We have an extensive sales network which provides us with deep market penetration and a wide coverage of hospitals and medical institutions.
We have an extensive sales network of distributors across the PRC. As at 30 June 2015, we had 179 sales and marketing employees, and established relationships with 1,594 distributors in the PRC. Our sales staff are dedicated to developing relationships with local pharmaceutical companies, major hospitals and medical institutions across all provinces and autonomous regions in the PRC, and to conducting our educational promotion activities (學術推廣) in respect of our major products.
We have a track record of successful educational promotion activities focusing on educating hospitals, doctors and other medical practitioners with respect to our products. These educational promotion activities allow us to actively interact with medical practitioner and obtain feedbacks from them on our products and our competitors’ products. For example, we have produced promotional videos and other materials for our leading product, Kewei, which promoted the standardised treatment of influenza and promote the brand name and recognition of Kewei in the industry. This is exemplified by the rapid growth of our turnover relating to Kewei. We have also sponsored various academic seminars in the PRC to further promote our Company and our brand name and to promote the recognition of our products. We have also sponsored various academic seminars in the PRC to further promote our Company and our brand name. As part of our educational promotion activities for the granules form of Kewei, in 2014, we participated in, among others, the First Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Respiratory Forum on Influenza Treatment and Education (第一屆粵港澳呼吸論 壇暨廣東省流感規範化診治學術直通車啟動會), the Tenth Central Eastern Region Hospital Pharmaceutical Conference (中南地區第十屆醫院藥學學術會議) and the National Paediatrics Conference (2014年全國兒科年會).
We conduct regular training for our employees that perform sales, marketing and distribution activities to ensure that they are up-to-date with our latest product portfolio. We also maintain records of our historical sales, marketing and promotional activities. This allows us to regularly review our performance in these areas.
We believe that our proactive sales and marketing model, combined with our extensive network of distributors, represents a key competitive strength of our Group. Combined with our successful track record of educational promotion activities, our dynamic marketing approach enables us to further market, sell and distribute our current and future products.
Meanwhile, we sell our products to third-party distributors that are GSP certified. All of our third-party distributors are required under PRC laws to obtain pharmaceutical supply permits and GSP certificates. As at 30 June 2015, we have relationships with 1,594 third-party distributors across the PRC.
As noted in the diagram above, we categorise our third party distributors into eight greater sales regions, with staff dedicated to developing relationships with the distributors in each of those regions. Having dedicated staff assigned to specific regions allows us to develop closer relationships with the relevant third-party distributors in that region and also allows us to respond to any changes in the demand for our products in the relevant area.