The Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards 2021 (APEA 2021) announced that Eastern Natural Beauty has been awarded the Inspirational Brand Award, making it one of the few Taiwanese companies and local beauty brands to receive this award from the APEA. According to President Gary Wang of Eastern Group, the award is a hard-won and inspiring recognition at a time when companies are thinking about how to make a breakthrough in the raging pandemic. The annual revenue of Eastern Natural Beauty (Taiwan) was NT$518 million in 2019. The company’s annual revenue reached NT$735 million in 2020, representing a 42% growth against the trend and proving the explosive growth of the company. Despite this year’s ongoing pandemic, the Group still expects to achieve outstanding results. In the future, Eastern Natural Beauty will continue to invest in research and development, pursue excellence, and become the top cosmetic biotechnology brand in Chinese-speaking markets around the world.
The APEA 2021 held an online award ceremony yesterday evening (6/30), and the Taiwanese beauty brand, Eastern Natural Beauty, received the Inspirational Brand Award, which also coincides with the company’s 50th anniversary this year. The brand has been growing and developing over the past 50 years, and after Eastern acquired the brand three years ago, it has been expanding and innovating its business model with multi-brand and multi-channel development, which has led to a jump in revenue growth. Each year, the APEA’s annual corporate or leadership awards are rigorously judged by a multinational panel of professional judges. The APEA was initiated by Enterprise Asia. The awards are given to less than one tenth of the more than 3,000 companies or leaders from 14 regions in Asia Pacific who apply each year. This year’s theme is a continuation from last year’s pandemic. The year 2021 will be full of great changes for companies. It will be a significant challenge for businesses to balance industry recovery, continuous operations, and long-term planning. Therefore, this year’s award winners were carefully selected by the organizers.
Chang Tsong-Min, Vice President of Hungkuang University, has studied Taiwan’s beauty industry in depth and has paid great attention to the APEA for many years. He agrees with the organizer’s dedication to corporate observation. In recent years, the overall brand performance of Eastern Natural Beauty has exceeded the original planning expectations. Not only is it one of the few local brands in Taiwan with an R&D center, but it also spares no effort to use resources to recruit talents from all sectors, demonstrating its dedication to product quality and determination for sustainable management. This year’s award is a testament to the judges’ recognition of the company’s core values and its growth performance.
Natural Beauty was founded in 1972 and has been developing the Taiwan market ever since. In 1992, Natural Beauty entered the Chinese market and was listed in Hong Kong in 2002. On the same year, it obtained the patent for its core technology in the United States. The company has developed the popular NB-1 product series, as well as skincare products, healthcare supplements, and essential oils. In 2018, Eastern Group acquired Natural Beauty and the company joined the new media and new retail ecosystem created by Eastern and accelerated its global deployment. Its brands include STREMARK, Mori Beauty, and PS Beauty. By leveraging the advantages of Eastern Group’s media and multiple retail channels, Natural Beauty is actively promoting brand awareness and expanding its consumer base. The brand is expanding towards both the high-end and young customer segments, and actively developing across all channels.
Eastern Natural Beauty has broken away from the traditional beauty industry by setting up the highest standard R&D center in the beauty and cosmetics industry in Shenkeng. The company is also actively promoting cooperation between industry and academia. The brand has entered into collaboration with PhD-level experts from NTU, Hungkuang, and Shin Kong Hospital to form a top professional advisory board. Eastern Natural Beauty has also signed a letter of intent for industry-academia collaboration with NTU for the donation of a biotechnology building to conduct regular joint discussions and gradually introduce scientific technology and AI big data, in line with the vision of “People, Evidence, and Science as Proof,” becoming a prime example of industry-academia collaboration. Eastern Natural Beauty also combines years of accumulated professional skin testing experience into its products; these have to pass blind tests by more than 100 people before they are launched. Even President Gary Wang of Eastern Group insists on testing the products himself to confirm the quality. The company’s products have won many domestic and international awards in recent years.
This year, despite the impact of the pandemic, the innovative research and development efforts of Eastern Natural Beauty have not stopped. The products related to pandemic prevention and at-home wellness have been selling well. In particular, the Eveil No 1 Remix Essential Oil, which many users apply to the side of their masks, makes breathing more comfortable. In addition, a variety of Natural Beauty skincare products can also help relieve the discomfort caused by wearing a mask. These include the award-winning NB-1 Peptide Elastin Restorative Eye Creme, γ-PGA Deep Hydration and Moisturizing Cushion Mask, STREMARK Advanced Revitalizing Cream, and Mori Beauty White Tea and Alpenrose series, all of which are said to be the best partners to alleviate skin discomfort from wearing masks.
Mori Beauty, the sister brand of Eastern Natural Beauty, is a series of products sold by Eckare, and many of its high quality products have been well-received by its members. Since May this year, the pandemic situation in Taiwan has worsened. However, Gary Wang, President of Eastern Group, is optimistic about the future development of Eckare. He has claimed that the stay-at-home economy can also be quite fruitful and rise against the adversities by relying on the e-commerce model. He also announced that he would challenge the NT$10 billion sales mark this year, and that the revenue would reach NT$50 billion by 2025. After gaining a firm foothold in Taiwan, the company will also expand to the Chinese market. The company is already actively working with the Eastern Zhenyu team. The newest high-tech tourist factory in Shanghai will also be the R&D base of Eastern Natural Beauty in China. The products of these companies, including Eastern Natural Beauty and Eastern Zhenyu, will be produced and manufactured here for distribution throughout China. Eastern will enter the Chinese market with a new business model, where online cloud stores plus offline physical stores will work together. It is planned that a cash cow worth RMB 4.5 billion will be established within five years.