KUCHING: Shiok! is revolutionising Kuching’s entertainment scene with current updates and reviews on the latest events, promotions and trends.In a recent interview with The Borneo Post recently, co-founder Fahri Izzad talked about the group’s history and how it came to be.
“Shiok! was the brainchild of Ronald Lim, a marketing consultant I met two years back. Both of us along with another photographer were previously attached to a lifestyle magazine based in Sabah as their corresponding team in Kuching.
“After leaving the team, we thought that Kuching could do with its own lifestyle magazine so he and I started Shiok! as an online information portal.
“We chose to brand ourselves as Shiok! because we can all relate to that word, making it very accessible to people even to those outside Kuching.”
According to Fahri, the group originally consisted of three members, which further expanded to more as the workload increased.
“We had two members doing the field work which included photo-taking and article writing while Ronald was the contact person for events, seeing as how he was widely connected in the events industry here,” added Fahri.
“After the other two left Kuching to pursue better prospects, a new team was formed with the basic idea still standing for everyone to put in an equal amount of work to keep our online magazine current.”
Presently, the new team members of Shiok! are Fahri, Cyril Dason, Norman Goh, and Andre Giovanni.
“We have a somewhat laid-back, ‘work-at-home’ style whereby we take things slow, but not too slow. We don’t have crazy deadlines or anything like that,” he added.
“We get invitations to events around Kuching especially grand openings and special day events. We are acutely aware that there is always a demand for information and when there is demand, Shiok! aims to fullfil,” he emphasised.
The group started off with a low start-up cost of only RM99 for the website’s hosting plan that was made without any help from designers, site administration or consultants.
“We wanted to try and see whether we could pull this off by using only a small amount of money and churn out profit from there. We used whatever knowledge and experience we had on hand to create Shiok!.”
Additionally, Fahri noted that most of Shiok! promotions were done
via word of mouth for the first three months, including social interaction mediums Facebook and Twitter.
“Of course, our social networks also provided a lot of help. We have a lot of associates around Kuching who constantly support us by providing access to events in and around town.”
“Aside from the basic event coverage, we also conduct reviews on gadgets, food and literature and provide news as long as it is relevant to Kuching.
“For example, we were recently offered to review Apple’s iPad by ITFusion. Since the iPad wasn’t available for sale yet in town, it was our best geek moment. The whole team was excited about it.”
The group is currently in the process of expanding its system to include feedback from society through its website.
“We also interact with our target audience through our comment boxes and emails. In fact, we are in the process of starting a new system where we will allow our readers to submit content. This way, our readers can inform us about the events that we didn’t cover or didn’t manage to attend.”
When asked about his future aims for the online magazine, Fahri noted: “Hopefully Shiok! will be able to grow outside Kuching. We’re not just looking at Sarawak, we’re looking at the whole of Malaysia, maybe even Singapore.
“Of course, getting to this level will take a lot of time and effort. A little bit of luck wouldn’t hurt,” he added jokingly.