Musa Diffuser Jewellery: keeping up with the market

Essential oil accessory brand Musa Diffuser Jewellery was founded by Ice Kou. Graduating from Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design, Ice had worked in the fashion and graphic design industry in Hong Kong before returning to Macao for her entrepreneurial journey. Ice is hoping to bring her customers unique fashion experience through Musa’ uniquely designed accessories and essential oil.

The combination of accessories and essential oil

Essential oil accessory, as the name suggests, is an integration of essential oil and accessory, which can diffuse fragrance when the user is wearing it. “My customers are looking for lifestyle choices that can help them release stress. The fragrance from our accessories can help them achieve that,” Ice said. “This is the market gap that I saw when I was making Musa accessories.”

Ice had learned in the beginning of her entrepreneurship that crystal accessories enjoyed quite some market shares and therefore decided to combine essential oil with crystal design and adequate colour blend. The accessories are designed in a simplistic manner for casual occasions. “Musa’s essential oil selections are purchased from the suppliers in the source areas. They are packed into small bottles in Macao and sold alongside with the accessories. The customers can then purchase both the accessory and essential oil, which is a great shopping experience.”

Keeping up with the market demands and expanding new businesses

Besides diffuser accessories, handcrafted essential oil skin care products are also Musa’s popular items. “When we are selling the diffuser accessories to the customers, we also learn about their demands on essential oil for skincare. We saw the business opportunities and then we expanded. We make handcrafted essential oil skin care products. Currently, our products include handcrafted soaps, essential oil facial cream, lip protectors, body lotions, etc. Our customers are mostly married moms or female consumers with sensitive skin.”

To expand the business scope, Ice also organises different product workshops. “We have cooperated with motherhood groups, dating agencies, commercial companies, etc. to host private workshops. In the workshops, we mainly make soaps and natural skin care products. We would introduce the ingredients of the product, how we use the ingredients for making the products, and then teach participants how to make the actual products. This process can generate great satisfaction for our customers,” she said. Ice is hoping to set up more outlets and mass-produce the products when the order flow meets the minimum demand of that of the industrial chain when Musa becomes more mature. More efforts will be invested in ensuring the production efficiency and quality control.

Different sales models for Macao and Hong Kong

At present, Musa mainly cooperates with Macao Fashion Gallery in Macao. “Macao Fashion Gallery provides great support for us in promotion and sales. For instance, they have arranged professional sales agents to introduce the products to the market for us. So even sometimes I am not in Macao, our products can still enjoy a decent sales volume when consigned at Macao Fashion Gallery,” Ice stated. “In Hong Kong, our products are mainly sold on the Internet. Consumers can order our products online and pay via online payments. Then the products will be shipped to them. The consumers actually like such sales model. We have professional customer service personnel on our Facebook page to answer consumers’ inquiry and process the online orders. After the payment is completed, we will ship the products to the consumers.”

“Handcrafted products have limitations in manufacturing efficiency and shelf life. If the materials cannot arrive in Macao on time due to logistic issues, then we might have trouble making the products according to the schedule. That leads to some occasions where we need to work overtime,” Ice explained. “Meanwhile, the shelf time of products made of natural ingredients is short. So we need to be extra careful with the number of orders. If we purchase too much then they will go to waste.”

Making products that can be recognised by the market

When comparing the handicraft markets in Macao and Hong Kong, Ice expresses that the handcrafted products in Hong Kong are more connected to industrial lines, which can be attributed to the fact that it’s fairly easy to find a corresponding factory in Hong Kong. In addition to that, there are a number of professional fashion buyers in Hong Kong who cooperate with fashion designers and make the entire industry more professional. On the other hand, Hong Kong’s creative and cultural markets will usually cooperate with big shopping malls and fashion outlets to organise activities instead of relying solely on government funding. This contributes to the stricter selection process of the exhibiting units in the creative and cultural market, which ensures the quality of the products people will see.

Currently, the Macao government provides a number of funding policies for the cultural and creative industry. But if a brand can only survive with the support of government funding then the brand itself is not a healthy business model, Ice said. “In Korea and mainland China, many fashion brands can create products that are popular in the market without funding from the local government. This is because they have accurately identified the market demands and that they are not doing the business for personal satisfaction,” Ice explained. “Professional talents in the cultural and creative industry need to connect with the commercial world. The funding in the industry should go into linking the commercial world and the creative and cultural world instead of just spoon-feeding the designers with money.”

Musa Diffuser Jewellery

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