It’s all about hard work and keeping up with trends
by Jonathan Chia jonathanchia@theborneopost.com. Posted on July 18, 2011, Monday
SPECIALISED SKILLS: Lai (right) poses for the camera with one of his workers at Chuan Ming’s factory.
Business philosophy marks Chuan Ming as key pioneer in custom-made furniture and interior renovation industry in Sarawak
KUCHING: Hard work and keeping up with the trends have proven to be the working philosophy behind the success of Chuan Ming Sdn Bhd (Chuan Ming), now regarded as one of the pioneers in custom-made furniture and interior renovation businesses in the state.
“Our world is dynamic; if we don’t follow the trend, the products that we offer might not be relevant to the current demand of the market. We have to always keep in mind that it is not the strongest that will survive; rather it is the one that can adopt to the changes that will survive and become successful,” said the company’s managing director, Lai King Min in an interview with The Borneo Post recently.
Chuan Ming was initially started by Lai’s father together with a few partners in the 1960s, before the senior Lai took over the company. The younger Lai joined the company in 1984.
The second-generation furniture maker underlined that the company had been dependant very much on the words of mouth in securing projects.
Lai highlighted that Chuan Ming had been known by most of the ‘old-school’ architects, which he believed that it was time for the company to promote and appeal itself to the younger generations of architects or designers.
“Besides that, I think we have to come out to do more advertisements because we haven’t done much promotion throughout the last 10 to twenty years,” he added.
According to Lai, Chuan Ming’s market audience comprised those from the middle and upper segments.
“We are in that market because people pay for it; therefore generally it should last. If not, we cannot survive this long. We must have certain amount of quality that we can survive in the market competition,” he explained.
Lai pointed out that over the last 43 years in this business, Chuan Ming had done many projects where most of the big ones here had been done by the company, which included both the old and new State Legislative Assembly building.
“We have the advantage in taking up big projects because we have the economies of scale where big projects require certain skills in certain designs, especially the classical design of furniture. In Chuan Ming, we have the specialisations in both classical and modern designs of furniture,” he said.
Talking about expansion plans for the company, Lai disclosed that Chuan Ming might try to expand its business to West Malaysia.
Considering that there were about 200 licensed furniture manufacturers in Kuching and with the population of about half a million, he said that the company had to continuously keep itself ahead from competitors.
