Forbes Asia - May 2018

68 | FORBES ASIA MAY 2018

samples to fashion and lifestyle blog-

gers, getting them to write about their

experiences using the product. He

deployed social media, including Face-

book and Instagram, to market it.

Within months, SnailWhite had

gone viral, and Sarawut had to contend

with fake versions looding the market.

Today an anticounterfeit sticker with a

QR code is on every package to distin-

guish the original from copycats. In the

irst year, SnailWhite notched online

sales of $3 million and was ready to hit

retail stores.

To rev up demand, Sarawut unleashed

an advertising blitz on television, radio,

print and billboards using TV celebrities.

By 2015 he had moved out of the fam-

ily business to concentrate on his own

venture. hat same year he expanded the

product range to sunscreen lotions and

cleansing products and invested in a fac-

tory at an industrial park 50 miles north

of Bangkok.

Tik Narudee, manager of a Watsons

drug store in central Bangkok, says

Chinese tourists are the biggest buyers

of SnailWhite, and it’s popular with

hai working women, too. Panaya W.,

49, an independent investor who had

stopped by to pick up a jar of Snail-

White sunscreen, says she chanced on

it when holidaying at a beach resort in

January. Until then, she had been using

Japanese brand Shiseido but ditched it

for SnailWhite because of its easy avail-

ability. “I can get it at the local 7-Eleven

A decade later, he decided to start a
cosmetics venture focusing on skin care,
getting four of his friends, who were
marketing experts, to join him. (hey
have small stakes.) Although the hai
skin-care sector was booming, it was
dominated by multinationals such as
L’Oréal, Unilever and Procter & Gamble.
A local brand of some size was Smooth-
E, founded by a dermatologist and
known for its dermatological creams.
Moreover, he explains, net margins in
cosmetic products were more than 20%,
compared with 5% in car paints. With
his factory experience he was conident
he could handle the production side.
“My father wasn’t happy at all and pre-
dicted that I would soon return to the
family fold,” he says, smiling.
Starting out as a contract manu-
facturer for small skin-care brands, he
initially juggled his work in the family
business with the new venture. Not-
ing that the skin-care market in both
the premium and mass segments was
crowded, Sarawut spotted a niche
for a hai version of what he calls a
“premium mass product.”
He latched on to the idea of snail-
serum creams that were all the rage in
South Korea but hadn’t made inroads
into hailand. “hai consumers found
the Korean creams too oily and sticky,”
explains Sarawut. Using imported Ko-
rean snail slime, he developed a lighter
version that would be absorbed into the
skin faster and was better suited to the
humid hai weather. To this he added
the skin-lightening agent. “It took eight
months and at least 100 versions to
perfect the product,” he recalls.
In 2013 SnailWhite cream inally
went on sale online. Priced at $30 for a
50 ml jar, it was cheaper than high-end
facial moisturizers that cost $80 for a
similar quantity and a notch above the
cheap $10 variety.
It wasn’t an easy sell. SnailWhite’s
prime target—women age 25 to 35—
balked at the idea of putting snail slime
on their skins. Sarawut distributed

store, whereas to buy Shiseido, which

is more expensive, I have to go to a

department store.”

To make deeper market inroads,

and with an eye on hailand’s 440,000

convenience stores, Sarawut last year

introduced 7 ml sachet packs priced

at $1.20 each. So far there is only one

company-owned store in Bangkok, as

Sarawut says he would rather spend

on billboards because “our customers

commute.” But he’s planning to open

pop-up stores at tourist hot spots.

Two years ago a TV commercial for

a Korean skin-whitening pill with the

theme “You need to be white to win”

sparked protests in hailand and had to

be withdrawn. Dermatologist Nopadun

Noppakun, an associate professor at Chu-

lalongkorn University who as president

of the Dermatological Society of hailand

had led a campaign to raise public aware-

ness that these products could be damag-

ing, says that whitening remains a “big

issue and a big market in hailand.”

(In India, where one of Unilever’s

popular products is Fair & Lovely

cream, the nonproit organization

Women Of Worth has a long-running

“Dark Is Beautiful” campaign. Founder

Kavitha Emmanuel says, “Unfortunate-

ly, Asia, where biases run deep, is a hot

spot for the skin-whitening industry.”

Women Of Worth has won strict guide-

lines for advertising such products.)

Sarawut doesn’t see any threat of

a backlash against SnailWhite, saying

that aspiring to have fairer skin is still

“culturally acceptable.” He is introduc-

ing new products every year, and the

original cream, which was his sole

product at one time, now makes up 37%

of total sales.

Now that SnailWhite features among

the country’s top ten in facial skin care—

Smooth-E is in this group too—Sarawut

says his father no longer disapproves of

his move. “I want SnailWhite to be all

over Asia. I still have a dream.”

Additional reporting:

Busrin Tre e rap ongpichit

Thailand’s 50 Richest

SARAWUT PORNPATANARUK

F

Within months,

SnailWhite had gone

viral, and Sarawut

had to contend with

fake versions. In the

rst year, SnailWhite

had online sales of

$3 million.