While I was in Bangkok I managed to catch up with a couple of friends for Steamboat. Over this steamboat lunch I learned of two stories of two entrepreneurs. Let me share it with you here.
Now I love this huge steamboat chain in Bangkok called MK. If you go to Bangkok you can’t miss it. It’s everywhere!
The story behind it is that it was started by a lady who used to work in a steamboat restaurant. After some time the owner of that steamboat restaurant didn’t want to do the business anymore and shut it down. So seeing that it was one thing she knew how to do, she decided to start her own steamboat restaurant. Today is has grown to have … something like a 100 branches in Bangkok… and from what I understand it’s not a franchise. All of them are owned by her and run now by her son.
Amazing huh…. shows that sometimes in life it doesn’t matter where you start or what industry you’re in. There will always be opportunity. Some people say that if you end up working in a bank, you will always be working in a bank and you don’t know what business you can eventually start. Well I know people who worked in investment banks and eventually started their own investment funds that now do very well. I guess the moral of the story is that, there is opportunity in every industry! It need not just be the internet.
Anyway I was having lunch with two of my Thai friends: Ji and Pruet.
Ji is the pretty girl on the left. Her name is of course a lot longer than just two letters but seeing I had trouble pronouncing the Thai name she just asked me to call her Ji. So Ji it became! Her Dad has a really interesting success story. She told me that her Dad in the past many many years ago had tried a number of other businesses but they didn’t work out. Then one day he went to Japan and he happened to see a kind of candy machine that could make heart-shaped candy. He decided to bring it back and sell heart shaped candy in Thailand.
He called it Hartbeat Candy.
What made it big though wasn’t just the fact that it was candy shaped like a heart. He had one novel idea. He thought of putting “love advice” inside each of the candy wrappers just like a Fortune Cookie. Each candy wrapper will have different advice.
So one might say “Don’t wait anymore to make the move for the one you love” whereas another might say “Don’t betray your friend for the one you love”.
After that the candy just took off! For more than a decade it became legendary in Thailand. Everybody knew what it was. Some sort like how everybody in Malaysia knew what Mamee Monster was because we grew up eating it. Now the company does lots of other stuff apart from Hartbeat candy though Hartbeat still sells pretty well. They now export it to India too and it’s apparently the number 1 candy in India.
I loved the story so right after lunch I went to pick up a packet of the candy.
I took out the first candy I saw in the packet, opened it and popped the heart-shaped candy in my mouth. Then I asked Ji to help me read what my “love advice” was since it was in Thai.
It said “Love is delicate. Don’t rush it”.
Such a simple idea made something so simple sell so well. Sometimes I guess it’s really in the little details of things.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space