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Published on November 6, 2007

Songpol Shanmatkit, chief executive officer, said yesterday the unit would utilise the company's large database of shoppers. It claims to have more than 600,000 connections to upper-income customers, comprising business owners and top-level executives.

About 70 per cent of these customers are 40 and above.

He added that 35 per cent of TV Direct's customers live in Bangkok and its outskirts. About 80 per cent of provincial clients live in urban areas, and more than 600,000 customers have their own mobile phones.

Songpol said the company also planned to sell physical products on new digitised media channels. "We are looking to expand ourselves into new business areas such as viral marketing, customised marketing, short message service marketing, and dialogue marketing next year," he said.

The new business activities will be developed to increase the company's bottom-line revenues, Songpol said.

"We have reshuffled our business strategy from focusing on financial capital previously to strengthening human capital. We are trying to make our staff happy and smart, and make them the most valuable asset of the company," said Songpol.

He added that the company had shifted from the old thinking method of trying to boost sales to a new strategic thinking of improving bottom-line profit. "Over the past two years, we have reduced the number of subsidiaries and affiliates from 15 companies to only one today," said Songpol.

"We were also able to move the company from loss to profit this year. And we expect our profit to increase by two to three times next year."

TV Direct expects sales of about Bt800 million this year.

Kwanchai Rungfapaisarn

 The Nation