Mr. Rodney Ang started off as an entrepreneur in the IT industry. Later on, his wife joined him and embarked on a new journey in the F&B industry. Rodney is a self motivated man with great aspirations. Rodney presents himself as a passionate entrepreneur, someone who really loves what he is doing and a certain level of freedom that his businesses give him.

Company: DEFU FOODS INDUSTRY PTE LTD Address: Blk 15, Woodlands Loop #03-53, Singapore 738322 Website: http://www.bbq.sg/ Interview with Mr. Ang Yew Theng by Pan Shiying Serene on 03-Jun-2009. Student can be reached at serenepan@nus.edu.sg   Business Profile: Defu Foods Industry Pte Ltd was set up in 2005 specializing in wholesale and retail of all kinds of barbeque food items. The philosophy of Defu Foods is to serve the customer with the best barbeque products they could get and value for money. Defu Foods aims to be the leading BBQ and Otak Otak manufacturer, supplier, exporter and franchisor based in Singapore.   Interviewer's Comments: Interviewing Rodney had been an enriching and unforgettable experience. Throughout the interview, he stresses on the importance of living and enhancing lives (versus simply making a living). To him, entrepreneurship is about self-fulfilling and developing other people rather than profit-maximization. This is a very important perspective which I will carry with me for the rest of my life.   1. What is the nature of your business? In general, I sell BBQ items. Some of our signature items include Chilli Crab Otah, Salmon Otah, Sambal Stingray and the all-time favorite - Nonya Mackerel Otah.   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.) Personally, I dislike doing office-based jobs. Initially, like many others, I worked in a company, holding a typical nine-to-five office job. Subsequently, with some recommendations from my friend, I started to do some outdoor sales which gave me inspiration to start my own company. I feel that I could achieve much more if I were to start my own business. Being an entrepreneur gives me more freedom to engage in more meaningful activities and also more control of my time to work forward in achieving my goals. As such, I started my own company - Blue Bay Interactive Pte Ltd.   3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry? As mentioned, the industry that I first chosen was actually IT since I had some background knowledge. Defu Foods is actually my second company in which its ideas are originated from my father-in-laws. My in-laws used to run a business of this nature and in some way, I was inspired by him. Although he had little educational qualifications, he had shown his capabilities in building up his business from scratch. So both my wife and I are keen in starting our own business of a similar nature.   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. Thankfully, with some existing contacts that my in-laws had, it had been much easier to locate suppliers and a suitable place for the production of our items than if we were to start from zero. In addition, as I own an IT company, I would create the website and design brochures, name cards and etc which reduce our costs to start-up. With regards to the start-up capital, both my wife and I used our personal savings to get the ball rolling. It was few years later that we approached the bank for more financial assistance so that we would be more financially stable in expanding our business.   5. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business? How did you overcome these challenges? Start-up Company is usually short of resources. It can be in terms of investments, infrastructure, connection network or manpower. Thus you must adopt the habit of multi tasking - to be able to do everything by yourself from delivery, marketing and even banking in your cheques. Not only that, you also need to overcome and compete with existing competitors who already are in the business. You must have the passion and motivation to keep you going despite the problems you are facing and the endurance to help you to pull through the difficult times when you need to go an extra mile to achieve what you want. As our start-up capital was not very strong, for quite some time, we always had to try making ends meet and taking risk of financial difficulties. So, we tried to keep our expenses low, for instance, for the factory that we rented at Woodlands, we did not spend too much money for renovation albeit still meeting the standard hygiene requirements. To add on, it was quite difficult to get orders as we were not an established company in Singapore yet. As such, we tried to do some marketing ourselves through various channels such as the Internet. Fortunately, our factory's location is well-known to others for selling wholesale products. So, the traffic flow is actually very good. Thus, in order to make our brand known to others, we made a very big banner to attract customers' attention. As such, we will get customers who walk-in or drive-through after buying things from other factories.   6. Can you remember a time when you felt like giving up? Yes. There is a saying that goes, 'If everything is coming your way, then you are on the wrong side of the road.' We were exasperated when we knew of something that we wanted to change but we could not due to certain limitations. For instance, in theory, we know that for an ideal food production company, automation is desired as it will reduce the time needed for food production and reduce cost as fewer workers are needed. However, in reality, we do not have sufficient resources to achieve it. As such, many times, we have no choice but to live with these negative factors which are hindering our progress. Nevertheless, we are constantly making improvements to our business, so as to eradicate the negative influences.   7. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses? I think that as an entrepreneur, passion is one of the elements which will drive you to work harder. You also need to be diligent and work doubly hard to solve your problems instead of thinking that things will work out by themselves. You should not be dependent on others or the government to help you out. At the end of the day, you need to have a clear mind and demonstrate your qualities for your staff to follow. It does not mean that as a person who is working for others, he/she need not possess these qualities, these qualities will give you a bonus in his/her career and promotion. That is why I think that everyone should have such qualities in this technological world we are living in. Along the way, we became tougher and gained more experiences in handling different situations. It is important to know your goals and not swayed by other factors. Although we may not be able to overcome each and every single challenge, it is imperative for us to learn from the mistake and to pick ourselves up from where we fell.   8. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? I feel that my proudest achievement would be able to run a business together with my wife. Through this opportunity, we have gone through thick and thin together, sharing the hardships and joys as one. In business, it is bound to have conflicts of ideas and I am glad that along the way, we have learnt to compromise and to help each other out.   9. Tell me some stories of your best day in business. To keep myself motivated, I would tell myself that each day is the best day in my life and there are beautiful things to look forward to. The best days are also the days when we are able to fulfill their needs and wants and make them satisfied clients since all businesses are basically people-oriented.   10. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? Please provide specific examples. We make constant changes to our products. Although we were given the recipes for manufacturing the items, we are constantly making refinements to our products to better suit customers' likings. In addition, we also try to do our own research and come up with new products. Recently, Defu Foods and NUS worked as a team in the Food Product Concept Competition and developed a convenient fast-food styled rice burger. This new concept is currently in the refinement stage and I believe it will be introduced into the market before long.   11. Where or who do you get your business ideas (wholesale and retail of all kinds of barbeque food items) from? How do you know this is the right business to go into? Dealing in BBQ food items is one of the numerous ideas that we have in order to transform the traditional business model to something different. As the idea of organizing BBQ functions is quite well-liked among us, young and old, we feel that this would be a good avenue for us to grow.   12. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business? What did you do to sustain and grow your business from year 1 to the present? I wouldn't think that we have fantastic results at this point of time and we still have some way to go. As this is a period of economic slow-down, we hope to great value-added products for our clients at affordable prices. To sustain our business, we need to be very systematic in running the business and cut down unnecessary wastage or redundancies from time to time. We had learnt about SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) during our school-days or army-days which we could also plug in some of these ideas to our business.   13. What do you see for your business in the next 5 years, and does it include any plans for expansion? This is a labour intensive company as most of the products are hand-made. This poses as a challenge for any plans for expansion. So, we are now trying our best to make the process automated, reducing the number of workers needed and the time to manufacture the products. In the next 5 to 10 years, I am hoping to expand the business overbroad. However, we would have to strengthen our base in Singapore first before executing any plans for overseas expansion. We are now working on initiatives that would help in strengthening our position in the markets. For example, we are going to create pre-packed food such as Otah and Satay to sell it in the supermarkets.   14. What does entrepreneurship mean to you? What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far? To me, entrepreneurship is a term related to the process in achieving a personal goal. Although money making is the ultimate driving force for any business, I do not associate successful entrepreneurs as people who earn the most money. Personally, money is just a tool to run a business. It should not be the primary benchmark to measure success of an entrepreneur. I believe perseverance and determination have allowed me to come this far. During the initial years, although the company may be losing money, the passion to stay in this business motivated me to move forward.   15. