Amway Philippines eyes up millennial market

The Filipino arm of the beauty and body care leader is opening a new ‘brand experience centre’ to attract a younger demographic in-store.

Brand and beauty

Amway is developing its new brand experience centre as a primary base for Amway Business Owners (ABO), to enable them to improve the in-store shopping experience for its ideal customer base.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Amway Philippines aims to appeal to millennial consumers through new product releases and targeted promotional campaigns.

“We are coming up with products specific to the Filipino market,” Elenita Olmedo, Country Manager, Amway Philippines announced to the press.

Amway will now turn its attention to the influential millennial target demographic through enlarging distribution activities and expanding its product range. Amway Philippines currently has an existing range of 200 active items, whereas its global portfolio contains 450 products.

The company’s brand experience centre forms a considerable part of these efforts, along with moving the location of its Amway distribution headquarters.  

Piloting the shopping experience

With more than 60,000 distributors nationwide, Amway Philippines plans to optimise “productivity and efficiency” to improve operations and “support etailing, training, and community building programmes” particularly in Manila, the capital region of the Philippines, added Olmeda.

“We will have a brand specific to the Philippines that will reach younger demographics. This Amway brand will not be available anywhere else. Since beauty and skin care still dominates direct selling, this is where we want to be,” emphasised Olmedo to the press.

Amway Philippines is planning to launch new products in the prestige skin care and cosmetics segment, which currently make up 20% of the total category.

The Philippines has been identified as an ideal landscape for piloting products for the millennial consumer base before expanding these into other markets.  

“We’ve been testing a lot of digital and social initiatives in the Philippines. So, it’s for this reason that we’ve been identified to pilot test some products,” highlighted Olmedo.

Population potential

The economy and ratio of the younger population compared to the wider population is shaping Amway’s millennial-focused strategy.

As approximately “70% of the population is below the age of 35”, and with the average age being 23 years old, the millennial market is the natural choice for cosmetics and personal care companies to target.

Booming economy

“With declining poverty incidence and rising income, the Philippines is fast becoming an upper middle-income country, providing more opportunities for retailing, especially for consumer goods in the fast-growing categories of health and wellness, beauty and home care,” Olmedo added.

Euromonitor International revealed that the direct selling business model in the Philippines is pitched at P62.7 bn (€1.1 bn) a year. The skin care and makeup markets contribute approximately P19 bn (€347.8 mn) to this figure.

Olmedo also stated to press how the Filipino economy is “currently among the fastest-growing in Southeast Asia, and has been on this stable trend in recent years”.