A piece I wrote about a delinquent-turned-policeman for Unicef @70 was published in the September 21, 2018 issue of Business Mirror. Link to the original story here.
A piece I wrote about seasoned child rights advocate Pol Moselina for Unicef @70 found its way to the September 1, 2018 issue of Business Mirror. Click for the original story.
Good Home is the home improvement and DIY division of Goldmyne Hardware.
David Lau ist the general manager of Good Home.
After recently opening what is touted to be the biggest do-it-yourself store in the Southeast Asian island of Borneo, Bruneian-owned company Good Home is setting its sights on further expanding its brand. The fledgling company, which launched its 1 600 m² flagship outlet inside the Aman Hills Shopping Centre in Brunei's capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan last May, plans to open two more stores in the sultanate over the next two years. It is also considering a foray into neighbouring Malaysia. The island of Borneo is split between the states Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
Good Home is the home improvement and DIY division of Goldmyne Hardware Sdn Bhd, one of the established hardware and roofing materials suppliers in the sultanate. In an interview, David Lau, Good Home general manager, told DIY International one of the two prospective branches in the sultanate is set to open its doors at the end of this year or early next year. This two floor store will have around 550 m². The second one, he said, will come by next year. It will be the company's biggest outlet yet.
The two new branches will bring the brand's total number of stores in the tiny Southeast Asian petrostate to four. Apart from the newly-opened flagship store in Aman Hills, Good Home also has a 100 m² branch at the Times Square Shopping Complex in the sultanate's Berakas subdistrict. Opened last October, this store - Good Home's first - served to test the Brunei home improvement and DIY market.
Also being considered is a regional expansion to Malaysia. The company plans to test the regional market via online store Babakimpo, an affiliate of Good Home.
Good Home carries 5 000 DIY and home improvement products, with plans of adding 2 000 more to the mix in the next six months. The company sources its items from Japan, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. It also sources building materials from Japan and Korea.
Growth in regional consumption happening outside megacities – study
By Jennee Grace U Rubrico
Megacities are still the largest markets for popular products in Southeast Asia, but demand for the goods in smaller, lesser-known cities is becoming significant, a new report by consultancy company Nielsen and AlphaBeta reveals.
The report, called Rethinking ASEAN, found that while cities such as Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok still top sales for consumer products, small middleweight regions with a population of 500,000 to one million and large middleweight regions, which have one million to five million people, now make up a significant share in demand for products.
It also predicted that by 2030, the fastest growth for seven out of the 10 products examined by the study would come from by small and large middleweight regions.
The Nielsen/AlphaBeta report aims to dispel myths about consumer and marketplace dynamics within the region “to reveal the real ASEAN consumer landscape,” a statement from Nielsen says.
The study, which also forecasts growth hotspots in the region between now and 2030, looks into current and future potential consumer demand in more than 700 cities and regions within the seven largest economies of ASEAN.
It covers 10 of the most popular product categories: chocolate, instant noodles, carbonated soft drink, beer, cigarettes, shampoo, laundry detergent, baby diapers, facial moisturiser, and vitamins.
While Jakarta, Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Ho Chi Minh, and Hanoi – which all have a population of over five million – still rake in the biggest revenues for the 10 products studied, the report shows that middleweight regions are also crucial markets for many items, being among their Top 10 sales generators.
The biggest markets for facial moisturisers in the region, for instance, are megacities, but also in the Top 10 are lesser-known places like Nakhon Ratchasima, Chonburi and Rayong in Thailand. Meanwhile, apart from Manila, Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh, Cebu, Cavite and Negros Occidental in the Philippines are also among the top sales earners for soft drinks, the study notes.
Middleweight regions will become even more important, with Nielsen noting that since 2010 demand in megacities was no longer the fastest growing for half of the 10 products studied.
“In the future, it will definitely not be the case. Across seven of the product categories examined, the fastest growth is likely to happen in either small or large middleweight regions,” the study states.
