVIN’ products are suitable for 80 percent of the body shapes of Asian women.

"The person responsible for the design of our products is a Japanese who was a consultant for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. She knows well of the body shapes of our target customers and understand their needs. So, consumers from different countries in Asia would choose our brand," she said.

Expansion plans are underway, but Wang said the company is carefully considering selling our products on other online shopping sites outside Asia. However, the delivery takes longer time and delivery charges can be quite high. "As we want to keep our production line in Taiwan we will not expand quickly," she said.

CEO Talking Shop is the Retail in Asia section devoted to interviews with brand CEOs and retail industry leaders.