May 2017

16 APAC / May 2017 , 1703AP14 Upskilled and Knowledgeable Make a Positive Difference Founded in 2001, DTCWorld Corporation Pte Ltd has a strong specialization on advertising gifts andmarketing point of sales merchandise. DTC has 2 central buying offices controlling all of our production in China. Started in 2004, we have since grown a strong team of merchandisers dealing with factories on a daily basis. Our Quality Control service is also managed from there. Since we started in 2001, DTC has been registering rapid growth over the years. We owe this to the support from our clients from various industries and countries, and our dedicated employees. Our clients list includes MNCs like Asia Pacific Breweries, Coca Cola, Nestle, Unilever, Singtel, Philips, Pernod Ricard etc. Besides focusing in Singapore market, we have been actively expanding our overseas markets since 3 years ago. Owing to our unique product range and competitive pricing, we have managed to penetrate into markets like Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Island. For the past few years, our overseas market revenue is increasing at 10 – 20% per annum. Many people see corporate gift industry as a sunset Industry due to increase competition owing to the low barrier to entry and with sites like Alibaba making the Industry costing very transparent. Corporate gift companies are not only competing within the country but is competing on an international level as customer can now order directly from factories through Alibaba. With the high manpower cost in Singapore, it is not easy for a corporate gift company to stay afloat. However DTC is able to excel in the industry because we are more than just selling a product. DTC sells a whole service package which includes timeline management, quality control, product designs to our customers. DTC does not aim to be the cheapest in the market. But we aim to offer the best value to the customers. When customers employ the services of DTC to customize their marketing merchandise or gift with purchase, we do not just sell what factories have, instead we sell what customer’s target audience wants. We look into customer’s target audience profile, get our designer to come up with a few designs that will appeal to customer’s target audience, then we will look into the type of material to use for the product so that it has the highest perceived value at the competitive cost. As DTC has the knowledge to manage the projects from design, to material to use, production to shipping worldwide, we are able to manage the timeline of our customer more efficiently than our competitors. This appeals to many FMCGs companies where the lead-time is always very tight. Customers stay with us as we offer more value than our competitors. They perceive DTC as their reliable long term working partner and resourceful solution provider. Many of our major customers have been with us for many years. For example, Asia Pacific Breweries and SingTel have been with the company since we started in 2001. To stay ahead in this competitive landscape, DTC believes employee development is the key. Great staff can attract loyal customers, Word-of Mouth recommendations, a vibrant atmosphere, strong morale and a well-motivated team. The best way to get first-class staff is through a proper staff training programme. Employee training and employee centric HR policies is an area which we put a lot of effort into. We believe upskilled and knowledgeable staff make a positive difference to the business. Learning helpful new skills, a strong customer focus, and gaining an understanding of the importance of their role in driving the business helps staff turn what may be seen as a job into a career. We train our employees to be knowledgeable in a wide range of products from bags, tech products, leather items to household items, apparels, beach flag, acrylic displays, and advertising outdoor tent etc. Our purchasers have to visit different factories to understand the production flow and technologies on a regular basis. We also arrange our sales and design team to visit factories annually to further understand the production limitations. With these in-depth knowledge, our employees are always able to provide the best advice to our customers in terms of product design, material, patent infringement, customs regulations, logistic practices for different countries etc. Looking ahead to 2017, we expect the business environment to stay even more competitive. DTC intends to relook into our company process to adopt more Corporate Social Responsibility Policies (CSR). We believe with increasing bad PR stories about sweat shops, corruption etc, this will be a key priority in future procurement process for our existing or new clients. To progress DTC from a Singapore gift company to a SEAS regional marketing merchandise procurement specialist, we have been exploring to expand our procurement offices not only in different parts of china but also to