Organic-foods mogul gives credit
Suwanna Jiwattanapaiboonn, left, founder of Xongdur Thai Organic Food, which has developed its own technology to produce healthy food.
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It took Suwanna Jiwattanapaiboon four years to find the right products and innovative machinery to start her own business, but now she seems to have succeeded by selling healthy food made from organic cereal.
Her goods were selected to be a five-star product of the One Tambon One Product government scheme in Suphan Buri province in 2000. She then decided to establish her own company to sell her products. The company was started with Bt1 million of Suwanna's savings. Now Xongdur Thai Organic Food achieves revenues of about Bt15 million a year. It exports to several countries, including Singapore, Malaysia and China. Suwanna began producing healthy food made from cereal because she could see people becoming more health-conscious. She and her husband, who is a pharmacist, have spent years innovating their own machinery to produce several cereal drinks. These include instant organic grown cereal, instant red unpolished congee rice with seaweed, black sesame soup and pearl barley soup with mulberry. Some ingredients come from her 20-rai family plantation in Suphan Buri the rest provided by other organic farmers. Her early efforts did not turn out well, given the strong competition in both domestically and internationally. "I saw several competitors at the food exhibitions I participated in. But I never gave up, and I've tried to create different products to attract customers," she said. Suwanna admitted that she might have wasted a lot of money on innovating her products and machinery had she not applied His Majesty the King's sufficiency-economy philosophy to her business. "I faced many problems before my success today, but I never surrendered. I adapted His Majesty's philosophy to my business operations; it was then that I became successful through innovation," she said. Suwanna still believes in the efficiency of the philosophy and continuously applies it to her business. After her daughter graduated with a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from Silpakorn University last year, Suwanna came up with the idea of creating a line of products in well-designed packaging. Xongdur is planning to increase its exports next year by attending many foreign trade exhibitions. Currently, about 15 per cent of its revenues comes from exports, and Suwanna hopes to increase that to 30 per cent within the next year. Hong Kong, Europe and the United States are the targeted markets. She said the baht's appreciation should not affect the company too much, since most of its materials are sourced locally. In addition, Suwanna said that although production costs had risen in line with oil prices, the company would try to reduce costs by developing efficient machinery and using alternative energy. She said the company usually developed new products and new designs in a bid to expand its customer base. "It's a matter of always coming up with new ideas and effective management, in order to make a business successful," she said.
Petchanet Pratruangkrai The Nation Hong Kong
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