Taiwan’s runs a collection of companies offering marketing, test preparation, education placement and other services in Taiwan, China and Thailand. We caught up with founder Mark Hsu for the lowdown on Taiwan’s shifting market.
小瓢虫传媒: Where did the idea for Envision Recruit come from?
Envision Recruit grew as an extension of my experience as an agency. What I found was that I had attended a lot of these international networking events, but the problem was that the schools were still having a hard time overcoming the last mile in converting leads into enrolments. That was my reason for starting it.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Why do you think schools find it so difficult to go the last mile?
In Taiwan, and in most of Asia, the agency industry is highly fragmented and so when you go to international events like agent workshops you鈥檙e seeing maybe 1% of the agencies out there. So an agency has to have the resources to fly out to events 鈥� even though we are getting comped for our hotel rooms and attendance 鈥� but you still need to have the means to buy the airfare.
“On a per capita basis Taiwan is probably the world’s second biggest source market”
So Envision Recruit put a handbook together showing that there are 350 active agencies in Taiwan and that at any of these agent workshops maybe two or three would show up. So there鈥檚 no way a school is actually capturing the whole market. Number two, I would say less than 3% of agents have English language websites. So if you鈥檙e a non Chinese speaker just Googling in English you鈥檙e not going to find the agency names.
小瓢虫传媒: So schools are missing opportunities in the Taiwan market?
Yes. I saw that schools were spending a lot of money on attending events, workshops, conferences and thinking that 鈥淚 have got Taiwan covered鈥�; or think that Taiwan is maybe a dead or dormant market. But if you look at the statistics, Taiwan is still the fifth most important source country for the US. Pound for pound, on a per capita basis it鈥檚 probably the world’s second biggest source market聽behind South Korea because our population is only twenty-three million.
“When you go to international events like agent workshops you鈥檙e seeing maybe 1% of the agencies out there”
小瓢虫传媒:聽Do you help broker relationships of meeting with agents for your clients?
We have two solutions. One is a la carte, so if you just want to test things out we have this handbook available for sale; and we run an in-country agent workshop at which we can represent overseas schools on their behalf so they don鈥檛 need to fly out. What we鈥檙e doing right now is a monthly agent workshop.
It鈥檚 a relatively inexpensive multi-school info-session. It鈥檚 more lecture style than speed dating. We don鈥檛 need to comp the agents so schools save on that; if it鈥檚 a half day session we just offer tea and coffee. If it鈥檚 a full day session we throw in lunch.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Can you tell me more about what Envision Recruit offers?
Before we started running events for language schools, previously we were running information sessions for top business schools such as the University of Cambridge鈥檚 Judge Business School. So we would coordinate the logistics of setting up an information session at a five star hotel. And then we charge the schools an execution fee to attract guests for the information sessions. We鈥檝e been doing this for three years.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Are you helping agents meet these schools?
No. Business schools want help with brand building. We also help Cornell University鈥檚 hospitality school, which has a campus at Nangyang Technological University, Singapore 鈥� we help them with media buying, placing advertorials and creating marketing materials.
小瓢虫传媒:聽When you do these seminars for students, how do you find the students?
For the MBAs it was pretty natural because we ran probably the most successful MBA placement consultancy in Taiwan. So we were already helping students apply and we just used our database of these contacts. We also have a very strong Facebook presence, running multiple highly 鈥渓iked” Facebook fan pages for 补苍诲听, as well as a very strong offline presence through giving free career workshops at some of the top universities in Taiwan.
小瓢虫传媒:聽Do people still like to use an agency in Taiwan?
I think direct is the trend. If I had to bet, I’d say ten years from the now the agency industry will decline聽with agencies being less and less and important. That certainly has been my experience.
“If I had to bet, I’d say ten years from the now the agency industry will decline”
Our business these days is primarily derived from 鈥渉igh-touch鈥� clients where we are really engaging with the students for 1-2 years, coaching them and sometimes offering tutoring services to boost their test scores so that we can position them to gain admission into top universities. We work with about 500 students a year, about 100 are enrolled in our test preparation classes domestically in Taiwan, about 30 attend undergraduate, about 300 attend graduate school and another 20 attend boarding school (high school).
In terms of student numbers, language school students comprise about 20% of our total students but the revenue generated is approximately 5% of our firm鈥檚 total revenue.
小瓢虫传媒:聽So what proportion of students would you say go through agents versus direct booking?
My feeling is that a lot of students go through a site like ApplyESL.com, which ironically claims to be a 鈥渘on agent鈥� in their online advertisement when in fact they are also compensated on a commission basis. This is because in Taiwan there is a perception that agents are shady, so ApplyEsl.com has fairly good market penetration in Taiwan. And so I鈥檇 say about 40-50% probably use an agent but that鈥檚 a big decline from previous years.
“The market is shrinking and the nature of the demand is shifting”
小瓢虫传媒:聽In terms of the outbound market, which countries are popular?
I think it doesn鈥檛 change. The US is number one, followed by the UK, either Canada or Australia, then New Zealand. If we factor in working holiday, then Australia would be number one for short-term travel.
小瓢虫传媒:聽And in terms of courses?
We do mostly degrees, because people are more willing to pay a premium, so it鈥檚 a more valuable market financially. If there are any trends, it鈥檚 that the market is shrinking and the nature of the demand is shifting. While the total study abroad market is not increasing, there is a clear pick-up in demand for boarding schools or undergraduate programmes particularly among the richer families who are more inclined to invest in their children at an earlier stage in their lives.
The trend in Taiwan and elsewhere in the developed parts of Asia is that families are having fewer children. Most families now just have 1 or 2 kids, but on average the spending per child is higher.
Envision Recruit’s companies include Envision Recruit, , and .
