8/10/2023 0 Comments Tao kae noi seaweed ownerRaising $200,000 by selling some of his chestnut stalls, he set up a factory to make crispy seaweed in 2006. "Our original salty and spicy flavors are based on her recipes," he says. He sought know-how from experts at Kasetsart University, which is known for agricultural sciences, and enlisted his mother's help in creating flavors. He sensed an opportunity as seaweed snacks were already popular with the younger crowd but were not being made in Thailand in a big way. Tob latched on to seaweed when a girlfriend brought him a packet of the traditional variety from her university store. Sales plummeted, forcing him to look for other avenues. The chain wanted him to shift to the parking lot since the smoke from the oven was affecting some customers and turning ceilings black. But he kept close tabs, visiting every spot at least once a week.Ī change in management at Tesco Lotus ended his dream run. "That wasn't bad for a 19-year-old," he says, smiling. He called his fledgling venture Taokaenoi because "my father used to tease me by calling me Little Boss." Soon he had expanded to 30 locations with monthly sales of $87,000 and 50 staffers. "It was all about location, location, location." "My kiosk was close to the cash counter," he says. Just then he got a timely break with supermarket chain Tesco Lotus. But sales were slow, and he contemplated shutting shop and going to work at the McDonald's opposite his stall. He used $7,200 from his savings to buy equipment and set up a stall at a food court in a mall. In his freshman year of college, he dropped out to start "a real business" to help with the family's financial woes.Ī visit to a food fair sparked the idea of selling roasted chestnuts. A video game fanatic, he dabbled in selling such fare while at school, netting $10,000. The youngest of three children, he saw his father's construction business collapse in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis with the bank threatening to take possession of their home. Tob imbibed such survival lessons at an early age. Tob parlayed a stall selling roasted chestnuts into a $1.1 billion enterprise. "We have to be big or we cannot survive." Taokaenoi depends on imports from South Korea, but Tob insists that it secures "competitive rates." The capacity expansion and export push are crucial, he says, for achieving his target of doubling revenue by 2024. But, she adds, the company remains vulnerable to price increases of its main raw material. Uraiwan Tantisuwannakul, an analyst with CIMB Securities (Thailand), points out that the eight-year tax break that the new unit enjoys, combined with productivity gains and cost savings, should make Taokaenoi more competitive. Chief operations officer Boonchai Kowpanich, who oversees the newly-opened unit, says it needs a third of the 3,000 who are employed at the old factory. Traditional labor-intensive production, whereby seaweed is manually fried (or roasted) in woks, has been replaced here with automation, using imported Korean and Japanese machines and some equipment that was developed in-house. Adjacent to Taokaenoi's 7-acre complex, is, ironically, a PepsiCo plant producing Lay's potato chips. It is located in an industrial park 47 miles north of Bangkok, close to the historic city of Ayutthya, the former capital of the Kingdom of Siam. He's used half the $42 million IPO proceeds to build a new factory that will produce exclusively for export. Unfazed, Tob is in the throes of doubling Taokaenoi's annual production capacity to 12,000 tons. In the American market, as in China, Taokaenoi will have to fight it out with earlier Korean and Japanese arrivals. "The next stop has to be the U.S., as that's the world's biggest snacking market," he says. "The IPO price hadn't fully factored in the China play," says Nantika Wiangphoem, an analyst at Bangkok securities firm DBS Vickers, who tracks the company.Īt his company's Bangkok headquarters, Tob, wearing a solid black T-shirt, the color preferred by his icon Steve Jobs, admits to eyeing an even bigger play: to make Taokaenoi a global brand. Analysts say the post-IPO buzz around Taokaenoi was also sparked by rising sales in China, the company's biggest overseas market, which contributes more than a third to revenues.
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