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15.
May
2017.
Fuzzy Brush Investment
 A TASTE FOR ASIAN MARKETS
 
JIM DREW: Fuzzy Brush is a price-sensitive product. It’s a little chewable toothbrush, about the size of a marble. We’ve sold it for many years. People like the mint flavour, based on xylitol. We market it as ‘the mint that cleans your teeth’. Korea is a very strong market for us – we sell it with the Union Jack on the packaging, which is really important. In Asia, the British flag actually means a lot more than I originally thought it did. It is a sign of quality, integrity and so on. We’re new to exporting, but it has gone well for us, particularly in Korea, where we went from 10k units per month to 120k units per month in one year. 
 
MARKETING
 
I take calls from three countries every day, but most are a waste of time. That’s my life! My history with the product is vending. I used to have 60 distributors in the UK, a network that I built myself. Then we went abroad, used distributors, and then we went into retail. So we are building the business again from scratch in a different environment. Now we are looking at one distributor per country, if we can get away with it. But in Russia it’s two, because otherwise it’s too much for one company or person to handle. You play it by ear. It’s not a precise art. This market here, in the UK, is the one I am most disappointed with. We are in some major retailers now, but that was a real slog. To get into one of them was two years of my life just to speak to some buyers. And within a year we decided to pull the product because of problems at their warehouse. So why should I bother with the UK, when I can pick up the phone to Korea and they’ll ask for a container!
 
BRANDING
 
In Korea, we changed the flavour of our new Fuzzy Rock product. We don’t change the brand, as we’re trying to build it and you need to stick to your guns. We had tried to change the name in Germany or Spain – but that doesn’t really work, as there’s no history there. But as for the flavour, that’s important. In Dubai they like ginger and in Korea they like spicy lettuce. We’ve made an extra strong mint flavour and a lemon flavour which is very
popular. We’ve made different flavours and sold in different languages, but it’s the same brand. We spend a lot on visual trademarks, because people love to copy things.
 
BUSINESS APPROACH
 
I’m a finance guy, so I look at everything in black and white, profit and loss, what can I make this for, and to some degree I might not care where the product comes from, as long as I can make it for X and sell it for Y. In this case, it’s a nice feeling to talk to the person who I have been talking to in Korea for five years. And he really appreciates where it comes from. And he buys because of this. Our approach is to always make a product to be the best that it can be, and to be unique. We use the best ingredients, the best xylitol, best plastic, best packaging. Whether we’re copied or not, quality always counts. People aren’t stupid. Quality is our long-term view. 

Fuzzy Brush Investment, extract with kind permission ICAEW 2017