By Wilfred Pilo
KUCHING, Nov 2: “Most start ups actually start down and only go up if they catch the winds of market demand.”
Living by this business adage quoted by American business author Ryan Lilly, five young local women entrepreneurs here had excellent outings in promoting and selling their products at a sales booth provided by Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) during the university’s convocation from Oct 27-Nov 2.
The five were participants of “Tunas Usahawan Belia Bumiputera (TUBE) 5.0 2018”, a programme organised by SME Corporation Malaysia.
All five are rookies in the business environment. However, these young entrepreneurs are gutsy and determined. They allowed themselves to follow the winds of market demand for their products as they needed people to know and taste their products.
Spokeswoman for the five Imelda Jimie cited a local saying, “tak kenal, tak cinta”, which literally means ‘if you don’t know, then you don’t love’.
“Well, we certainly want people to love and like our products and this venue and sales booth gave us the mechanism to to promote our products to a wide spectrum of people here,” she said.
“The venue provided by Unimas gave the five of us young women in business not only the exposure for ourselves but the opportunity to promote our products and sell our goods.
“That is the main reason we joined the sales booth and this outing is good as it gives us the training ground to enhance our business skills and learn from mistakes. The most important thing is that we learn the trade and this is a learning curve for us,” she told DayakDaily.
Imelda has won various awards and the most outstanding to date was from SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp Malaysia) which a Central Coordinating Agency under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry Malaysia. She is very optimistic of her future if continued to be given such opportunities.
“But of course we must motivate ourselves and help ourselves to be more dynamic and not be scared to face all sorts of obstacles and challenges,” she said.
Imelda said that the feedback from this kind of event is good as local entrepreneurs can enhance rapport with the public and get people to know their business and also motivate other young people.
“We intend to further expand and develop what business we are involved in and take every opportunity in order for us to boost our incomes as local entrepreneurs, especially young women like us.”
Imelda said she herself is involved in producing products made from brown, red and white rice, and the by-products not only can be eaten but used for beauty care.
Under the brand name “Berau”, she currently has come out with four products namely soap, facial scrubs, cereal and rice (brown, red and white grain rice) .
The other four women entrepreneurs who teamed up with Imelda at the convocation event were Siti Nurkhadijah (Chocolate Chip Cookies and Bubble Rice maker), Syafiqa Amira (Almond Crunchy Florentines), Noralbaniah Abdul Manaf (homemade pickles like kimchi and skincare products) and Hafizah Ceng (various flavours of ‘kompia’).
Imelda hoped that their efforts get the attention of the state government to further assist young people and women like them to do well in business. — DayakDaily
