Trusted Australian brand leads in health, beauty

Editor's note: One of the leading natural healthcare companies in the world, the Australia-based Blackmores offers high quality products made with sustainable ingredients. Over the years, the company has maintained expertise and strength of resources to achieve good growth. To share more about the company, Christine Holgate, CEO of Blackmores, sat with China Daily reporter Song Mengxing to share her views on the company's market expansion and future plans in China.

How would you recommend Blackmores and its products to people who know little about the company or the brand?

Blackmores is Asia Pacific's leading natural health company and the most trusted brand in our category in Australia and Southeast Asia.

We were founded more than 80 years ago by Maurice Blackmore, Australia's pioneering naturopath. His son Marcus is our chairman today.

Our product range is based on those naturopathic philosophies that have underpinned our business for many years, combined with knowledge from the Blackmores Institute, our research and academic arm. We have unrivalled quality programs and we offer trusted advice and support to consumers in many ways.

What are Blackmores' key products? What are their main functions?

We offer a wide range of products so consumers can choose the products to best suit their needs.

One of our most popular products is Vitamin E Cream, which has enjoyed a loyal following since Fan Bingbing revealed her preference for it. Pregnancy and Breastfeeding Gold is also a wonderful product as a prenatal vitamin with additional nutrients that support a woman while she is pregnant and nursing.

Our most recent launch has been Blackmores Infant Nutrition range for mums who have challenges breastfeeding, to ensure they have access to high-quality products.

We formulated these products to be as close to breast milk as possible and using Australian milk.

You said Blackmores retained huge growth potential in the 2016 fiscal year. What plans does it have to boost sales? How will it make the yearly revenue increase from AUD$471 million to AUD$1 billion?

At Blackmores we're proud that all of our business and markets are in strong growth.

We'll build on these results in the future by expanding into new markets, delivering exciting new products, progressing new partnerships - such as our joint venture with Bega - and growing our presence in important new markets, such as China.

To support this growth we will invest in more people, including doubling our team in China. We will increase support of our brand with more marketing. We will further the work of the Blackmores Institute because knowledge and education is so important, and this will include partnering with leading universities.

We will grow our range and have plans to launch more than 100 new products in the coming year.

Blackmores has partnerships with most of the main Chinese e-commerce companies, such as Alibaba Group, Jingdong, Netease and VIP. What do you think about this cooperation? Does the company have any plans to further its sales via Chinese shopping websites?

We're very proud of our partnerships with the leading Chinese shopping websites. We will continue to explore the many different ways the Chinese consumer shops and we know that we will need to build a presence on other retail websites, in stores and to support the various other retail platforms as we expand our offering.

Do you have any other plans for expansion in China?

The Blackmores Institute is currently exploring a number of new collaborations for research and education. We will expand our infant nutrition range in China.

Blackmores will build on the success of our market-leading Vitamin E Cream, which has received extremely strong positive feedback by expanding our range of therapeutic cosmeceuticals. This is part of an exciting pipeline of new products we will launch.

Li Na became Blackmores' brand ambassador last year. Why her? What influence do you expect the tennis world champion will have on Blackmores?

We have long respected Li Na because she's been a passionate campaigner for the health and wellbeing of people in China.

We found out several years ago that Li Na was a big fan of our products and how important they were to her training regime when she was competing.

This was a huge honor because we admire her so much - her achievements both on the tennis court and as an advocate of health and nutrition initiatives are so significant.

She's a strong intelligent woman and such an amazing role model.

Li Na came on board as a Blackmores global ambassador when she was pregnant with her daughter and we were delighted to host her here in Australia for the launch of our infant nutrition range in January.

For medical reasons she was unable to breastfeed and so she relates, as many women do, to the need to be able to trust the quality of the product and nutritional value of the formula you give your children.

I hope our influence in working together will be greater than brand or product promotions - we are partnering on health campaigns such as The First 1,000 Days to ensure families have the education they need to give their babies the best start in life through better prenatal care and for the first years of life.

What will you do at the second Australia Week in China in April? Do you have any expectations?

We are delighted to see the respectful relationship between our governments and the ChAFTA shows the strong trade relationship between China and Australia.

We hope to be able to showcase the quality of Australian products and to learn more about the needs of our Chinese consumers and how we can further support them.

One of the key activities we'll be participating in during Australia Week in China is the signing of a strategic partnership with one of China's largest mother and baby store chains - LeYou - for distribution of our range of infant nutrition, pregnancy and children's products. LeYou has over 400 retail outlets as well as a dominant online presence.

I am also honored to be delivering the keynote address to the Australia China Business Awards gala attended by the Australian Minister for Trade& Investment on the evening of Wednesday, 13th April.

Blackmores pays much attention to the quality of its raw materials. What does the company do to ensure the high quality of its materials and products?

We have an unrivalled quality and sourcing program. This includes working with organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on the sustainability and traceability of our supply chain.

We send our quality team to the source where our natural ingredients are caught and harvested.

We conduct extensive testing throughout the manufacturing and packaging process.

On any single Blackmores product, more than 30 quality checks and tests have been passed before the product is released for sale.

We don't compromise, so if we can't access an ingredient that meets our high quality expectations, then we will not produce that product until our standards can be met.

We have a quality code of practice for our team and for our suppliers to maintain standards that are even higher than the world-class Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) requirements.

We have strong relationships with our suppliers - they become our business partners.

In recent weeks, we hosted an event for more than 100 of our growers, suppliers and manufacturing partners to share our business strategy to further the trust and strong ties between our companies.

What are the competitive edges of Blackmores when compared with other nutrition makers?

We have an unrivalled history so we've become experts at what we do. We have deep knowledge inside the company with a quarter of our employees holding a healthcare qualification.

We do not compromise on quality. We have a commitment to sustainability and traceability.

We care about people - we invest in the community, in support of our consumers and in our staff.

These staff share a strong passion for what we do.

We have our own research Institute - we partner with leading universities and researchers to offer the best products, advice and education.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with the readers of China Daily?

We've been humbled by the wonderful reception of the Chinese people who have warmly embraced our products into their homes.

Though, we're also learning a lot from our new friends in China about traditional Chinese medicine so our presence in China will benefit our consumers in other countries as we translate thousands of years of knowledge into products for a modern lifestyle.

(China Daily 04/15/2016 page19)