PETALING JAYA, Dec 11 – The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the landscape of many businesses, and survival for many in the highly competitive social media marketing era will depend heavily on adopting new ways of branding and marketing as well as having unique formula for their products, says a player in the Original Design Manufacturing (ODM)/Original Equipment Manufacturer production for cosmetics and food supplements.
Speaking to Weekly Echo recently, Dr Jodness Tan, Chief Executive Officer of a regional business empowering company, HWT Group Bhd, said while OEMs produced homogeneous products for their clients, these come without much efforts for special branding or packaging.
This will not provide their customers, who are the brand owners, with the edge they need and they will find it very hard to market their products in a highly competitive market such as cosmetics and food supplements.
“Consumers have changed, and they tend to look at the overall appearance of the products as well as the added advantage of a product, a unique component or formula only that particular product has. They are being bombarded with product advertisements all the time and how their needs and sentiments are covered in the design, packaging will play a role in their final selection of a product.
“These consumers are pushing the shift in the commercial market as they look for holistic packages and this shift in demand requires that traditional ways of manufacturing and marketing can no longer work. There needs to be innovation.
“This is where going for ODM will be better. When brand owners opt for ODM rather than OEM, they are also gaining a strategy for a unique branding and advantage for marketing.
“This is especially important for start-up companies, who are still struggling to push up their product. Gettinng involved of a product development at the ODM stage and branding it uniquely in line with market trend and consumers’ need, will help companies take off their product in a strategic way,” he said.
Dr Jodness, who has had hands-on industry experience in Malaysia, Singapore and China for more than 10 years, has collaborated with over 20,000 brands and organisations to develop some of the market’s most well received cosmetics and food supplement products.
He said HWT’s ODM arm DJW Labs currently spearheads the branding and marketing service to provide their partner brands a holistic approach to capitalise on the new pattern in consumption.
He also said Malaysia’s multi-cultural background also gave manufacturers an advantage, as they can pick and use the components of the various cultures both in the make-up of a product as well as its branding in the international level.
A regional business empowerment company, the HWT group also operates in the areas of B2B enterprise service platforms, brand activation, business awards, events, financing & listing services, media, logistics, OEM/ODM production, photography/videography, and software development.
–WE