interview

Noway Studio is a handicraft workshop established by a postgraduate student, Yu Xi, for overseas Chinese students to experience traditional Chinese Kung Fu. The founder, Demi, chose Redbook as the main promotion channel because of its active user group and preference for graphic and textual posts. The studio faced challenges with product delivery during the pandemic, but relied on digital media for promotion. In the post-pandemic era, they plan to attract local customers and focus on online promotions. They also consider using hyper-local marketing strategies. Demi hopes their experience can be helpful to others. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Unicorn Podcast. So far, we mainly focused on micro-influencing factors encountered in the development of medium-sized enterprises. However, we haven't mentioned much about truly small business, which startup is empty-handed yet. Many international students show hesitation to choose work in office or enter pre-occupying due to the increasing employment pressure. Noway Studio is a handicraft workshop established by the postgraduate student Yu Xi and run by the members of the University of Melbourne's Chinese Kung Fu Association. The studio aims at allowing overseas Chinese students to experience traditional Chinese Kung Fu without waiting for long express delivery during traditional festivals. Now let's welcome the founder of Noway Studio, Demi. Hi, Impoor. Nonetheless, I am so glad to be here as your guest. My pleasure. First of all, congratulations on seeing a new increase in views and likes that your account has received on the Redbook platform. I would like to ask, at the same time, there were so many digital media channels such as WeChat, TikTok, and also commonly social media platform, Redbook, etc. How did you finally make the choice? I admit that I was a little bit fortunate. However, I reblogged some competitors on those platforms and summarized the article during while I was comparing various platforms to create promotional blogs. In the end, I decided which platform attracted the most user interaction and used that to primarily share my production posts. Would you like to share more about your experience in choosing a digital platform? And why did you finally confirm that Redbook was the main promotion channel? Yes, of course. Although TikTok is the most popular platform in recent years, however, Redbook's active user group consists of strangers and females who tend to have graphic and textual posts instead. For me, I prefer writing things instead of expressing production. Besides adding hashtags and keywords or joining some communities, I was hoping to better expand the customer groups here. Well, it sounds like you made sufficient preparations before starting a business. Would you like to share more about the challenges you faced when you first started running a studio? As a student, we saw a similar working experience before. In fact, I started a studio before I was a boy. So, I think the COVID-19 did have a great impact on the delivery of my products. Especially when I changed the cultural markets, the policy was often adjusted during the pandemic. This brought a damaging impact for small businesses like mine. So, I'm relying more on the promotion of digital media so I can attract more time not only from the local market. We have to admit that not only for the retail business, but almost every industry suffers the same issues. Luckily, we got through it. Have you thought about recent marketing strategies for your studio in the post-pandemic era? That's a really good question. Since we're both living in Melbourne and the city has high cultural colourings, I'm planning to attract more local customers who really love Eastern culture and custom handcrafts. However, I would like to focus on also the online promotions because, you know, the rate is not always affordable. Agreed. I've also heard of hyper-local marketing which provides productions with unique features and mainly targets local customers. Have you thought about this strategy before? I know that. Sounds like if visitors search the keywords on the map, then some relevant shops would be recommended to them by real-time track. I've created an account on Instagram and planning to register the location on Google for Google Maps. I hope this strategy works. Good luck. I think that's all for today. Thanks for sharing so much fresh ideas with us. Would you like to give a conclusion for today's episode, Demi? Yeah, I'd like to. So, I think I have a great sense of achievement in the process of interpretationship and handcrafting is also my hobby. I'd love to have more attention from you guys to the Nova Studio and hope my experience can be helpful to you. Thank you.