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Published on October 12, 2007

After the struggle to survive in the years following the 1997 financial crisis, Anuphong Assavabhokhin came to a conclusion about his company, Asian Property Development, and what he wanted it to become.

His goal is to make it a "living organisation" - "living" in the sense that it can cope with changes in customer lifestyles and "living" in the sense that it can develop new leaders from its own staff to replace retirees.

"We had to work hard to recover the business from the 1997 crisis, when we faced a huge debt burden," he says, "but that was easier than running the business now, in the present business environment. The customers' lifestyles are changing faster than property developers can develop projects to meet their demands."

Anuphong says developers have to mould their businesses to cope in these circumstances, and his answer is to operate Asian Property Development as a "living organisation".

His original concern was to create a business whose staff were capable of carrying on when the existing top management retired. The second generation of managers needed the capacity not only to run the business, but also to create projects that stood out in a crowded market. Clearly, human resources had to be sufficient at all times, but more than that, all staff members had to believe they could become key managers.

Arnuphong explains that Asian Property Development was never a family company. So in preparing his "living organisation" for the future he has to make it a professional property firm with a strong internal organisation that is capable of developing future leaders.

"I started the business when I was young, only 28. I had a staff of only 30, but now the company has a staff of 200," he says.

The main problem he sees with the larger size is one of communication, since the bigger a firm becomes, the harder it is for management to communicate directly with staff. He is concerned that all his staff might not follow new directions in a rapidly changing business environment.

"My strategy is the creation of an internal communication system with my staff. I have to listen and learn what my staff is thinking about the business, and the direction it pursues when the business environment changes. So I have set up an internal website. Now I will know what my staff thinks. I will know who has the ability to join the next generation of top management and I will know how to develop my staff. Most importantly, it is the way to reorganise the business to cope with changes in the business environment," he says.

Anuphong began to apply his new philosophy earlier this year. Feedback from his staff has been so good that he created a property-development project with a new concept. It is called The Life condominium project and created largely by the company's staff. Although, like many others, it aims to suit a city lifestyle, it is different from Asian Property Management's other projects and leading them in the market.

Life has a modern style and focuses on the young generation, but its image has abandoned the old "warm welcome" and has changed its advertising look to a modern, even racy, image. The promotional character is a lady's man who enjoys the ability to meet several girlfriends in close succession by using the speed and convenience of the nearby Skytrain and subway systems.

"When we open our minds to accept different ideas from our staff, we get new concepts to build new products, and this creates a variety of products for the firm," he says. "It also builds the confidence of the staff to create more products to drive Asian Property Development. Professional staff is now the key to driving our business to achieve its goals."

Anuphong established Asian Property Development in 1991, after resigning from his mother's company, Mandarin. Earlier, he spent three years gathering real-world experience at Tisco Finance after graduating with an engineering degree from Chulalongkorn University and a master's degree in business administration from Wayne State University in the United States.

Anuphong says he established Asian Property Development because he wanted to run his own business and he had land for residential development. So he joined with Pichet Vipavasuphakorn, a friend of his older brother, to form the company with a registered capital of Bt100 million.

"I thought it would be easy for me to enter the property business because both my mother, Piengchai Harnpanich, and my older brother, Anant Assavabhokhin, run property firms," he recalls. Anuphong's brother, Anant, own's Thailand's leading property firm, Land and Houses.

Seven years later, when Thailand tumbled into the financial crisis, he learned how very difficult the property business could be. The company's debt burden was as much as Bt1 billion and although his projects at hand were worth Bt3 billion, nobody was buying. Customers didn't have money to pay because they had lost their jobs.

"I had to change my business model and work out how to recover from the crisis. As a first step I held on to our business position of performing loans for our creditors by paying interest on time. Then I tried to sell the existing projects by using aggressive marketing and I delivered townhouses, detached houses and condominium projects to my customers on time. Every day I woke up wondering how I would find funding to save my firm. It was difficult, but it was challenging," he says.

Three years after the crisis, in 2000, Asian Property Development was still standing. The company had survived and was starting to expand again.

The first big step in 2000 was a backdoor listing on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. The company bought a major stake in PCM, a producer of pre-cast floors that was a subsidiary of Land and Houses. It has "deconsolidated" its business since the beginning of 2006.

Becoming a listed company, Asian Property Development expanded its business by focusing on middle to high-income earners and launching a new concept in townhouse construction called Baan Klang Krung and Baan Klang Muang. The townhouses are simple but elegant residences.

Then, having experience only in low-rise projects, the company decided to go upwards and launched a condominium project in the central business district.

Looking back on the early years, Anuphong recalls that Land and Houses was his business ideal. Most of Asian Property Development's projects followed those of Land and Houses. When Land and Houses launched detached houses, Asian Property Development would follow.

Most of Land and Houses' projects were given the name of a flower, so Asian Property Management followed suit.

"We didn't have an identity for our business at that time," he says.

The trials of the financial crisis changed all that. Asian Property Development learned to stand on its own feet.

Good fortune, by way of shrewd judgement, also played a role. Anuphong's company opted to develop a city condominium that focused on the luxury market. Land and Houses had never done that. Through its new-concept, staff-developed Life project, it also shifted its focus to city condominiums when demand in the property market was unexpectedly shifting from low-rise projects outside the central business district to city condominiums within the CBD.

The tale of the company's performance lies in the figures. In 1997, Asian Property Development had projects at hand worth only Bt3 billion. Presently, it has projects ready to transfer to customers later this year and next year worth Bt14 billion; it has residential projects worth Bt6 billion that are ready for sale; and it plans to launch new projects in the final quarter of this year and next year worth Bt5 billion.

The company's total assets have increased from less than Bt1 billion in 1997 to Bt11.1 billion in the first half of this year. It expects sales of Bt7 billion this year, similar to last year.

Asian Property Development is now ranked among Thailand's top five property firms in terms of projects launched this year and is in the top 10 in terms of sales this year.

Anuphong says that although the company's sales this year will be similar to those of last year, this performance is still better than others in the market, whose sales have fallen slightly, in line with the country's fall in purchasing power.

After 16 years, Anuphong says Asian Property Development must still become a professional property developer, with a mission to be "a dynamic creator of quality living satisfaction".

"To achieve my objective and my mission, I have to reorganise the firm and build its human resources to ensure they have the ability to run the business when my team retires. Creating a more professional staff will be my objective and mission in this decade and manpower will be the key to making Asian Property Development a 'living organisation'," he says.

Somluck Srimalee

 The Nation