Page 19 - Sphere No.20 (Nov 2007)

IONEERING comes with potential pitfalls, as Chi-Med discovered
with its initial attempts to make TCM user-friendly for Western
customers. The Sen chain in London is now a thriving business, but
it took time to get the formula just right, ensuring that customers felt
comfortable and relaxed in the stores.
While it succeeded in presenting the modern face of Chinese medi-
cine, the initial Sen store proved to be over-designed, to the extent that
casual customers were reluctant to pop their heads around the door.
The decision was taken to go back to basics. The flagship outlet was
given a more welcoming look so customers could saunter in and browse,
perhaps opting for a treatment from the in-house doctors, seek advice
from staff on appropriate pills and lotions or have a foot massage.
Business boomed. It proved to be a question of presentation, pitching
the products in the right way to the appropriate market. “It has gone
from strength to strength,” says Chi-Med CEO Christian Hogg. “We put
in a seating area with nice red carpets and lovely leather chairs and did a
much better job of merchandising the products.
“Now we have expanded from 43 products to 250 in body care, bath and beauty skincare; all very
high-end products.We offer acupuncture, foot reflexology and now have five shops.”
The success of Sen confirms that there is a huge potential market in the Western world for
traditional Chinese medicines.
Sen now has outlets in prestigious London stores such as Harvey Nichols, reaching
customers from all over the world, and a further seven shops in the British capital are
scheduled to open before the end of next year. Also on the drawing board is a plan to
offer the Sen beauty and skin products through the A S Watson-owned Marionnaud
chain, which has over 1,200 stores in Europe.
“We thought Western consumers were increasingly interested in complementary and
alternative medicines, especially herbal medicines, and we felt that TCM represented the
biggest pool of knowledge in botanical medicines,” says Mr Hogg. “We felt if we packaged
it right,Western consumers would go for it. You have to understand the customer.”
HOW THE WEST WAS WON
SPHERE 17
safety would help it to breeze through the first series of trials. That
was music to the ears of scientists, who could confidently point to
the substances being safely in use for hundreds, even thousands of
years in China.
Paradoxically, or perhaps appropriately, the scientist head-
ing up the project did not originally have a particular
interest in TCM. Dr Du grew up in China where
traditional remedies for coughs and colds, cuts and
bruises were prescribed but during her profession-
al life in the United States the focus was purely on
Western-style pharmaceutical remedies.
When Chi-Med first came calling, she was
only mildly interested. Over time, it became
clear that this was a unique opportunity, head-
ing up a well-funded project that could even
become a history-making one and she moved her
home and family to Shanghai.
Once there, Dr Du, 42, realised the scale of the task ahead.
The scientist scoured the country for the brightest and the best,
determined to assemble a team capable of working to demanding,
American levels of professionalism. It proved to be a tough task.
“After six months travelling around China, I realised that
research and development was at an early stage,” she recalls.
“It was impossible to set up any operation with global
ambition. I proposed that we build the R&D facil-
ity and now we have global quality and are the
best in China.
“We have 66 different patents and eight dis-
covery programmes at different stages and
two clinical trials in the United States. We
have a technical platform that is first class in
the world, not just in China, and have gone
from zero to 150 staff.”
The large capital investment and diligent pro-
fessionalism is clearly beginning to pay off. All the
tests so far indicate that tens of millions of people suf-
fering fromserious, life-threatening illnessesmay be helped
on the road to recovery through the medium of TCM.
This is not folklore-based research.
P