Question 1: What motivated you to take the entrepreneurial leap?
“I Have a Dream”, “A Game Worth Playing” & “The Sky is the Limit” are always some powerful quotes that inspired me to take on my entrepreneurial leap.
Question 2: How did you leverage your personal contacts in the industry?
I always believe that upholding and building my personal and our Company degree of trustworthiness within our industry – namely Furniture, Wood Making & Wood Panel industries – is a crucial ingredient before we start to leverage in any of my personal contact in the industry.
With a high level of trustworthiness, I do believe that working with any individuals/contacts in the industry by basing on a Win-Win Relationship will always provide both parties with extra benefits and a long-term beneficial relationship.
Aside from trustworthiness and win-win relationship, I too believe that having a substantial degree of appreciation and gratitude to any individuals / contacts in the industry that am working with will too add some extra booster in enhancing the results in leveraging contacts / people in the Industry.
Question 3: Can you share with us the turning point when you decided to diversify your services into more value-added wood panel products? And how did you come up with this strategy?
I started my entrepreneurial journey with a wood panels & furniture fitting trading house in 2009; in which a business involved in huge volume with low business margin plus higher credit risk to clients. However, after several years of operating this trading business, I experienced multiple bad debts from several clients that resulted in constant financial issues that eventually led to more than a million ringgit in debt.
Upon such a disastrous experience, I started to re-plan and re-organise my entrepreneurial blueprint by looking into more value-added products in the same industry which I believe could provide me with better profit margins. Adding to that, I re-entered the market with custom-made cabinets or tailored made cabinets by penetrating directly to direct buyers or house owners by eliminating all the middle person and contractors; which I believe could provide me with safer and comfortable credit risks.
Question 4: Over the five-year period of paying off your outstanding debts, what were the critical steps you took to stabilize and grow Kuchemate?
Compelling Desire + Solid Belief + Effective Action + Iron Will = Results!
I constantly equipped myself with these four crucial beliefs and continue to enhance my personal consistency, persistency and self-discipline. At the same time, I am also worked on overcoming one of the most disastrous debts that my company and I were facing at that point of time.
Aside from that, I also believe that avoiding the debts is not a viable option. I rather choose to take on the responsibility of clearing the debts from the previous trading business by proactively looking for creditors and bankers for direct negotiations along with my personal commitment to each of them. Once everything is lined up with all the creditors, I will make sure all the repayment plans commitment will be in order from weeks to weeks/months to months or years-to-years.
Question 5: How did you manage to transform your company from facing financial crises to becoming the leading tailored-made furniture brand in kitchen and wardrobe system niche?
Having a clear vision and direction from the initial blue print in this tailored-made furniture business is an essential core value in transforming from a financially troubled trading house to a leading tailored-made furniture brand.
Aside from that, I continued to rebuild my personal and company trustworthiness in the market place by staying responsible and committed to all stakeholders.
Continued innovation and adaptation to the whole new market place in every aspect will be another a key success element in ensuring our company remains reputable and trusted.
Question 6: Maintaining quality while offering affordable products is a delicate balance. How did you approach this challenge, and what trade-offs did you have to make?
We maintained active communication and engagement with our suppliers and business partners in order for us to have better quality products and better costing in order for us to pass down to our customers. Plus point from our long term relationship with all of our suppliers and business partners is that we always work on a win-win situation which provides everyone with the best case scenario
One scenario that I can share was during the pandemic, everyone was struggling with the price increase in materials costing; whereby, with our active engagement with our suppliers and business partners, we offer some of the main suppliers with some core products with higher volume purchase and provide them with better credit terms or even offered cash payment to them. In such, we could continue to fetch better material costing from most of our suppliers and business partners.
Aside from that, we consistently improved our production line by having an effective and efficient production process flow.
Question 7: Are there any specific moments or decisions that you consider pivotal in shaping the trajectory of your business?
Around End of 2019/Early of 2020, we decided to explore internet marketing.
This committed decision in exploring internet marketing was a pivotal decision that provided our company a huge safety net. Furthermore, it was also a pivotal trajectory in our company as when the whole market close down due to the Covid pandemic that came into about 2nd Quarter of 2020.
Question 8: Now that Kuchemate is a leading brand, what are your future ambitions and goals for the company?
Moving forward, we will be exploring into a whole new furniture production ball game by investing and setting up our new production lines with adaptation to AI System; in which we will have almost 60% fully automated furniture making production lines.
By having such production lines, we believe that we can continue to improve on our production effectiveness and efficiency with lower material wastage that will eventually benefit our customers by having quality product and affordable price.
Principally, we are still sticking to our initial company vision and mission:
“To strive and deliver a whole new space planning experience by being a trusted home living planner and specialist that provides innovative solution through higher quality products with affordable pricing strategies and continuous commitment in after sales services.”
We always believe that if everyone in the industry is looking upwards to all the richer clients namely; T20; then who will be one who will be taking care of those in medium average clients group namely; M40? We choose to take care of these group of clients.
Question 9: How do you plan to continue offering affordable and quality tailored-made furniture in a rapidly evolving market?
- Active engagement with all suppliers and business partners by exploring into more product development with effective costing.
- Effective and efficient production and installation process
- Minimizing materials wastage
Question 10: What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs to navigate financial challenges and setbacks in the early stages of business?
- Be persistent. Be Determined. Face setbacks instead of avoiding them. Build Trust. Be Committed.
- Honour our Words with Actions.
- Compelling Desire + Solid Belief + Effective Action + Iron Will
- Acknowledge Self Short Falls > Reset and Restart the Whole Entrepreneur Journey.
Question 11: Based on your experience, what are some common pitfalls that entrepreneurs should be aware of, and how they can avoid them?
Financial and Credit Risks
- In our local market, credit terms serve as a norm in every business. However, entrepreneurs always face much uncertainty and insecurity by providing credit terms to customers / clients in the marketplace
Personal Management Risks
- For some, their entrepreneurial journey will start smoothly and yield decent earnings. However, based on my experience, most people who start to see such profits might start to direct the cash flow into their own pockets instead of re-investing into the business. Eventually, this will burden the company and lead to financial issues within the company itself.
Too much enthusiasm and adopting an overly optimistic business plan
- While all entrepreneurs can conjure an interesting and well-documented business plan, many are overly optimistic in the early stages of the journey. If he/she doesn’t play their cards right, such a mindset leads to spreading the company too thin and will pose a problem in terms of revenue and profit. It is a dangerous situation for any entrepreneur to be in.
