The new plant, built at a cost of more than Bt1 billion, is spread over 20 rai (3.2 hectares).

The company’s chief executive officer, Kankanat Sansookavihirun, said the new factory will help increase business potential with its eco-friendly and high production capacity.

He said the company would penetrate the market with a full range of latex products, including mattresses and pillows, and aims to achieve Bt1.7 billion in revenue by the end of this year.

Green Latex started operations 14 years ago as a trader of latex mattresses and pillows.

“We used to buy latex products from factories in southern Thailand and sell them as raw material to cover manufacturers. But around 2011, we invested in our own cover production factory in order to add value to our products and sell directly to tour shops and importers.” He said later, the company expanded the factory to produce spring coils to offer a wide range of bedding products to a bigger market and locally. “Three years ago, we invested in a latex injection factory in order to produce all materials by ourselves to control the quality, cost and offer the best price to customers,” he said.

Our vision is: “We are committed to continue innovating products that bring healthier sleep and better lifestyle quality to our global customers,” said Kankanat.

He added that in 2019, the company aims to be the number one brand for latex products, not only latex mattresses and pillows but also new products with innovation and a variety of price levels catering to all customers.

“We have built this new factory in order to increase the production capacity of latex mattresses and pillows to support our market expansion. This factory has three times the production capacity of the previous one,” said Kankanat. He said the company’s new factory and showroom would be completed by next month with the formal inauguration in the third quarter of this year.

Chirawadee Angsumalee, the vice president of Green Latex Co Ltd, added: “In 2019, the company plans to spend more than Bt30 million on marketing and public relations to publicise the new factory and brand worldwide. We plan to penetrate all markets through every channel, including traditional ones and new channels such as e-commerce and foreign markets.”

She said the company aims for 30 per cent growth year on year, with targeted revenue of Bt1.7 billion this year.

Business growth this year is expected from exports to new markets not familiar with latex bedding products with focus on regions with large populations such as the US, India and Middle East. “We have already found customers in India and we have a lot of customers in the Asean Economic Community. We have a Cambodian Green Latex distributor with two showrooms in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. In the second quarter, we will have distributors open showrooms in Vietnam and Myanmar,” she said.

Chief marketing officer Marita Abraham said Zilingo had raised Bt7 billion in investment funds, including from Sequoia Capital and Temasek, in February this year.

It also has direction to expand its online business in two new countries –Australia and Philippines – which are high potential growth markets with few competitors and high value markets.

“I think that the two new countries offer high potential for growth and with few e-commerce competitors. We will expand our business to support both business-to-business [B2B] and business-to-customers [B2C] sales. However, Thailand is an important market for us, ranking as the second biggest in the region. Meanwhile, the company’s highest market growth is in Indonesia, also the No 1 market in the region,” said Abraham.

She said Zilingo has a strategy to develop its merchant ecosystem to support both sellers or merchants and customers such as through a catalogue system, logistics and financial services, in order to create market efficiencies and help sellers to more quickly sell their products.

Future plans include developing benefits tools to help its customers make an easy decision, such as a policy that would allow them to buy now and return later, within 15 days.

The top-selling three products on its platform are women’s clothes, women’s bags and watch products. The online platform boasts over 100,000 products from more than 3,000 sellers or merchants across a wide area, including retailers at the Chatuchak Weekend Market. The main target customers are aged 18-36 and purchase an average US$50 (Bt1,580) per transaction.

Abraham said that the intersection of global fashion and lifestyles is more than $3 trillion in size and relies heavily upon merchants and suppliers in Asia.

The platform conducts promotion campaigns to keep customers coming, such as their 20 per cent cash-back programme.

Zilingo now runs businesses in 15 countries, including the US, China, India and Vietnam, and has launched an operation in Thailand. Revenues will grow 200-300 per cent this year over last, she said.