ACCORDING to McKinsey, the worldwide beauty and wellness sector is worth more than US$1.5 trillion (RM6.63 trillion), with annual growth of 5%-10%. Over time, the notion of beauty has evolved, with total wellbeing taking centre stage. Consumers today see wellness through a much wider and analytical lens, including not just beauty and appearance but also fitness and nutrition, with overall physical and mental health as a personal objective.
Despite its growth, the sector is beset with problems. Negative sales strategies include gimmicky hard selling practises, emotional blackmail, and body shaming. In the process, these techniques put the client under pressure and intimidate them, resulting in sales but a terrible image of the industry as a whole.
The beauty business received the most customer complaints, according to the Consumer Association of Singapore, when compared to other industries. Among other things, the industry’s employment of aggressive sales practises was identified as a cause. Last month, beauty and wellness brand Beauty & Co. hosted an event titled Selling with Love, teaming with worldwide speaker and author of the book Selling with Love: Earn with Integrity and Expand Your Impact, Jason Marc Campbell, to address the key issue.
Campbell believes that we must propagate and share knowledge on the value of responsibility in how we sell, how we market, how we treat our employees, and even how businesses invest their money. “This applies to any industry, but is particularly rife in beauty and wellness,” he said. Beauty & Co. CEO Yap Yann Fang also stated at the event: “Hard selling is a major issue in the beauty and wellness industry. The tactics may result in short-term gains, but over time, damage the reputation of the industry at large.
“We are driving efforts to spread awareness on ethical selling and raising industry standards. To help with this movement, we need to band together with our peers for a larger impact. In spite of the tremendous global market size, we are able to expand so much locally if we do things ethically and raise the standards.
“The principles of selling with love encourage businesses to be strategic about their long-term goals in the industry. Understanding their target market and what really attracts the segment will make it for business to build effective products, minus the gimmicks.”
Yap added: “This is complemented by the integration of tools and processes that work for the business. Finally, it is important to be authentic and transparent, and to love what one does, as this will become evident to customers whilst driving revenue.”
The beauty industry is both profitable and competitive. In Klang Valley alone, there are around 50,000 beauticians. Yap envisioned Beauty & Co as a platform that would allow beauty companies grow and work alongside one another rather than compete. Beauty & Co is based on the concept of co-working spaces, which provide beauticians and skin experts a creative and collaborative atmosphere. Yap is driven by her desire to democratise the beauty profession by providing beauticians from all walks of life and experience levels the access to the greatest equipment and trainers in order to develop a new and radically different generation of beauticians.
The coworking space at Beauty & Co is exactly what it sounds like. A business concept based on the shared economy in which beauticians may utilise the space, equipment, and supplies to service their consumers. This eliminates out the phase where a regular beautician would have to build their own location with hefty capital cost.
The coworking space is an extension of their beauty parlour, which has been in operation for two years and has six outlets in the Klang Valley. For the time being, The Gardens Mall in Kuala Lumpur is the sole location offering a coworking space. Yap previously established four beauty brands and 30 overs beauty parlours in Malaysia. She has been in the profession for almost 20 years, and her enthusiasm for beauty is what has kept her going. She founded BizzyBody, a chain of slimming centres, at the age of 25. In 2011, she had about 30 outlets. Then, in 2012, she sold the firm to a multinational organisation (MNC), working for them for four years before exiting the company in 2016.
Fast forward to a stint in the United States, which taught to her that beauty business operators do not need to compete fiercely, pushing clients away with desperate techniques. Inspired, she started Beauty & Co, a stop centre for beauty, wellness and co-working. Beauty & Co, Malaysia’s first beauty and wellness co-working space, offers four core treatments: sexual health, weight reduction, pigmentation, and anti-aging, relying on state-of-the-art equipment and trained, skilled beauticians invested in solving clients’ problems effectively.
When asked about her long-term aspirations, Yap stated that she wishes to establish a platform that would raise the standards of the beauty and wellness industries in terms of ethics, knowledge, technology, and education. She further stated that she hopes this platform may be sustained for at least another ten years.
