What are your responsibilities within your company?

I am the Asia Pacific manager of Comfort Zone. I am in charge of sales, development, branding, customer support for all Asia and Oceania.

What products/services does your company provide to the wellness industry in Asia? My company is Davines s.p.a. It is an Italian company based in Parma and founded in 1982. We manufacture and distribute professional hair care products with the Davines brand and skincare/spa products with the Comfort Zone brand. We have a branch office in New York and one in Hong Kong.

To the wellness industry we provide a complete range of skin care products for face, body, hands, feet, male products, sun products, oils, accessories for spa, ambience products, furniture.

We focus our offer for spas particularly to the luxury hotel and day spas. We also provide a 360-degree consultancy service to investors who are willing to open a spa but don't have the know how.

Thanks to our catalogue of products, our services and our treatments menu, we are the best partners for any spa in Asia and in the world.

Our products have a strong retail appeal and a true professional spa soul. Comfort Zone is based on strong values that make it unique: care and pleasure, as our mission is to deliver care and pleasure in every product, treatment and ambience accessory we propose; science and nature, constant scientific research is the only way to take advantage of the endless potential which nature has to offer; essential richness, our style is defined by clean and pure shapes complementary to the accurate selection of unique raw materials and refined components; experience and results, in Comfort Zone every gesture becomes a well-being ritual, every detail a unique contribution to an exclusive multisensorial, effective and pleasant treatment.

Are your products available throughout Asia?

We have started concentrating on the development of the distribution in Asia only this year as we opened an office in Hong Kong, where I live and from where I can control and follow all the Asian market.

Our products are now available almost everywhere is Asia except Indonesia – that is one of my targets in 2006 – and Sri Lanka. In China, India and in Malaysia we will launch in 2006 as we are under the process of obtaining the licences. In many Asian countries we opened spas this year in some of the most prestigious hotels as Mandarin Oriental in Macau, Mandarin Oriental in Singapore, Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, Mandarin Oriental in Tokyo, Park Hyatt in Ho Chi Min City, Park Hyatt in Seoul, Grand Hyatt in Bangkok.

We are also in Australia where we will concentrate more in 2006 and in New Zealand. In 2006 we will open also a location in Maldives islands.

Are your products available from source or through distribution channels? We sell through distributors. We believe that is impossible to provide a good service to our prestigious clients around the world directly from Italy. The local distributors can give a better service in terms of delivery of the products, as they have stock locally and ongoing training, but usually for the corporate accounts the first training is given directly from the company. The local distributor is responsible for the development of the brand in their area and for the service to the clients. We follow and visit the clients regularly and we help the distributors in the sales and support to the spas.

How do you overcome potential conflict with your distributors in meeting the end users, which is what you will be doing at SIBEC ASIA?

There is no conflict. Our distributors are very glad that I can introduce them to potential new clients, and this is something I regularly do. From my point of view the distributor is a 'service' that we provide to the end users. All the policies and strategies are decided by the company and the distributors work with us in synergy and in a very co-operative way. Our distributors are among the best in Asia, in terms of professionalism and training experience.

What advice would you give to new suppliers in the region about selling to different areas within Asia pacific? There are already many brands in this industry, so my suggestion is be different, create a clear strategy and stick to it, be coherent with what you say and what you do. Every country in Asia is different but the wellness industry and in particular the luxury spa industry is quite similar everywhere.

Be ready to spend a long time and money in licence applications for every country. Asia is very far from Europe, but in Asia the concept of service is stronger than in Europe so it is better to have someone locally to manage and follow the distributors and accounts. In Asia service and image are the key.

What do you expect from your time at SIBEC ASIA? Why are you coming?

I expect to meet some of the most important and prestigious potential clients in the industry. It is a very good opportunity to have many decision makers concentrated in the same place at the same time and a wonderful occasion to introduce to them our company and our brand. Of course I hope that from this meeting we can start some new co-operations, but in any case it is a good experience to meet so many different people from the same industry and know each other.