Posted by After one of the lectures of my evening class “Supply chain management”, the professor invited a guest speaker to talk about the supply chain of his own start up, CîME skin care, an organic Belgian skin care company.
The story behind this startup was really interesting:
Inspiration of CîME
It all happened at a family trip in Ladakh, India. The family were resting after trekking up to 3000+ km high attitude from the Himalaya, the daughter Anke began to wonder whether or not being a lawyer is what she would like to do for the rest of her life. The supporting father Walter said, “Well look around, there are many beautiful herbs around, maybe we can do something with it”.
After the trip, Anke started talking to her ex classmates Isabel (also a lawyer at that moment) about the idea, very quickly, Cîme skin care company was born, with core the ingredients from Himalaya region in Nepal only.
Anke and Isabel became the co-founders of the company, Walter became the product manager. Ready their full story here.
Marketing in CîME
The product itself is not the cheapest in the market given its logistics from Nepal and small production set up.
The company spends most of the budget in product development, less than 5% on marketing (mostly by telling people, on social media, or in a seminar), comparing to some famous brands where 80% cost is from marketing.
Stick to your story
Question from a student “Have you ever considered importing the ingredients from other(nearer) countries to save some costs?
Answer from Walter “Indeed the ingredients we are using can also be found in Turkey, which can reduce the cost dramatically, but if we do that, we become one of the other companies, we will no longer have a story to tell.”
Walter’s story convinced most of us in the class, even myself, personally not a skin care fan, wanted to give the product a try even though I have never heard about it.
Story telling technique
Story telling technique has become one of the most important skills in our life, we can use it to sell a product, explain a theory, introduce a use case etc.
How to tell a good story?
- Get your audiences’ attention by building up suspenses
- Get audiences’ empathy by sharing your experiences in the story
- Simplify the theory by using concrete example
- Tell your own stories, believe that you have lots of interesting stories to tell
Oh I recently discovered that some of the colleagues are already using story telling to explain the SOLID software principle.
Related movie
I would like to recommend an old movie Life is beautiful (1997)
It tells a story about a Jewish father uses humour, imagination and theatre technic to tell his son that the concentration camp is all a game, in order to protect his son from the awful time. The movie is very intrigue and heartwarming, definitely recommend!
References:
https://www.cime-skincare.com/en
Post is not sponsored.