Franchise Focus managing director Somjit Likitsathaporn said about 300 firms would take part in New Biz 2006, including franchise operations and new businesses.

She said she accepted the reality of the coup, which, when combined with the unstable economic situation, might restrain investors. However, several kinds of business being featured in the fair offered to alleviate the burden on consumers from high oil prices, such as sales of electric scooters and information for converting diesel engines to run on natural gas.

She expects more than 100,000 people to visit the fair - to be held at The Mall's Ngarmwongwan branch from October 4-8 - to check out the business opportunities.

"About 600 people became new entrepreneurs through our business fair last year," she said. "We expect to create more than 1,000 this year."

Swatch Group Trading (Thailand) Co Ltd sales manager Sirichai Chungchansart said his company planned to expand its business into provincial areas using a franchise system.

"We expect to find partners at this fair," he said. "We believe local people will know the market in each province better than we could."

Sirichai said the franchise system would help the company save time in marketing upcountry. It currently has five franchise branches - on Koh Samui and in Pattaya and Surin - and has no figure in mind for the number of new operations it will launch.

TR Auto Machine (Thailand) Co Ltd managing director Chaiya Suriyapornpun said the company wanted to sell auto pumps and believes a product franchise system would help reduce its marketing costs. The company hopes to attract partners at the fair. "We would have to pay more to expand auto-pump sales by ourselves. At the very least, we would have to hire more workers," said Chaiya, adding that the company would open its own auto-pump station if the economic situation became more stable.

DAI-O Co Ltd sales representative Sorapoom Ruangrit said his company would use the fair to find distributors across the country for its electric scooters.

DAI-O currently sells 100 scooters a month after launching them in the Thai market a year ago. The company has also successfully penetrated the Chinese market.

Sorapoom said the company planned to expand its domestic business by appointing 100 small distributors around the Kingdom this year. The company also wants to appoint a main distributor in each region.

Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul

The Nation