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? (e.g. Educational qualification, work experience, family influence, attitude, etc) The people whom you mix around would directly or indirectly influence the way you construct your thoughts. Educational qualifications can only get you that far. One must understand that it is more than having a good qualification. You have got to learn the concepts and apply it to real life. It may seem easy but I could tell you it is never the case.   16. What was your childhood dream? When did you decide that you would strike out on your own instead of working for someone else? My childhood dream was to be able to be the first to build, create or invent something. I have read stories of such historic characters as Thomas Alva Edison, Albert Einstein etc and admired their hard-work and intellect. While I was in school, I had started off working during my vacation as some part-time sales person. I used to think that a sales position is a low-status career. I later learnt that many successful personalities were also great sales-person as one could literally sell anything under the sun. For example, the fact that our country Singapore had a good reputation around the world despite its insignificant size is due largely to some great salesmanship led by our founding father, MM Lee.   17. What advice would you give to those who have failed business? Keep trying and never gives up on hope. Try to be more versatile and search for more channels to build your network. Like climbing to the top of the mountain, there are different routes in which you can take to reach the summit. If this route does not work for you, then try another one. Ultimately, there will be a way for you to reach the summit like how other successful entrepreneurs did. Perhaps, you could try climbing other mountains which are easier to conquer. You do not have to be at the highest point of the world. It is important for you to know what are your strengths and limitations when starting a business.   18. Who or what motivates and inspires you? I like reading inspirational quotes. During my free time, I will browse through the quotations from different distinguished persons and I get my inspirations and motivations from there. I even printed out some of the meaningful quotations and file them up. These quotations encourage me to take on a different perspective to things around me. I am also motivated by renowned people in the society regardless of the industries they are in. I would read their stories and try to gain knowledge of the experiences they went through and to apply it to my business. One of the persons I look up to would be the founding father of Singapore - MM Lee.   19. To what extent do you think that one's educational level has helped or hindered entrepreneurial-ship? Singapore's education system has done a very good job in catering to the masses. To what extent one's education level helps one's business has to do very much with the kind of business one wants to do. For example, if you are in a business that requires you to possess certain educational level, such as water purification or research work, then it will definitely help you in the business. On the flipside, if you want to start a company that does not require you to excel in your studies, then I may say that one's educational level will not affect entrepreneurship as in this case, the skills and network of a person is more important. Paper qualifications do not teach us how to start and run a business successfully but it gives us the foundation to get the ball rolling. Perhaps, it is a supplementary but not a necessary factor to be a successful entrepreneur.   20. 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? Despite the changes in the market today, I don't think it is any harder to succeed. There are a lot of opportunities being created daily. You have to know to grab the opportunity when it comes knocking on your door. However, ultimately, it depends on one's definition of being successful. Success, in my perspective, may not be measured in monetary terms. If in the service industry, the ability to retain loyal and happy customers could be your success too.   21. Can you describe the market changes and trends since you started business? What are the opportunities created for you and how did you grab it? We are living in a knowledge-based world and embracing info-technology in the right way may help us gain a competitive edge. To be successful, one key factor, in my opinion, would be to know how to inject info-technology into traditional business models.   22. If your son starts a business when he is in university and he feels that his business can earn him a decent living of maybe $5000 at least at the moment, and he wants to quit school. What would be your advice for him? It depends. If 'my son' could nurture his entrepreneurship while keeping pace with schoolwork and finish the term, it would be a better choice than quitting half way. Here I quote Bob Beamon, 'Whatever you do, don't do it halfway.' However, if 'he' could see strong reasons in doing what 'he' wants, then 'he' could do so as 'he' would be responsible for 'his' own future.   23. What are some of your business values and what would you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? What advice would you give young people who want to start their own business? Be clear of your goals and move forward towards it. Do not be distracted by other people or temptations that may come along the way. Take for example the group of mountaineers who conquered Mount Everest. They are very clear of what they want to achieve. As such, even if the event may cost their lives, they proceeded on with it. On top of it, be bold in your decisions. Once your goals are set, do not waver anymore. In addition, you need to understand the market. I will advice that you take some time to learn from the market and do some market research to understand how well received the product you want to venture into is. You can also go and work in similar business sector for a period of time to be able to feel the product and learn what the problems they are facing so that you can be well-prepared with regards to the potential setbacks you will have when you start a business.   24. nil nil