KUCHING: Sheer honesty, creativity and passion are the principles that TRUevents founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Silas Martin built his business on.
Starting out with very little in hand, but nonetheless, equipped with an unwavering mission to ‘make it’, Martin has over the years managed to craft out one of the most recognised and rapidly growing event company in Sarawak.
Banking on prominent projects like the Shell MDS in Bintulu, Sime Darby Plantations, Trienekens, Unilever, Sarawak Housing Development Association and being listed as one of the recommended event contractors in the Spring Shopping Mall, establishing the company was indeed a whirlwind journey for the CEO cum founder of TRUevents.
Notwithstanding the odds, his drive for creative ambience as well as quality and value-added services was the group’s key selling points. BizHive traced TRUevents history from a one-man show to now, a team members.
“I left my profession as an engineer in 2004 and got involved in the music industry. As the band (Evenstarr) that I was with travelled a lot, we were exposed to many things and this in particular included the poorly managed event organisation which we encountered.
“I saw a potential in the music industry in Sarawak and was keen on organising gigs using high-quality equipment. ‘Lord of the Bands’ was amongst the many gigs which I started out in. Although we had an astounding band participation rate and sold off an estimated 1,500 tickets, we did not make any money. This was due to the cost of operations and logistics which were a killer to our financial sheet,” stated Silas.
Despite the loss, he and his team did the gig and caught the attention of the 8TV unit. Soon after, he was approached by the television station to launch the Malaysian Idol first season roadshow in Kuching.
This became the platform for the emergence of TRUevents. The RM10,000 proceeds of the roadshow became the seed money which was used to register the company and get the operations going in September 2005.
“The company started out with only an office that cost RM100 a month on rental fee and all the equipment needed to run the events were rented from service providers. In the first two years, it was a break-even deal for us where we made some money in some events but made a loss in others,” he said.
Six years and counting TRUevents now is a going concern with most of the equipment bought and paid for to reduce long-term costs and has expanded from a single room office to three office lots.
The company boasts medium to large scale projects averaging a budget of about RM100,000 for a medium sized event and above RM100,000 for a large scale event within the East coast.
“Apart from the inventive ideas that we provide to our clients, an event company like any other business, has to be profit-driven. On average, the profit margin for an event management project is about 30 per cent. If the company fails to make 30 per cent on average, due to the overheads and nature of the business, it will not make it past the six months mark,” noted Silas.
Apart from that, return on investment (ROI) for clients according to him was extremely vital. He underscored that even in the years that he and his team were the ‘new kids on the block’, delivering quality results regardless of the price was more important than meeting the budget.
“We prioritise our clients. We make sure that they actually reach their target markets and that is how we organise our events. The event must be successful and at the end of the day it must have a strong ROI. The bottomline is that this is an integral part of what corporates look out for when conducting events.
“Next of course is definitely the cost. At TRUevents, we base our business on healthy margins, and we go all out to provide value-added services to make sure that we are still cost-effective to our clients,” he highlighted.
TRUevents anchor clients now include local automotive dealers, Mitsubishi Dakar Rally, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission and major telecommunication players – just to name a few.
With a string of projects in hand, there is no rest for the sprightly young entrepreneur who is constantly on the move reaching for greater heights. With Kuching in the bag, TRUevents is expanding its horizon into the northern Borneo, Kota Kinabalu and tapping into the competitive market of West Malaysia.
Moving ahead, when asked to comment on the difference between the event management scene in Sarawak as compared with that on the West Coast, Silas observed that currently, the event scene in Sarawak was still at an infant stage. This was attributed to the technology employed and the frequency of available business.
In the West Coast, it was about meeting high demand, whereas in Sarawak, the job of the event companies was to create the demand.
“We create demand by smoothly running events for clients. Hence, we have to look beyond sheer entertainment. Many of the corporate events held are based on conveying a message of appreciation for their staff. In East Malaysia, depending on the content of the event, companies are willing to splurge between RM200 and RM300 per head on an appreciation night,” he revealed.
He further opined that the prospect for a booming event scene in Sarawak was bright considering the growth of the state’s economy.
“As the economy flourishes, so will the industry and the state’s population. This bodes well for the event scene which in my opinion, is thriving albeit at a slower pace.”