QNET Celebrates 20 Years Of Empowering Entrepreneurs

1998 was quite an eventful year; Europe agreed on a single currency – the Euro, Microsoft officially became the biggest company in the world, and Google was founded. While all this was happening, another eventful milestone occurred in the Philippines - the birth of one of Asia’s leading Direct Selling companies - QNET.

20 years on, QNET has emerged as a prominent player in the direct selling industry, a pioneer in the eCommerce space, and one of the few Asian companies in the business with a fast-growing global footprint, especially in emerging markets that have only recently discovered direct selling. QNET has grown from a single-product company at the time of its inception to a lifestyle company with a wide range of products focussed on health, wellness, and holistic living, with millions of happy and satisfied customers in more than 100 countries.

“We started with one product in 1998, and today we offer over 100 products in the categories of health, wellness, home and living, personal care, watches and jewellery, online education, and holidays. We have customers from Ivory Coast to Indonesia, Cairo to Kolkata, Morocco to Moscow who have not only benefited from our products but also from our business opportunity.

In the late 90s, at the height of the dotcom bust, our Founders had the vision to merge the decades old concept of direct selling with the rising popularity of e-commerce, thereby allowing this business to be truly global and accessible to all. That strategy paid off and two decades later, we can proudly say that QNet has touched lives around the world.” says CEO Trevor Kuna.

Direct selling is a thriving global industry that generated USD 189.6 billion in 2017 and involves over 116 million people around the world. QNET’s e-commerce platform has allowed the company to grow seamlessly across international borders and the grassroots business model has helped create hundreds of thousands of micro-entrepreneurs, especially in emerging economies where there is a shortage of mainstream income opportunities.

QNET offers a very wide range of products, and some of its best-selling products include HomePure Nova, LifeQode, EDG3, Qafe, Amezcua Bio Disc 3, Tripsavr and qLearn. The company is also planning to introduce a slew of new products in the nutrition and consumer durables space to mark its 20^th year.

While QNET’s global headquarters are in Hong Kong, the company has a local presence in nearly 30 countries around the world through representative offices, franchisees, and agency partners. QNET has been in sub-Saharan Africa since 15 years across the markets of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Cameroun, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Tanzania. It has an office/s in Rwanda, another office is opening in Abidjan for west Africa. We work with a network of thousands of distributors across the region.

“We are also about to enter into new markets in South East Asia and the African continent, as more countries are recognising the potential of the direct selling industry and introducing legislation or guidelines to regulate it. We believe we are the pioneers in many of these new markets and aspire to set high professional standards for the industry, to the extent of self-regulating ourselves, in markets where regulations do not currently exist.” Kuna says.

QNet is a member of the Direct Selling Association of Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, and UAE, and active in sports sponsorships around the world. Some of the more prominent partnerships include being the Direct Selling Partners of Manchester City Football Club and Manchester City Women’s Football Club, and the Confederation of African Football (CAF) club competitions. Additionally, we also donate during the holy Ramadan month, underprivileged communities giving them some groceries and cash. Last Ramadan we supported 13 communities. Then we support the less privileged young students in, Ghana with e-readers devices. Recently, in Ivory Coast we supported Red Cross efforts for floods relief.

QNET is also actively involved in community building across the globe, through its corporate foundation. Its mission is to promote strategic and sustainable development of communities in need through social investment, fundraising and grant-making, under three focus areas - children with special needs, community development and community wellbeing.