A spirit of risk-taking and innovation by managing director Noppachai Veeraman has made his company, Masterkool International, stand out as one of the most internationally recognised Thai brands today.

Noppachai, a middle-age businessman, decided to leave his routine job as the managing director of a Thai satellite company six years ago after an idea came to him to create an outdoor water-mist cooling system.

Unlike those tourists who take things for granted, Noppachai stumbled upon his innovative idea during a trip to Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Here he was very impressed by a giant outdoor cooling fan. In 2001, after returning to Thailand, he immediately consulted with three engineer friends to create a similar outdoor cooling machine.

Ten months later, with an initial capital investment of Bt200,000, the team had successfully produced the first outdoor prototype cooling system.

"After I saw my product, I believed that it would be successfully marketed in Thailand. As a result, I decided to set up a company to explore the market," says Noppachai.

Noppachai was the only person from the research team who resigned from his routine job to operate the firm. After a tough start in marketing and gaining customers, Masterkool now claims a 95-per-cent share of the outdoor cooling business in Thailand.

Noppachai explains that he had to devote a lot of time to introducing the machine in its first year. "Masterkool is an innovative product," he says. "It was very difficult to reach customers and make them believe in our product's qualifications. But I tried hard to demonstrate how the machine worked at hundreds of trade exhibitions."

The company sold almost nothing in the first six months of a market-testing campaign. However, the cooling machine's quality finally won over customers and began to sell to industries that wanted to solve problems of hot temperature at their business sites.

"We sell not only a product for our customers, but also a solution to a problem that they have not been able to solve before," says Noppachai.

The Masterkool brand has expanded its customer base in a range of industries over the past five years: garment and automobile factories, outdoor restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions.

The firm recently announced that it would set up a company in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Of Bt150 million in revenue last year, Masterkool now generates 25 per cent of its sales from exports - mainly to the Middle East, Europe and Australia. The firm plans to double this to 50 per cent in three years.

Although more firms are entering the business each year, the rising competition is not a major challenge, says Noppachai. "Our challenge is to increase brand recognition and remain customer-based."

He says the global market has plenty of room for growth, and his company has so far achieved less than 10 per cent of its value.

Noppachai says the company's challenge, therefore, is to increase brand awareness and turn Masterkool into a generic brand for customers, as with other pioneer products.

Many similar products are flooding into domestic and overseas markets, in particular cooling machines from China. However, the company remains the leader in the business, due to its continuous research and development.

Masterkool keeps investing more than 4 per cent of income in R&D annually, although most other kinds of business put only one per cent into R&D.

Noppachai explains that the company is trying to decrease the costs and increase the quality of its products to serve the demands of the market. The cost of one cooling machine has decreased to Bt25,000 from the initial Bt75,000.

The company will also focus more on reaching other groups of customers, such as households and small outdoor restaurants, by producing small cooling system units.

Outdoor cooling machines can now serve areas from 30 square metres to 1,000 square metres.

Noppachai also has an innovative style of management. Even though Masterkool ranks as a small to medium-sized company, he does not fear uncontrollable factors that would impede business growth. The company will concentrate on solving internal problems and increasing employee efficiency.

Instead of complaining about the strengthening baht, rising global oil prices or the uncertain political situation, Noppachai has instructed all 80 of his employees to concentrate on product development and improve service quality to increase customer satisfaction.

Petchanet Pratruangkrai

The Nation