Four Develop House aims high

Four Develop House's managing director Vichai Kongsriong

Vichai said he saw a business opportunity of building detached houses at prices lower than Bt5 million a unit. He discussed this idea with his boss, Four Pattana's man¬aging director and owner Pramote Teerakul.

After the discussion, Pramote agreed with Vichai and decided to establish a new subsidiary Four Develop House, with Four Pattana, Pramote and Vichai as major stake¬holders and a registered capital Bt4 million in July 2005.

Vichai did his bachelor's in archi¬tecture from Phranakhon Teacher College (now Phranakhon Rajabhat University) in 1989. He worked with an architectural agency for two years before joining Four Pattana as a sales architect.

In the first 14 years after joining Four Pattana, Vichai learned how to build and design detached houses and also studied customer needs and market trends. This led to his con¬clusion that if he set up a system to serve customer demand for detached house at prices lower than Bt5 mil¬lion, it would boost Four Pattana's revenues.

However, Four Pattana's business philosophy made it difficult to build detached houses at prices lower than Bt5 million because its construction costs were higher than the market rate because its construction concept was to use its own staff. This was dif¬ferent from other companies who gave subcontracts to small and medi¬umsized contractors.

Sensing that the new plan would suffer losses if it followed Four Pattana's policy, Vichai offered to establish a subsidiary, Four Develop House. The subsidiary would focus on the middle market by offering detachedhouse models at prices between Bt2 million and lower than Bt5 million per unit.

About three and a half years after its establishment, Four Develop House has succeeded in building its portfolio from eight units worth Bt15 million in the first six months (July 2005December 2005) to Bt53 million last year. In the first half of this year, the company recorded a sale of Bt50 million and expects to touch Bt70 million by the end of the year.

The company's sales target this year is lower than the first estimate of Bt75 million because the slower growth in the country's economy and land owners delaying their decision to build new houses, he said.

"The key to our success is devel¬oping quality houses to meet cus¬tomer demand, which in turn will help us meet our target of Bt100 million by 2010, when we celebrate our fifth anniversary," Vichai said.