James Vernon (JV): How did you first get involved in this field?

Pongpot Hiranpruck (PH): Well actually I’m an engineer and I have no real medical background. But about 20 years ago, I worked for a renowned company that specializes in cosmetics and skin treatments. This allowed me to learn a lot about dermatology and cosmetics.

JV: So you were employed as an engineer?

PH: That’s right – I was in charge of production at the company’s branch here. I worked for them for a few years then noticed all kinds of opportunities for development, both here and abroad, in terms of what I refer to as 'Non-Surgical Beauty Treatments', which also falls under what I refer to as 'beauty business'. I use this term since the treatments don’t require doctors, just in-depth, non-medical training in beautification treatments.

JV: And that experience encouraged you to form your own business?

PH: Yes. I began by opening a beauty salon offering simple treatments, such as body and facial treatments, using special creams and gels. I didn’t use any machines at that time. Later on, as an engineer I became curious about the use of various machines for skin treatments, so I got in touch with my contacts in Europe to find out what kinds of ‘beautification technology’ was being used there.

JV: Did your company introduce beautification technology to the kingdom then?

PH: Yes, we did. That was around the mid-1980s. I imported the machines into the country, but I had a hard time initially. It was difficult to get across the goals and results of the technology to our customers, who were already satisfied with gels and creams. But after a while, people became more familiar with the treatments and understood their effectiveness.

JV: At that point, which direction did you take the business?

PH: A few years later I created a company to distribute beautification machines in Thailand. We supplied all kinds of these machines from Europe. In addition, we developed our own brand of beauty products – like I said earlier, it’s a ‘beauty business’.

By the late 1990s, we purchased about 80 machines and had opened four beauty centers called Care Beauty and Wellness around Bangkok. Each center had about 20 machines.

JV: What do you do about maintaining the machines?

PH: Maintenance quickly became a problem once we began importing the machines. We had no detailed instructions about how to repair them – this was quite a smart move on behalf of the manufacturer, since they don’t tell you about such things.

The machines were ‘rights protected’, so it was difficult to carry out any kind of quick maintenance if they broke down. You can imagine how costly this situation was for us with all the customs and shipping fees. Having sent machines back to Europe for repair, we had to pay additional tax when they were returned to Thailand. Additionally, the downtime was costly, since the machines were not being used for one to two months – it just didn’t make sense.

So I decided to hire some other engineers to take a look at the equipment and after a while they became familiar enough with it to fix it. I also invested in more equipment as a form of backup so we were in a better position when machines broke down and were being repaired. A few years later, the manufacturer in France closed and transferred all the know-how to us. Thankfully by that time we understood the technology sufficiently to form a joint venture with them and keep them running in Thailand.