Vincent graduated from NUS, Faculty of Engineering two years back. During his university years, together with two other friends, they started what is currently known in the industry now as the "sgCarMart.com". Although the route was not smooth sailing for them, none of them had the thought of giving up. This was the spirit that got them to where they are now. sgCarMart has gradually grown from a humble 3-man team into a 15-man team today. He says, "It is all about opportunity cost. Be brave, and start early when you have minimal opportunity cost."

Company: SGCM PTE LTD Address: 61 Ubi Ave 2 #06-03 Automobile Megamart Website: http://www.sgcarmart.com/main/index.php Interview with Mr Vincent Tan Boon Kiat by Tan Jia'en on 23-May-2008. Student can be reached at jiaentan@nus.edu.sg   Business Profile: sgCarMart is incorporated in June 2004. It is a media owner which provides a place for car owners and businesses to advertise. Not only that, it also offers car buyers a consolidated source of information. The aim is to help consumers in their car buying decisions by providing them the essential information and to help businesses increase their sales through cost effective advertising. Steadily, it has grown to become the largest car classified website in Singapore with more than 500,000 shoppers monthly.   Interviewer's Comments: My interview with Vincent had been a fruitful one. I think we have a lot to learn from this aspiring and creative entrepreneur. It is impressive to see how an 15-man team can manage this large reputable internet business. He taught me that being an entrepreneur at a young age has more pros than cons. It was only at a young age that you have nothing to lose, because you have nothing to start off with. Armed with a strong passion of bringing convenience to car buyers and sellers, the idea of setting up an online car mart strikes them. What really impresses me is that he and his team had never thought of giving up when so many other big companies had tried and failed. I believe it is this "never-say-die" gut that had brought them thus far. He has triggered the "entrepreneur-spirit" in me. I hope one day, I too, will own a successful business as well!   1. What is the nature of your business? sgCarMart is a media owner which provides a site for car owners and businesses to advertise on the internet. Not only that, we also offers car buyers a consolidated source of information. It reaches out to mainly end-users or other businesses. Previously, when car dealers have to advertise their cars, they would do it through the newspapers. Now, with sgCarMart, we provide them with another medium to advertise at a lower cost.   2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.) During the first summer holiday, my friend, Henry, and I did not work and we had free time on our hands. Hence, we decided that we should do something. Coincidently, my dad had a stock-pile of office chairs which he had to get rid. Thus, we thought we would help him by selling those chairs at the night markets and at the same time earned some pocket money. We started looking for space for rent at various night markets to sell those office chairs. I could still remember that we sold the chairs at $28 per piece. We only set up the stalls during weekend. Business was quite good and we managed to earn profits. Our business got affected when Carrefour started selling similar chairs at a much lower price. Luckily, at that time, our stock-pile of chairs were depleting too. That was when we stopped that business, which was our very first business too. Subsequently, when we were walking around in the campus, we saw a man giving out leaflets. I took a glance at the leaflet and it says "asweetflower.com". Then I thought, "What a funny name the website has". Apparently, it was a car classified website. I told Henry that we could easily do a better job. For that reason, we visited the website and started our research. We realised that there were not many such car classified websites around. A typical dealer would have to spend about $1200 on advertising for his cars on a weekend. This is only from one dealer alone. The traditional advertising medium would only allow limited space due to budget constraint. On the other hand, an online classified would be different. It can transmit a large amount of information. Hence, we decided start our own online car classified website.   3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? There are four parallel for online classified, namely, shops, cars, property and jobs. The online job classified sector is a rather saturated. As for property, there are already other websites that serve that market and if big property firms intend to venture into the online sector, it would be difficult to compete with them given the resources they have. Shop is a rather wide segment that is difficult to target. Hence, we chose the cars parallel as there are not many online cars classified around. Also, we were more familiar in that area.   4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc. We started out with very minimal capital, an amount just enough to set up a bank account. And we operated from home.   5. Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? My dad is a car dealer. In the market, there were about 200 car dealers. He was our first customer but that is not enough because he represented less than 1% of the entire market. I sought his advice on this business idea but he was not very supportive of it. The reason being: he had see many companies trying out this business idea and failed. For example, speed.com.sg, they invested a few millions and it did not take off.   6. The business idea involves the internet and IT-knowledge but both of you are studying engineering, so how do you overcome that? Yes, we needed an IT-person. Hence, we found our third partner who was pursuing his degree in computing. At that time, he was only in his first year of university. He was our mutual friend.   7. So what makes you so determine about this business idea? As we were in university, there was zero opportunity cost. As a student, our main focus is on study. Therefore, by doing some extra, we had nothing to lose. Adding on, the risk involved in starting an online business was very small. We started our business with very minimal capital too. Probably, an amount just sufficient to start a bank account.   8. