AFTER building a US customer base via e-commerce, Maneuver Marketing now wants to get its health supplements onto shelves in the country.
The aim is to have its products carried by major US retailers – such as Walmart, Target and CVS – from 2025, with the company now in talks.
“At the end of the day, we want to build a global brand that is omnichannel,” Maneuver Marketing founder Sant Qiu told The Business Times.
Offline retail provides a “huge opportunity” to tap the market segment that prefers to shop in-store, said Qiu. Some consumers, for instance, prefer to replenish their health products as part of regular supermarket trips.
The Singapore-based company made US$157.2 million in revenue in 2023, from its BB Company brand of health supplements.
The supplements are available globally through various e-commerce platforms, but more than 80 per cent of sales are to customers in the US. The rest are mainly to Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
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Over the next three to five years, Qiu expects that revenue distribution across these five markets will remain relatively stable.
But offline sales are expected to contribute up to 30 per cent of total revenue, with annual sales growth ranging between 30 and 50 per cent. The company is profitable, and expects to remain so.
Marketing roots
As its name suggests, Maneuver Marketing’s origin is not in healthcare but in marketing consulting.
Founded in 2001 by Qiu and his wife after they graduated from university, the company helped small businesses in Singapore with marketing and branding, including designing brochures and websites.
But operations went dormant from 2002 to 2007 as Qiu tried other trades, working for entrepreneur and trainer Adam Khoo and then the late realtor Dennis Wee, who died in April.
He also spent two years in Indonesia helping with his family’s interior furnishings business.
From 2007 to 2013, Qiu revived Maneuver Marketing’s consultancy work, but also divided his time across other businesses.
This was mainly through partnerships with other business leaders, from selling water filters to offering real estate training services.
“My initial attitude to partnerships was that I’d focus on my strength – which was marketing – and I’d partner somebody else who had the domain knowledge and their own niche in another area,” he recalled.
However, these partnerships invariably broke down due to differences in ambition and vision.
As Qiu put it: “I had a few partnerships, but they didn’t last long, and I felt like I walked away with nothing to show for it.”
He then resolved to start his own business, even if it meant acquiring the necessary domain knowledge.
Three-phase plan
His plan had three broad phases. First, the company would accumulate capital through a business with low barriers to entry, such as corporate training.
Second, once sufficient capital was gathered, the company would pivot from services to developing and selling products.
Finally, the company would invest in and mentor other brands and businesses.
“The idea is to learn, do and then teach,” said Qiu. “That means we have to (first) go through the process of learning, and then do it until we have a certain level of mastery.”
From 2014 to 2017, he doubled down on Maneuver Marketing’s model of supporting small businesses in Singapore with marketing.
To boost revenue, he moved away from one-on-one consultations towards group coaching and large-scale training sessions instead, covering topics like copywriting and social media marketing.
By 2017, the company had accumulated nearly S$1 million in retained earnings – a sum Qiu deemed sufficient for phase two, which was developing and selling a product.
This required choosing the right product. Qiu had noticed a rising trend of probiotic health supplements, particularly for weight management. Probiotics, which are live bacteria and yeasts, are commonly found in yogurt and certain drink products.
Separately, Qiu drew inspiration from his “sickly” childhood in an Indonesian village.
“I was a sickly child, and we didn’t have a lot of access to doctors,” he said. “We tended to rely more on herbal medication.”
Qiu decided to combine probiotics with the herbal remedies he had known since childhood, creating a pill designed for weight management.
Made in America
To develop and produce the product, he engaged a third-party health supplement specialist and a contract manufacturer, both in the US. The formulation and production costs were funded by the reserves Maneuver Marketing had accumulated.
In early 2018, he launched the product on the company’s own e-commerce site, under the BB Company brand.
Sales exceeded US$2 million in the first year, but the company was still in the red, having had to invest in operational infrastructure such as warehouses.
Qiu also had to reapply his marketing know-how, promoting the fledgling health supplement brand through digital marketing in a foreign market.
“We came from traditional (marketing), where we tended to do things like brochures,” Qiu said. “We had to adapt it for social media, because such consumers tend to respond to different types of messages; it took us a while to adapt.”
As marketing improved and more products were introduced – including pills to relieve some menopausal symptoms – the company’s sales quickly gained momentum, taking it to profitability in 2019.
Qiu even noticed some resellers buying its products during sales and listing them at higher prices on Amazon. So in 2020, the company opened its own Amazon storefront. Today, Amazon sales account for about 40 per cent of total revenue.
As for the third phase of his plan – to invest in and mentor other businesses – Qiu aims to begin this in three to five years.
The timing will not be determined by specific revenue targets. Rather, he said, it is “more of building a strong enough leadership team and growth infrastructure to ensure our own brands can continue to grow steadily, so we can take on the challenges of mentoring other brands”.
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