Events organiser Sombatsara "Tue" Teerasaroch always wanted to be rich. As a kid he'd spray rocks with gold paint and dangle the nuggets from the branches of trees.

He may not be exactly rich today - so far - but he sure hangs out with a lot of rich people. He's at all the fashion shows and high-profile happenings, dressed in his trademark black blazer and trousers (his "costume", he calls it), and with a painfully wealthy person within consultation distance.

Tue is best known for arranging the designer extravaganzas like the Bangkok and Elle fashion weeks, and he does presentations of brand-name clothes for the big department stores.

But his firm, Tue Company (get it?), goes well beyond fashion.

The bespectacled and spiky-haired man-about-town says his favourite designers are Soda, Greyhound and Issue, but he professes to wear little in the way of brand names. "I'd feel sorry for the clothes!" he laughs.

Sombatsara produced some of the "Amazing Thailand" campaign advertisements and was at the Leo Burnett ad firm before getting into the burgeoning events-organising business. He founded Tue Company 10 years ago and remains its president.

He doesn't have to sell his skills - his clients come to him. He comes up with ideas and lays out a concept for them, occasionally working in some of his artistic creativity, as when he designed dolls for a charity project and the one-eyed monster punching bag that decorated Siam Centre for Halloween.

It's his quirky side that adds to appeal for clients.

"I don't like to do things the same as other people," he says. "I'm crazy. In my mind I always question things."

Being inquisitive sometimes produces funny results. He took up architecture at university only because a friend did, and even though Tue didn't care for the course, he passed it, and his friend didn't.

Another friend had a crooked leg and never once realised that Tue was only pretending when he walked just like him. "He thought I really had a crooked leg!"

Sombatsara has also pretended to be a magical queen casting spells to make things disappear - but who hasn't done that?

This last quirk probably kicks in when he loses his temper, something he has a reputation for if things don't go as planned.

He's a hands-on president, and Tue Company's clients all speak directly to him. He's involved with all the details, thoroughly planning rather than delegating responsibility to his team - if there is a team. He's rather mysterious about it, and you never see a "team" walking around with him.

"If you trust things to other people, what you have in your head won't be clear," he says, "but everything has to be clear in your head."

Tue trusts those who truly deserve it and earns the trust of others. His clients routinely become his friends.

So what kind of people does he hire for this alleged team?

"I look at people's attitude - do they want to work because the work is cool or because of the money? I love money. People who work for money will work hard because they know what they'll get from working."

Asked if there's anyone else in the events trade who warrants the level of trust he gets, he giggles, "If I see someone, I'll let you know!"

The money spent on promotional events is meagre in Thailand compared to overseas, Tue says, so it has to be spent efficiently. He's mum about the problems encumbering the business, but acknowledges that there have been improvements.

"Thai people can survive," is all he has to say.

How's his gold repository these days? More giggling, slyly this time, and then a tangential answer: He had to find his own source of money rather than relying on his family.

But there ought to be real gold dangling from the branches soon. He's got 10 projects lined up through the end of the year, including events for Central World Plaza, Siam Paragon and Hewlett-Packard. He'll soon start work on a summer fashion show too. The new year already has four or five projects booked.

That's a lot of work ahead, but Tue can count on a lot of applause too.

"I don't tell  myself that I am successful," he says. "I let others tell me if I am successful."

Lisnaree Vichitsorasatra

The Nation