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LCN: Making Nails Healthier, Stronger & Prettier

By MALCOLM AINSWORTH

Orpheus Choy walked enthusiastically to the product showcase that I was admiring in his boardroom, displaying just about every conceivable product ever designed to make nails healthier, stronger, longer or prettier.

"We must have over 900 different kinds of products now," the former auxiliary-police officer said proudly reaching out his hand to welcome me. "Most of our products are for professional nail, hand and foot care, but nail art is also starting to be very big across Asia, as you might have guessed from the number of nail boutiques opening," he explained pointing to a gallery of painstakingly decorated artificial nails.

Nail, hand and foot care is so big in fact that his company, LCN (Hong Kong) Ltd, was awarded a Hong Kong Superbrand title this year. He calls the honour "quite overwhelming," not just because he is rubbing shoulders with the likes of  McDonald's and LG, but for the simple fact that the first two attempts to launch the business failed before it even got started.

The idea came about quite by chance while holidaying in Europe and North America in 1990 with his wife and co-founder of the business, Eva Choy. Seeing how popular nail bars and salons were there, they figured that it was just a matter of time before the idea caught on in Hong Kong. After returning home, Mrs Choy, a beautician by training, suggested to her boss at a fitness centre where she worked that they start to offer such services at their club.

"She said that such services would make so little money that it wasn't even worth bothering about," Mrs Choy explained. "At that time there were thousands of beauty salons in Hong Kong and competition was very keen, but there wasn't a single nail salon that I knew about. So I discussed the idea with my husband and he encouraged me to open Hong Kong't first nail, hand and foot care salon on my own."

They searched for products around the world before deciding to order from one of the industry's leaders LCN Germany. They ordered hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of products through a local distributor and started planning for their grand opening.

"We were very excited when we received the delivery," Mrs Choy said. "But all our joy turned to disappointment after discovering most of the glass jars had been broken during shipment, and then to disbelief when the distributor insisted we still had to pay for the damaged goods."

"Some of those jars cost over HK$3,000 each, which to a one-man band that we were at the time threatened to put us out of business before we even got started," Mr Choy added.

After fruitless discussions with the distributor, the couple decided to fly to Germany to meet the supplier and find out if they were really as uncompromising as the distributor was making them out to be. What they found was that LCN Germany was in fact having a lot of problems with their Hong Kong distributor.

During the meeting, they talked nails, exchanged experiences, and by the end of their visit, the family-owned LCN Germany was so impressed by Mrs Choy's skill and knowledge of the industry that they invited her to become their Asian distributor.

Mr Choy supported his wife's decision to take on the role and decided to quit his job as Director of Sales and Operation at Hong Kong Parkview to focus on making the venture a success.

With LCN's good reputation in Europe and North America, demand for their products in Hong Kong grew and before long the business had developed into three core areas: selling of products, training, and the establishment of a salon, catering to the rich and famous.

Mrs Choy attributes part of their success to the emphasis the company puts on quality, which it ensures through its own R&D facilities in Germany while adhering to Germany's strict good manufacturing practices.

"All this work and effort towards developing the highest quality of products and services helped us win the Professional Beauty Award in 1999, and more recently we were appointed as the official nail, hand and foot care products supplier to the Miss Hong Kong Pageant 2002," she said proudly. "This was the first time that any product was officially appointed for contestants to use in the pageant's 30-year history."

LCN Training Institute

In addition to distributing LCN products across Asia, training is a very important aspect of the business. Since opening in 1992, LCN Hong Kong has trained over 3,000 professional nail technicians across Asia, many of whom have gone on to become trainers, salon owners and loyal LCN customers.

"In Asia, nail salons are still considered a bit unusual and exclusively for women," Mr Choy explained. "But in Western countries, even men have their own salon. I think it will be some time before Asian women are comfortable with men doing their nails, but look at how hairdressing, facial and even massage businesses have become perfectly acceptable for both male and females."

Currently, the industry is not regulated by government, but this hasn't stopped Mr Choy from qualifying as a '5-S' (Quality Environment Management System) company, and is also in the process of adopting ISO 9001:2000 standards to make sure the business maintains its goal of meeting the highest international standards.

He is also thinking of taking the business IPO, but is concerned that this might have some negative repercussions on the company philosophy and guiding vision which has so far proven to be a very successful formula.

"I always think that a good manager should be doing the right thing, instead of just doing things right," he said. "Some friends of mine have told me of their positive and negative experiences of listing their companies, so it is going to be a tough decision to make."

He has little doubt that the industry will continue to grow, and that Hong Kong's economy will also be running a full steam soon. But he says the rising tide of insecurity and negativity in Hong Kong worries him.

"All this negativity isn't encouraging more businesses to open here. Hong Kong business people are famous for being risk takers and adaptive, that is the spirit of the Hong Kong people. I do hope this spirit can come back again," he said. "I see a very bright future for business here, but we have to go out and grab the opportunities. We might fail, once or even twice, as we did, but we will never succeed if we don't even try."

	Company: LCN (Hong Kong) Ltd Business: Hand, nail and foot care Established: 1992 Year joined HKGCC: 2002 Web site: www.lcnasia.com