HEALTH IS WEALTH

Group CEO of A Wellness Holdings ARICH TAN shares how he turned one small chiropractic clinic into a small empire of beauty and wellness brands and companies.

- CHARMIAN LEONG

Arich Tan is a straightforward man. He's dressed in jeans "because it's casual Friday" but chose to top it with a red Louis Vuitton jumper "because it's my lucky colour and I'm closing a deal later", and he wears a black and white Hublot Big Bang "because it's a good everyday watch".

Personal fancies rarely colour his decisions, as evidenced by his highly pragmatic entrepreneurial trajectory: "I didn't want to lose my employability as I grew older," the 51-year-old explains. "That meant I had to start my own business, and I chose pain management because we are an ageing population and it will never be a sunset industry." Clearly, every choice he makes serves a purpose.

Having previously worked in sales and marketing, and in business consulting, Arich wasn't altogether surprised when friends and investors constantly highlighted his lack of relevant experience when he told them he wanted to open a chiropractic clinic.

"A lot of people didn't believe in me. They kept asking if I was a chiropractor or medical doctor myself, or if I specialised in this field of business. Of course, the answer is no; I'm just a businessman," he recalls. "But I filtered out all the doubt. My only thought was 'just do it!' So I just did it."

So Arich joined forces with co-founder Paurline Wee to open Natrahea, a clinic offering chiropractic, functional wellness and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) services, at Parkway Parade in 2012. As further testament to his Nike slogan approach to life, he didn't even have an existing customer base to draw from. "On our first day of opening, we were sweating," he laughs. "I was looking at my team, they were looking at me, and we were like, 'What do we do next?'"

For starters, they distributed flyers to their neighbouring tenants and made cold calls. Their first customers were the parents of children who attended the enrichment centre above and had time and pain to kill.