Proudly Korean however internationally oriented: Pointful is focusing on the journey retail channel as a core element of its international growth
Introduction: Pointful Korea, the cigarette model owned by Worldwide Korea Tobacco (IKT), underlined its daring progress ambitions in journey retail by changing into a Diamond Sponsor of the MEADFA Convention held in Bahrain on 27-29 November. Director Dae-Younger Jung spoke to The Moodie Davitt Report about progress since.
The Moodie Davitt Report: Pointful Korea was a Diamond Sponsor at MEADFA. How was the expertise for you?
Dae-Younger Jung: Changing into a Diamond Sponsor at MEADFA was a great opportunity to advertise our model Pointful and its model picture. Having seen Pointful at MEADFA, we’re hoping many will recognise and proceed to recollect the model. As this was our very first exhibition occasion, we’ve learnt tremendously and gained invaluable expertise.
We plan to actively sponsor and host cubicles in 2023 on the Asia Pacific and Cannes exhibits, World Tobacco Exhibition, Intertabac and The Trinity Discussion board.
How did retailers react to your presence at MEADFA?
Pointful obtained an awesome welcome from the retailers. They confirmed profound curiosity and a constructive response that left us feeling extremely grateful.
At first, the retailers approached our sales space with curiosity as they have been unfamiliar with our merchandise since our market is at present solely inside Asia. However quickly after the retailers encountered our merchandise, they gave our cigarettes excessive marks for high quality.
Due to that, we have been in a position to have deep conversations with a broad vary of shops throughout various sectors attending MEADFA – past our function of selling our model and introducing our merchandise.
Even after the MEADFA occasion, we’re happy to be repeatedly speaking with a whole lot of unbelievable retailers and sustaining good relationships with them.
What are the following steps in Pointful’s worldwide and journey retail growth?
We’ll intensively goal not solely the ship provide sector, border shops and airport obligation free outlets, but in addition native markets to extend the distribution of our cigarettes.
Our benefit, we imagine, is that the standard of our merchandise is analogous or higher than different tobacco merchandise with a better worth vary. And but our merchandise are comparatively reasonably priced in comparison with different manufacturers.
Predictions of a world recession are rampant for the present time and the longer term. To remain aggressive in such market circumstances, our objective is to supply the very best merchandise to our shoppers with extra cheap costs.
By steady improvement of recent markets and enterprise growth, we’ll exert nice efforts to make sure that our cigarettes could make important worldwide progress by way of high quality and product worth.
Do you’ve got another key product developments within the pipeline?
For the king measurement cigarettes, we at present have 6mg-type, menthol-type, and capsule-type cigarettes. We’ll launch 8mg-type cigarettes sooner or later. For the tremendous slim class, we now have 4mg-type cigarettes, with a menthol-type and capsule-type to be launched in 2023.
Having began out by producing cigar-type cigarettes, our firm has since invested over 20 years in creating the flavours of the present merchandise. That’s the reason we delight ourselves on the standard of our merchandise and really feel aggressive by way of worth. We imagine that in comparison with different manufacturers that occupy the identical worth vary as ours, prospects can simply really feel that the standard of our merchandise is far greater.
It’s easy to reinforce different SKUs primarily based on the present primary baselines that are our king measurement 6mg-type and tremendous slim 4mg-type. As well as, we’ll manufacture extra SKUs to cater to customers’ diversified tastes in response to totally different market traits. We’re working vigorously on additional creating our product design as nicely, so please keep tuned and keep the excessive anticipation. ✈
Robust ESG dedication
In response to the IKT website, the corporate plans to evolve as a globally-competitive tobacco firm by increasing its manufacturing services and thru sound ESG (Surroundings, Social, Governance) credentials. “We’ll do our greatest for the general public good of society and become an organization that pursues our philosophy of ‘frequent good’,” the corporate mentioned. ✈
Enlargement plans embrace the development of eco-friendly factories and a give attention to decreasing carbon emissions. The corporate arranges an annual tree-planting occasion and its executives take part in an array of voluntary actions.