Korean brand of coffee creamer saved by export markets

“I still feel dizzy remembering the moment I was mistaken for a drug trafficker by customs officers at an airport.”

Ha In-ho, 51, senior manager of Dongsuh Food’s export department, has traveled around the world since 1994 carrying Prima, a coffee creamer used as a substitute for milk. Taking with him samples in the form of white powder, he often had a hard time at airports with customs officials.

Nonetheless, he could not afford to give up. Because coffee mixtures were widely introduced in Korea, Prima quickly fell in popularity and the only way its maker could sell it was export.

Dongsuh exports Prima to 27 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. The value of Prima exports has gone from just 1.1 million U.S. dollars in 1994, the first year of export, to 55.02 million dollars last year. Prima has a sales network of 41 distribution stores in Russia and controls more than 77 percent of the market in Tajikistan. In former Soviet republics, the product is an essential seasoning added to boost the flavor of various foods including cereal, soup, ice cream and bread.

○ Effectiveness of Korean-style marketing

Central Asia, including Russia, is the biggest market for Prima. Dongsuh relied on a variety of marketing and sales measures that it had used in Korea, including sweepstakes, giveaways and fliers, as well as sampling of food recipes served by marketing assistants and ads on buses.

Heo Kang, 40, head of the company`s export team, said, “Opening the minds of consumers, which had been shut under the communist regime, was the most important task in this region.”

Dongsuh had to win over people who considered sweepstakes a form of cheating. The export team took the rather bold measure of announcing sweepstakes winners on the TV news to affirm that Prima’s sweepstakes were real.

Consumers had even declined to try and taste Prima at sampling events, but finally came around. In Dongsuh`s first sweepstakes in Kazakhstan in 2010, just 1,692 people took part but that number rose to 35,770 by 2011. The company utilized proactive marketing at a time when rivals including Nestle were lukewarm in their promotional campaigns.

○ 20 types of Prima for Southeast Asia

While individual consumers are Prima’s primary target in Central Asia, bulk purchases supplied to manufacturers take up the lion’s share of trade in Southeast Asia. For instance, Dongsuh supplies the product to coffee makers in Indonesia and Singapore and to bubble tea makers in Taiwan. Targeting a creamer market used in bakery paste, the company also developed the sub-brand "Hi Milky”

When making inroads into the Southeast Asian market, the company focused on a localization strategy in which it adjusted Prima’s flavor to cater to the tastes of the target market. It used different ratios of protein and oil mixtures for different companies and added aromas favored by a certain nationality.

To this end, Dongsuh’s export team is collaborating with companies in overseas markets from the research and development phase. Likewise, it takes three to four years before a customized creamer product is developed and introduced to a particular market.

Dongsuh has targeted 70 million dollars in exports this year and 100 million dollars by 2015. This year, it plans to enter more Asian countries including Thailand, Myanmar and India and step up its advance into the U.S. and Latin America. Africa is another region that the export team is aiming for within several years.

Export team leader Ha said, “In certain countries, people consume Prima as a substitute for meals,” adding, “We`re also trying to offer Prima free to the African continent, where people suffer from starvation, through a domestic philanthropic organization.”

salthj@donga.com