“Although many Muslim women cover their faces with the niqab or hijab [sic], striving for beauty is human nature,” Taiyen Biotech Co vice president Chen Shih-hui (陳世輝) said of his company’s efforts to break into the vast but conservative Muslim market.
Tainan-based Taiyen was formerly known as the Taiwan Salt Industrial Corp. It was privatized in 2003 and changed its name after diversifying into the cosmetics and beauty care sector.
“Taiyen has great potential to explore the market of the [world’s] 1.6 billion Muslim population,” Chen said.
“All Taiyen cosmetic factories are halal-certified and we have developed 61 products that will be to our great advantage when trying to find business opportunities in the Muslim market,” he said.
Halal certification assures consumers that certified foods and goods are in compliance with Muslim religious strictures.
“Only married Muslim women wear the niqab to cover their faces, showing only their eyes, and there are many unmarried Muslim women who do not do so [sic],” Chen said, adding that “they constitute a potential market for Taiyen’s cosmetics and beauty care products,” because “all human beings are keen to become pretty, whatever their religion or race.”
Taiyen began producing facial masks in 2013 and conducted a study with the product in Indonesia that same year, the results of which show that not only Indonesia, but other ASEAN countries with significant Muslim populations, such as Malaysia and Singapore, are markets worth exploring, he said.
Since 2013, Taiyen’s products, including lotions, facial masks, skin-balancing mists and creams, have established strongholds in these countries, he said.
South Korean brands are well-known to consumers thanks to intense advertising and government backing in grabbing foreign market shares, but Taiyen can only hope to gradually increase distribution through overseas channels, he said.
However, after four years of brand-building efforts in Muslim countries, Chen said that Taiyen’s cosmetic and beauty care products have gained only “limited” awareness in their target markets.
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