Mr. Philip Wong has conducted business in various industries. Besides selling online via Toypowerseller, Philip owns the ice3 cafe at Serangoon gardens which sells fantastic premium desserts which has earned him several accolades. He also believes in returning to the society by working with charity organizations for under privileged children and sponsoring charity events.

Company: WWW.TOYPOWERSELLER.COM Address: Blk 1014 Geylang East Ave 3 #03-198 Website: N/A Interview with Mr Philip Wong by Ho Han Yew Victor on 22-May-2008. Student can be reached at vertigoblues86@hotmail.com   Business Profile: Toypowerseller use eBay as a main platform to sell to the world. Products include toys, remote control cars, fishing reels, and many other items. By using eBay Toypowerseller immediately have access to international market like Australia, UK, USA Italy etc. Toypowerseller is now one of the Top eBay seller from Singapore.   Interviewer's Comments: Through the course of the interview, Philip struck me as a very sincere and genuine person. He is someone who is very passionate about his businesses and takes very good care of his staffs. He is willing to provide a deep and personal sharing about his personal business and life philosophy which was very insightful.   1. What is the nature of your business? It is basically an online retailer. The platform that we use is eBay, we use eBay to reach out to individual buyers overseas like UK or Australia. We also have some wholesalers buying directly from us over the years.   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.) Of course. My father is a businessman himself and he still in the construction industry. Through his influence, I had always wanted to be my own boss since young and my dream was to make $14-15 000 a month. Based on my education level after my ns, the only way I can achieve that is through business. I started my first business, if you would call it a business venture, somewhere in secondary three or four. My friends and I pooled our resources to buy some carnation for mother day; that was how I started my first business. My first actual formal business is when I was at the age when I was nineteen or twenty years old. Photography was my first hobby so I decided to start a photo shop; we printed photos and did some developing.   3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? In fact, I was in many, many industries at a young age. I started with my hobby which failed, so I do not want to go with my hobby anymore as I don't want to spoil my hobby in that sense. Besides photo developing, magazine and toy distribution, I also did food distribution. I bought food wholesale, I made profits but many a times I stopped because I am still young and I wanted something more interesting; maybe it's because of my character. When I was around 29 to 30 I realized I was not young anymore, and I needed much more investments to build the business so I stopped a while to find what to do next. So in the process of keeping fighting fishes, I found eBay and that was how I started this internet business. Through the internet, I don't need a lot of capital and I had access to the international market. market   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. Many a time I don't have a lot of money to start. The magazine distribution business I started with my last drawn pay. I had 14,000 dollars to start with the ostrich frozen food business and it was my personal savings. I only had a few thousand dollars to buy stocks for my online business.   5. What are some interesting stories you have about your first few customers/first few years in business? In terms of toy power seller, when I sell fishing equipment, I usually pose some fishing picture online. Some of my happy customers who used my product will send me picture of bigger fishes they caught. They asked me to come to Australia and volunteer to bring me to fish. Online trading is about building trust and making friends.   6. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? Especially for young entrepreneur who are not born rich, funding is always an issue: how to expand the business when the bank doesn't really trust you. You have to persevere as funding is one of the main challenges. I also realized I started out pretty young and do not have corporate knowledge working in very big companies and the luxury of managing them. You need a lot of knowledge growing a SME and this is something a lot of SMEs lack. It is also a key challenge as you will always face bottleneck at different phases of growth, there are always bottlenecks and trial and error can be very costly.   7. How did you overcome these challenges? Please share some specific examples of the action you took to overcome the challenges. Basically, in terms of knowledge and funding, to increase funding you will have to be thrifty, persevere and try to find better profitability to expand. In terms of bottlenecks, the only way to get rid these challenges is through education like courses, talks and mentors. I have lots of mentor some of them are author from books; I don't really meet them but I read their book. Once in a while, I actually meet up for lunch with mentors like the COO of Osim, Charlie Teo and we would exchange thoughts. Other mentors teach me how to develop the business and overcome challenges. I have got a post graduate diploma in marketing. I want to further pursue my education, perhaps a MBA. However, I would prefer to open a new ICE3 outlet than to pay $30-60,000 for a MBA; I would jump in quickly if offered a scholarship. I also attended talks, seminars and part-time classes to help myself gain knowledge. One of the recent seminar I attended which is didn't know existed previously is called the lao ban lian yi hui in Chinese. It is held for once a month and is free, so SME bosses just register and go there. The speakers are mostly from SMEs. They are bosses, CEOs and directors from different companies, sharing their experiences. This is one of the places young entrepreneurs should always go to broaden up their knowledge   8. Can you remember your worst day in business or a time when you felt like giving up? What happened that made you feel that way and how did you triumph over it? I think the worst day or I would say the best day was when I made the decision to end my first business. My wife (then girlfriend), friends and family advised me to give up but I didn't want to. Finally, that day came and I sold this business to everyone was shocked so I would say it the most difficult decision I have to make as this is my first formal business.   9. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses? I think being a very young and egoistic entrepreneur, there are times during my first 7 to 8 years in business when thoughts that came to me "why work hard when you can work smart?" I eventually realized that working smart alone can't help you. But rather, working hard will generate more ways to work smart; and that hard work is the only way to overcome challenges.   10. When was the moment you realised the business would work and support you? After the first business failed, the other business was profitable and quite successful. I think over the years of being a businessman we really know what can work or cannot work; as long you don't take major risk on your livelihood. Through passion and having confidence in your product, you just need to keep evolving. Collecting rubbish is a huge multimillion dollars business. This proves there is nothing that can't work, its only how, where and whom. I would say the timing is important.   11. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? And why are they so important and meaningful to you? I would say if my customer send me an email they tell me they are happy with my products and it helped them to catch big fish, I am very happy with that.   12. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? Please provide specific examples. For my current business ICE3 cafe, when sales kept increasing and customers keep coming back and saying this is one of the coolest place; this will be one of the thing I am most happy with. I always believe in selling thing we ourselves want. I am also quite happy with awards I won like Shell Livewire as I was one of the six who won overall champion; at least I know I am doing something right.   13. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? The ambience is only the "hardware". The most important is the software, the product. In my cafe, I never allow my staff to serve anything substandard, this would never happen as we use our heart to serve. For toy power seller, when it is rainy season and the almond leave products are soggy and can't be used, I would tell my customer the product is unavailable.   14. Where or who do you get your business ideas from? It all depends. It can be from books, magazines and television programmes of things happening from places around the world. It can be from your staffs as well, they can give you ideas to introduce new products.   15. What do you see for your business in the next 5 years, and does it include any plans for expansion? Currently we sell our products to UK, Taiwan and US. Recently, I found a new website similar to eBay which sells to people in China. Maybe we will expand to sell to china as well. For my concurrent cafe business, we can expand locally and overseas couple of years time, we are looking to franchise overseas so local customer will still find them when they go Taiwan, Australia or Malaysia.   16. What does entrepreneurship mean to you? Being your own boss and making a living out of it.   17. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far? Perseverance and belief in yourself. This is especially true if you are not from a rich family and your financial support is limited. So you have to find opportunities along the way while persevering   18. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? The most important thing is to continue to learn. If you are in the internet business, there is 1001 ways about internet marketing; there are also talks and seminars. In F&B, there are 1001 management books and seminars. Unless you keep on learning and evolving, your business would be stagnant. You can also learn from others. Being humble is a minimum quality in SMEs, if you are in the retail trade; customer opinion is really one of the more important. If you don't listen, finally they will leave you; there are tonnes of other businesses that are better than you.   19. In your opinion, what does it mean to have the "spirit of enterprise"? It is never give up, as long as you don't give up, the failure will never come.   20. Who or what motivates and inspires you? Many people, but the key motivation still come from my family as the reason why I go into business is to create the dream life I want for my wife and parents. Hopefully, I can give them a very comfortable life which we can enjoy together.   21. What are some of your business values and what would you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? I think business ethics are very important. If you in selling products, only sell items which you would buy yourselves; that's a basic requirement. Without theses basics, I don't think you would succeed.   22. Can you share some of the more significant events / incidents that affected or shaped your business philosophy and the way you conduct your business? It's really tough during SARS. My previous business is affected by SARS and I needed a lot of money to be able to maintain my operations which became an issue as customers started dragging payments I entered this internet business after SARS, I chose it as the risk and start up costs is low.   23. With the changes in the market today, do you think it has become harder or easier to succeed in business? Why do you say so? I think it's the same compared to the market ten years ago or twenty years ago. I think it is not difficult to be an entrepreneur. Out of a 100 people who wants to be rich, maybe 10 will want to do business, and of the 10 maybe 1 will take action. The rest will probably get an office job which is no competition to you, so how hard is it to be successful? At least that's what I feel.   24. What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? Doing something that you love is very important, don't go into business just for the sake of the money; you need to enjoy what you are doing. Doing business solely for the sake of money will poison your mind as sometimes you might be tempted to do things against your philosophy. Do something you like so you will not fall into this trap.