Business opportunity development
Market development
Through the establishment of a distribution system, our distributors have assisted the Company in the management of 8 series product sales while providing timely service and support to local customers. YOKE enlist the assistance of specific distributors in various regions by functioning as our Worldwide Distribution Center (WDC). By analyzing the historical sales data, we were able to predict the status of distribution in said regions. By taking inventory management and production lead time for planned production, we preemptively ship the forecast sales volume to our WDCs across different regions. For smaller markets or market demands with uncertainty, we also share our resources with our WDCs to help them expand their business. Incidentally, WDC is not a distributor with different prices at the upper and lower levels, but rather a product sales model established to accommodate the needs of distributors to pick up small quantities and or quick collection of products.
Major personal safety protection equipment manufacturers around the world are key clients for our N-series products. As the cooperation mainly involves OEM products, our sales representatives are required to be ready to communicate and discuss with our customers at any time in order to better understand our customers’ needs for product development while offering customers’ latest products to them so as to create more business opportunities and improve our customer service quality.
In addition to operating a subsidiary in Shanghai (Zhen Rui), which functions as an integrating office for all distribution in China, we have also established joint ventures with local distributors in Germany, South Korea and Thailand starting from 2018 to strengthen the development of local markets. In 2020, YOKE also established a subsidiary in Vietnam to further bolster the strength of 8-Series product promotion in the local market to consolidate our presence there. "YOKE's private label distribution model has expanded to 41 countries on 6 continents with a total of 87 distributors by 2021.
Product sales area
YOKE will continue to focus on the Americas as its main sales market in 2021, with a 4.7% increase from 2021 due to the increasing demand in the post-epidemic era. The main market for 8-Series products are in Europe. The ratio of sales from the European market increased to 46.1% in 2021.
Brand marketing
In an effort to extensively reach out to potential customers in different areas of specialization, YOKE has been attending various exhibitions of automated equipment, machine tools, automobile, plastic/rubber molds and petroleum industries to promote application for our industrial safety lifting components and fittings (8 series). The Company has been participating in shows and exhibitions in more than 10 countries, including the U.S., England, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and so forth. However, in 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic still affected us and we only participated in 7 exhibitions both domestically and internationally.
The pandemic in 2020 has changed the nature and format of our interaction with customers as we hosted online video conferencing and offered online training videos for our products to serve our clients. In all, we held 34 sessions of online training for our customers and end-users in 2021. Fortunately, our customers have reassured us that interaction through video conferencing had actually improved service efficacy. We were able to carry on with the development of new projects without being delayed by the pandemic.
Business opportunity management
In an effort to cultivate new customers, the Customer Relationship Management system strengthens the management of potential and existing customers. Through accurate analyses of the needs of potential customers and products, we were able to increase our transaction rate via customer training and online con-call as an alternative to customer visits. For the past three years, we were able to convert 40% of our business leads to actual sales, generating US$ 20 million in revenue. This highlights the benefits and effectiveness of the system’s introduction. Not only that, the system also enabled us to separate the remaining unsettled accounts into categories of quality, price, delivery, service, specification, strategic non-order, difficulty in obtaining end-user feedback, delayed demand and so forth. These categories serve as useful referencesin our improvement of internal operations.
