During the gap semester of my sophomore year, I had the pleasure to intern at Timeless Truth Mask, a Taiwan-based skincare company specializing in facial sheet masks, in their sales and marketing department. I was primarily working with international clients and building its international brand awareness. I also worked with their laboratory called Jolab, a research and development laboratory that manufactures skincare products. To aid its OEM clients on the types of products they should manufacture, I created personalized presentations with recommendations using data and market insights.

During my 6-month internship, I learned a lot of different skills and faced numerous challenges. These challenges can be summed into one main problem that I tackled with various solutions during my internship.

Although TTM has products distributed in more than 20 countries and has received more than 15 awards from globally recognized beauty organizations, their international brand awareness still lagged behind their brand awareness locally in Taiwan. In what ways can I help improve their international brand awareness?

Create a company profile in English, which allows TTM to introduce themselves to international companies and organizations.

To write the company profile, I first conducted research by reading on the espoused values on their website and articles written about their brand. Additionally, I also interviewed the CEO, John Lee, my sales manager, Momo, with additional questions. Lastly, I toured their laboratory, Jolab, to gain a better understanding on their equipment and manufacturing processes.

This company profile was then submitted in an application to RE100, a global renewable energy initiative led by The Climate Group and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). It brings together the world's most influential businesses committed to 100%. In April, they were officially accepted as a member and they now promise to use 100% renewable energy by 2023. By joining this international group, they are further accrediting themselves globally.

Cold email companies, retailers, and influencers for potential partnerships with personalized templates, improving response rate

This was one of the first few assignments tasked to me as an intern. They mentioned how they would send over 500+ emails with 0 responses back. I wanted to improve this response rate so I decided to take on a different approach by doing research and creating more personalized emails. In the opening paragraph, I would mention specific facts that pertain to them and how their values aligned with TTM's. By drawing out the connection, they are more likely to want to collaborate on a project. Instead of quantity, I decided to prioritize quality.

By doing so, I was able to increase the response rate by 60% by the first week. After sharing it to my co-workers, this approach was adapted into a Chinese version. Using the Chinese template, my co-worker found that 2/3 of the influencers she messaged had replied.

Onboard new distributors with product training, which allows them to better understand and sell the products internationally

After looking through their brand and products training slide deck of more than 70 pages, I realized that it may be hard for distributors to quickly comprehend the differences between the 7 product lines. I wanted to help distributors easily identify unique selling points for each product line. Therefore I decided to add a recap slide after each product line to outline the key selling points. By doing so, it will help distributors better understand the differences between TTM's products and further aid them in promoting our products in their respective country.

To practice presenting in front of international distributors, I practiced numerous times alone and with my manager. I also recorded myself presenting to see ways I could improve. Moreover, I anticipated questions the distributors may have so I could better respond to them after the presentation.

By adding a summary page after each product line, the entire presentation was easier to comprehend and more streamlined. This was evident in our presentation to the distributors in Czech Republic. They commented on how the summary slides were a good way to identify key takeaways for each product lines.