Homeking: Ready to serve as gateway to mainland China market

With mainland China’s middle class expanding at an unprecedented pace, expect their income to also increase in a few years. In fact, by 2030, their consumer spending will reach a new level now seen in the European Union, an analytics company said.

According to The Economist Intelligence Unit, about 35 percent of mainland China’s population will have in excess of US$10,000 of annual disposable income, a 10 percent rise of what they have today.

Upper middle-income consumers—over 109 million of them are now in mainland China—are defined as those living in China’s first and second-tier cities, with wealth of at least US$28,000 and are able to purchase cars, branded goods and properties (in comparison, high-income individuals are those who can afford financial services, overseas travel and high-end consumer goods and services).

And with the population size of mainland China, the number of billionaires there, and the attractiveness of having a foreign domestic helper who can speak English, it will just be a matter of time for mainland China to hire foreign household service attendants. At the moment, only foreigners living in China’s mainland cities, as well as citizens of Hong Kong and Macau, are allowed to hire household service attendants from overseas.

Established in 2010, Homeking is now the largest household service provider in mainland China with a customer base of over 3 million families, 30 branch companies and just last year, reported a revenue amounting to close to RMB 1 billion (US$150 million).

Homeking Philippines announced that besides tapping premium household service market in the Philippines, it will make itself a major springboard for the mainland Chinese market to have access to the best quality and dependable domestic service professionals. 

As explained by Mr. Yoo, the said thrust conveys two things: firstly, by “Global Sourcing”, Homeking will seek all the best resources from all over the world in order to provide the highest standard in household service attendant industry, including providing the best education and training resources in house cleaning, care taking, nanny, butler, best business model, best products for household use (such as kitchen ware, toiletries and other lifestyle products).

Secondly, Homeking intends bring to the world all these top level services and products together with its mature business and management model. In our era of information, international and industrial division of labor has become more diversified since our pace of life and work is faster, and people all over the world are more and more relying on outsourcing services.

Homeking has chosen the Philippines as the 1st station of its global sourcing thrust, “Filipino household service attendants (HSAs) have been known the world over for their good character and our Chinese clients will find that they are very professional, diligent and discreet, thanks to the well-established training and certification system here in the Philippines. Not only are we looking forward to introducing them into mainland China HSAs but we will also train them based on a certification system,” says Mr. Yoo.

To take the first step, Homeking has entered into a partnership with Filhigh GNS Inc. and Ikon Solutions Asia Inc., both prominent manpower recruitment and deployment agencies based in Metro Manila. This partnership will not only include recruiting and dispatching high quality Filipino household service attendants, English teachers and care takers to mainland China in the future, but also will involve establishing training camps with local educational institutions, enrolling Chinese participants in courses such as housekeeping, food & beverage service, cookery amongst others. In the end, we aim to produce high quality household service attendants that could ably serve Chinese clients. We also intend to tap household service markets in Hong Kong, Macao and Middle East countries—employing Homeking’s mature business model—where our two local partners have strong connection. For our part, Homeking would like to provide an even better protection of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

 

Homeking believed its efforts will soon attract more Filipino household service attendants to consider mainland China and will think twice going elsewhere.

It should be remembered that last year, Philippine Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III revealed that (despite the ban and hefty penalties involved) up to 200,000 were already working as domestic helpers in mainland China illegally. These families from mainland China were attracted by Filipinos’ culture and their proficiency in English, which they believed, could help their children with their studies.

For the past 8 years Homeking has distinguished itself as a leader in household service industry in China. However, the challenge at the moment is how to remain a step ahead of the competition. “It is not enough to simply expand our housekeeping business, we have to upgrade our service by utilizing the increasing trust of our customers that we have accumulated over time, from housekeeping to articles sorting, to interior design, and eventually to health care of our customers’ family. These are the so called elevation stairs of customer’s demand as well as sequence of customer’s trust, and we have to climb each of these steps,” Mr. Yoo revealed.

For this end, Homeking is seeking to integrate the most-trusted household services from all over the world, besides Philippines, the company also looks to Japan and the United Kingdom as its possible next stations for article sorting, care taking of senior people and toddlers.

Besides, Homeking is seeking to introduce high quality lifestyle products from independent designers worldwide as well, another gesture to acquire more business from its existing customers. The first Homeking store opened in January in Xiamen City, where Homeking’s headquarters located. A total of 100 stores are to be opened in China in the coming years.