Nurse turns online friends into clients
PANIDA MONGKHOLDEE, 26, expanded her income by joining an online business that distributes a personal care product generating up to Bt45,000 monthly for her – higher than her Bt30,000 monthly salary as a professional nurse.
“I decided to resign from my full time job as a nurse, and work part-time. To add to my income, I saw the opportunity to do business through an online channel such as Facebook, and open my own webpage,” Panida said in a recent interview with The Nation.
She was first inspired to go into the business after she told her Facebook friends about her positive experience with the Acno 5 brand of face cream after using it for two weeks. Her Facebook friends asked her how to use it and where to buy it. This inspired her to contact the firm who produced the product and order it to sell to her friends through the social media channel.
Her success at getting orders from friends led her to go part-time in nursing and turn her attention to building an online business distributing personal-care products.
Four months after taking the plunge, Panida feels she’s making a success of it, with average monthly sales of Bt80,000 a month, and take-home income averaging Bt45,000 monthly.
“I’ve now doubled my income from the combination of the online business and the part time nurse job, and I’m meeting the challenge to expand into new products to serve the customers’ demands,” she said.
Adding to her original product, Acno 5, Panida is going to distribute a group of new personal care whitening products under the brand, White Perfect and made from a local herb.
Panida said that she selects a product only after personally testing it. If she finds it an improvement over other products, she will then post how to use the products to her Facebook page and wait for feedback from the market.
If the market shows strong confidence and has sales success, she will choose to distribute the product. This approach reduces her investment risk.
“Doing business online is easier and has a lower cost for me. It also creates more opportunity for the younger generation to become an entrepreneur than [does] a traditional business, where you have to invest and open a shop,” she said.
That approach to business is also easier to manage, especially the logistics system. Panida uses several distribution systems to send products to her customers at a cost of only Bt50 per pack, she said.
Panida is planning to increase the personal care products in her portfolio, focussing on herbs. But she pledges to always test them before introducing them to her distribution channels at Facebook, Instagram and her own webpage.
