Tjufoo Pursue Quality over Quantity When Acquiring Brands

Startups aggregator brands Tjufoo said the company will continue to maintain quality brand acquired companies to grow together, rather than chasing quantity. Pursue growth brand going to scalable growth became the focus of the company pioneered by Tj Tham.

"We don't want too many [acquisitions], help those Existing course but must high quality [his business]. Now there are six brand, there will be more. The total is not important, what matters is that they can build together with us," explained the Co-founder and CEO Tjufoo Tj Tham during Open Joint Media last week, (6/4).

Tj emphasized that his party was targeting brand agnostic alias not fixated on one particular industry. As of now, Tjufoo has acquired six brand local, namely:

1. ACMIC: brand for product mobile accessories,
2. Granova: brand healthy snacks,
3. Cypruz : anti-scratch frying pan product for young mothers,
4. Dew It: skin care brands vegan based,
5. MuscleFirst: brand for supplements fitness,
6. Chocolate Kitchen: brand cakes and chocolates that have a variety of menus signature.

Interestingly, the decision to join the Chocolate Kitchen was motivated by management considerations which were also affected by the pandemic that took place two years ago. The CEO of the Chocolate Kitchen Silvano Christian who was also present at the occasion said, expertise and the strong ecosystem is the main reason why Dapur Coklat has joined forces with Tjufoo.

According to him, the 'successful' pandemic forced the company to do more agile and opened my eyes that the Chocolate Kitchen needed support from businesses externally so that it can continue to grow. "The hope is that the Dapur Cokelat brand will gain higher awareness, stay strong and spread throughout Indonesia," said Silvano.

Dapur Cokelat has been operating since 2001 with its first shop located on Jalan Ahmad Dahlan, Jakarta. Now the shop is spread across 32 points and 56 delivery points. Delivery points is a project the company initiated during the pandemic, exploiting the potential of cloud kitchen to get closer to consumers in residential and office areas.

The same opinion was also expressed by Muscle First Founder Sally Varsly. According to him, he and his team had deep experience before getting serious about the fitness supplement business, were able to develop products and knew what the market liked. However, to make Muscle First a long-term sustainable business, you need people who are experienced in their field.

"Muscle First only started in 2017. But we have been selling since 2012 as imported supplements, we learned what the market here likes, until finally we came up with the idea to create our own brand. Now we need partners who are experts in their field to make Muscle First grow even bigger. ," explained Sally.

TJ explains the process of every brand acquired, usually they will receive investment not only in the form of equity, there will also be capital assistance for business development, for example in the form of inventory financing. "Because they are now part of a big group, this is what happened safe cost rather than taking a loan from a bank or p2p lending."

Because acquisitions can be a means for founders to exit. However, before being transferred, TJ wanted to ensure how Tjufoo could continue the legacy of the old founder well. Remembering that the business that was taken over was started by the founder from day one, it was like taking care of his own baby.

Tjufoo Support

TJ continues his passion for building brands Local started from three obstacles that he found often befalling him brand. First, brand often don't invest in recruiting an experienced team to grow their business. Second, brand often do not invest in operational costs because short-term mindset which is not focused on sustainability long term business.

Final, brand often don't use much data to make business decisions for effective results. The presence of Tjudoo plays a role house of brands by building the right ecosystem for brand can go up a class. Starting from an experienced team with hyper-local market, corporate governance, business operational support, as well as expertise in processing data and using it as part of strategy.

Claimed with financial support and the Tjufoo team, a number of brand under Tjufoo, he succeeded in making them move up a class. For example, ACMIC now has 500 points of sale offline Since joining, I have previously only relied on sales online. Next, Granova has 400 sales points offline in various partners and department stores, as well as increasing production capacity to meet market demand.

Furthermore, Cypruz, which previously relied on offline sales distribution, has now succeeded in increasing online sales up to 7 times and providing production capacity for distribution throughout Indonesia. As for Dew It, Tjufoo provided marketing strategy and funding support, developed inventory until it succeeded in increasing sales volume up to 3 times in six months.

It is claimed that Tjufoo is committed to channeling investment to MSMEs in Indonesia worth IDR 1,8 trillion. TJ was not prepared to provide further details regarding this figure and when the target would be completed. Compared with Malaysia and Singapore, TJ said IDR 1,8 trillion for MSMEs is still relatively small. However, in Indonesia, IDR 1,8 trillion is a large figure for MSMEs.

"But this is very large if we compare special funding for MSMEs. "Many other countries don't get special funding of this magnitude for MSMEs, but funding goes to the technology or startup sector," he concluded.