The report identifies six factors that drive the growth of middleweight regions in Southeast Asia. These include proximity to India, China and Japan, which allows the region to benefit from global flows, as well as the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community, which emphasises free flow of goods, services and investment; the presence of export processing zones and economic clusters which support sub-regional growth in the region; and the proliferation of “satellite” regions that are within commutable distance from megacities.
The study likewise credits the rich natural resources in the region, the demand for which has created benefits to cities that are resource rich; tourism; and a growing consumer base.
“While ASEAN has been enjoying economic recognition in recent years, businesses tend to view it as a single entity and surprisingly, little is known about the many cities and regions that make up the archipelago,” Patrick Dodd, Nielsen Growth Markets Group President, is quoted in the statement as saying.
“It’s time for companies to look beyond mega-cities to see the growth opportunity hotspots within middleweight regions. The diversity of its 625 million people represents a multitude of ethnicities, languages, and religion. This makes it crucial for companies to take a granular approach to understanding market opportunities in ASEAN.”
Singaporean broadband provider MyRepublic is raising funds in a bid to consolidate its operations and later tap into new markets, an official of the company said.
Lawrence Chan, company vice president, told B2B in an interview that MyRepublic is looking to enter 50 fibre optic-ready markets around the world, including Brunei, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, China and the Middle East after it consolidates its operations in the four markets it is currently in.
MyRepublic provides internet services through leased fibre-optic networks under countries’ national broadband network programmes and promises to give subscribers 10 times more speed than the ones offered by mainstream telecommunications companies for the same price. It started operations in Singapore, where it rides on the fibre-optic infrastructure laid out by the government to provide faster internet service to constituents, in 2011.
The company, which targets gamers and streamers – the biggest consumers of data – also has operations in Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia.
“Once we consolidate the four countries [that we operate in] and [raise funds], then we go into a new country,” Chan said.
The company is currently in a fundraising exercise and is in talks with investors, he said. It is also looking to conduct an initial public offering in two years’ time, he added.
“There’s so much opportunity in the world, so many countries needing good, fast broadband. We just don’t have the funding to be able to get into that. We have enough for four countries, we just want to go into more. That’s where the IPO and the current round of funding comes in,” Chan said.
He declined to say how much the company aimed to raise from the fundraising exercises. The venue for the planned IPO has yet to be decided, he said.
Chan admitted that raising funds for MyRepublic has not been easy, as its model can be difficult to grasp.
“A lot of people don’t understand our business. If you talk to the guy on the street, he doesn’t understand the telco business, when you talk to a telco guy, he doesn’t understand that the business could be done so cheaply because he is so used to spending so much more in capital investments. They don’t believe it can be done cheaply and effectively,” he says.
“That leads to problems on fundraising. Because our idea is not easily understandable, but is great for the country, we had to convince people on an individual basis,” he adds.
Chan said that this was what pushed the company to be innovative. “When you don’t have the big cheque book behind you, you’re forced to make money. You can’t afford to go too far and try to do too many things. You do things that make money from day one,” he said, claiming that the company is EBITDA-positive, so it posted profits before the deduction of income tax, depreciation and amortisation.
Unlike mainstream telecommunications companies, MyRepublic is not capital intensive because it does not take it upon itself to build the fibre-optic infrastructure it uses to deliver content, Chan explained.
The company also uses in-house software that is easy to migrate and deploy in new markets, allowing it to provide internet service in a new country in as little as two months, he added.
“We wanted to specialise on managing the content coming in and making sure that you get it very fast.”
MyRepublic has no plans of dominating the markets it is in – it only targets a five per cent share of the market of each country it operates in, Chan said.
“We can survive in any place with five per cent of the market because we’re so lean. We sell the same products, we have little manpower, our marketing is the same. We only have two or three products that we sell. We keep it very simple,” he said.
MyRepublic reportedly entered a bid to be Singapore’s fourth telecommunications company last year, after frontrunners SingTel, Starhub and M1, but lost the spectrum auction to TPG Telecom Ltd.
In May, it was reported that the internet provider was seeking a private-equity partner to bid for M1, after the publicly listed telco’s shareholders appointed Morgan Stanley to conduct a strategic review of their stakes in the company.
