Petaling Jaya,Sun – Malaysian herbal products have the potential to penetrate the international market though strategic advertising and promotional and marketing approaches.

International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz said local products should have suitable brand names and attractive packaging.

A product must have at least five types of brand names and different packaging to suit consumer’s preferences she added.

Rafidah said although Malaysians were quite happy with brightly-coloured packaging such products could not penetrate foreign markets unless their brand names and packaging were changed.

If our product are sold in Japan the colours must not be too bold as Japanese prefer light colours.

" The product could be the same but it must be packaged differently for Asians.If we want to sell our local products abroad,they should have a variety of colours and packaging," she said.

Rafidah said this at the Nona Roguy Meniti Waktu Membina Keunggulan award presentation ceremony for its distributors and stockists who had notched record sales for its herbal products.

Also present was Nona Roguy Chairman, Tan Sri Syed Agil Syed Hassan Barakbah, Chief Managing Director Hamzah Abu Al Haj, Managing Director Datin Sharifah Anisah Barakbah, Marketing Director Syed Hidzir Barakbah and Administration Director Dr Syed Muhannad Azman Barakbah.

Rafidah said it was also important for distributors to maintain a long-term relationship with customers by ensuring the latter were satisfied and continued to show loyalty to a particular brand.

"If the packaging and quality of a product is good it will continue to reap success."

She said distributors should also maintain direct links with manufacturers and consumers to gain their acceptance,confidence and market share for their products.

" One aspect of marketing is to inform consumers of the ingredients used and their effects on health.

Sometimes a product may be good but due to poor marketing strategy it is only distributed locally."

Earlier,Syed Agil said Nona Roguy had achieved sales of RM23 million last year-an increase of about 30 percent from RM8 million in1997.For this year it anticipates sales of RM30 million.

NonaRoguy has about 60,000 distributor and 400 stockists.

Source: New Straits Times, 3/5/1999