Fair value and readable claims in every language

I am chief marketing officer of Lumarind Holdings Limited, a fictional Singapore-based maker of halal-certified hair care, skin care and body care, listed on the SGX Mainboard and controlled by the family that founded it in 1971. We earned S$742 million of revenue in 2025, 44 per cent of it in Indonesia, and we sell most of what we make through roughly 410,000 small shops in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, where many families buy shampoo for the day rather than the month. Our brands are Helaimas in hair care, Embunsari in skin care and Teduhwangi, the cooling powder the company began with.

I came to marketing from the shop floor and the delivery van. I started in 1998 as an assistant cosmetics buyer at a Singapore department store, then spent four years as an area sales manager in East Java, riding with distributors' salesmen to warungs in Sidoarjo and Malang. I learnt brand management on a sachet shampoo in Jakarta, ran hair care for a European group across Southeast Asia from Singapore, and led marketing for a listed snack and powdered-drink company in Manila before joining Lumarind in April 2019.

Since then, the work that has mattered most has involved refusing an easy number: a smaller sachet when costs rose, a recyclability claim our packs had not earned, livestream hours spent on promises we could not support. Each refusal cost revenue or margin. Each made the brand easier to trust in a region where one claim is repeated in four languages and on thousands of small screens.

Current focus

I am preparing Embunsari's second year in Vietnam, where the halal mark means little to most shoppers and the brand has to be built on formulation and texture, in Vietnamese. With our head of regulatory affairs I am also rebuilding our claims file as Indonesia phases mandatory halal certification across cosmetics, so that every halal statement we make rests on a current certificate rather than on habit.

Conversations I welcome

I am not seeking to leave Lumarind. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed consumer-facing company outside personal care, in Singapore or Malaysia, on its sustainability or risk committee, giving about twenty-four days a year with my board's consent. I also accept a few speaking invitations on small-pack pricing, live selling and claims governance.