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? Business was very bad initially. My dad kept telling us that according to his experience in the industry, the business would not work out. When we approached the other car dealers, their responses were negative too. It was a very difficult task to persuade them to use our services. This was probably attributed to the fact that most of them had tried out with the other companies and they failed. In addition, most of the car dealers were not IT-savvy and the only site that they visited was the government site to check out some car details.   9. How did you overcome these challenges? Please share some specific examples of the action you took to overcome the challenges. To overcome the lack of confidence of the car dealers, my team had to put in more effort to persuade them to use our service. At times, we had to even do it for free to attract them to keep up with the service. At that time, most of them do not own cameras. We had to go to their office every week to help them take pictures and upload them to our website. Practically, we did everything for them, from taking pictures to uploading. I believe that traffic only grows with content. Therefore, if you have no content, you will have no traffic. Basically, we were making a loss if you take into account the labour charges.   10. After trying out your business idea for months and you did not succeed, have you ever thought of giving up? No. I felt dejected but the idea of giving up has never struck me.   11. Why you did not have the idea of giving up? Probably because it is a partnership and your decision will affect the rest in the partnership. Hence, we must be responsible. Moreover by not giving up, we don't lose anything. The cost of operating an online business is not very high. But by giving up, we lose everything we have done so far. Let's think of it this way, if I do not go and do surveys, and take pictures for the dealers, what will I be doing? I will be staying at home watching my favourite television program! I think it is also the university life that made it possible. We were allowed to plan our own timetable hence allowing me to plan my lessons to a 4-day week or even a 3-day week. Then, I could have more time for my business. Imagine, if I am working, that would not be possible.   12. Where do you get your motivation from? We got out motivation from the dealers. I still remember when we first started, most dealers did not have confidence that the website will work. One day, I got a call from a dealer and she told me that she managed to sell a car through our website. I could still remember that that was a Subaru car. You get encouragement along the way so in a way that is the motivation which pushes us along.   13. When was the moment you realised the business would work and support you? Probably, after the first year. That was when we took in our fourth partner.   14. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? sgCarMart has been given recognition by Hitwise for being the No. 1 most popular automotive classified website for year 2005, 2006 and 2007. These did not occur by chance, everyone in the team had put in effort to ensure that our website content is good and accurate to attract more visitors to the website.   15. How many times your business is now compared to those days when you first started? It is about close to 10 times of turnover from my initial start-up as compared to now. Our turnover for the past 5 months was about $500,000.   16. Do you consider general classified website as your competitors? I do not think that general classifies are our competitors.   17. Or is there any website that you consider them as your competitors? sgCarMart is vertical classified. So to speak off, st701 is our largest competitors. This is because they have four vertical (property, car, jobs and shops) and is relatively quite successful. However, I must say that sgCarMart still has its first mover advantage. We started the trend of advertising on the internet. It is also because of us that almost all dealers in the market own a digital camera.   18. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? We started our business with the main focus on used car section. In the recent year, we added in new car section and related articles for car buyers. I believe that these changes had helped us increase traffic to our website. We realised that we could add in the article section for visitors who are driver themselves (who do not have the intention to buy or sell their cars), to make them stay at our website. In doing so, when they need any assistance in buying or selling cars they will visit us.   19. Where or who do you get your business ideas from? As there are little or no companies to follow, we always thought of new ideas ourselves and implement them. If results proved to be negative, we will make changes to improve on them. We have to be creative and understand what our users are looking for.   20. What are the plans you have for your business? We had the first mover advantage. Hence, we are confident that our business would not be overtaken by others. You can see that almost all car dealers have cameras now and that is because of us. sgCarMart has a strong customer base. My team has always been flexible in our management. We are always trying out new ideas to attract visitors to our website.   21. As Singapore is a rather small country, have you thought of expanding your business to other countries? Not at the moment.   22. Why not? I think that in Singapore, car is a big business. Although our population is small as compared to other countries, our people are more affluent. Also due to COE, most people change car every 2 to 3 years. Hence, there is a lot of selling and buying activities in the market.   23. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far? Everyone is good in his own way. I believe that no one is an entrepreneur himself. It is the combined qualities that made us a good team. In a team, we share opinions and in my team, I have members who are analytical, understand customers' needs and conservative, and some who are diplomatic, good in public relations and creative.   24. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? It is all about opportunity cost. Be brave, and start early when you have minimal or zero opportunity cost. Don't wait till you have started working because by then, the opportunity cost will be high. I think one should never constraint himself to doing something that is not related to his field of study. You can be professionally trained in that area and excel in others too.