Peakchan မွတီထြင္ဆန္းသစ္မႈ၊ သုေတသနဒီဇိုင္းႏွင့္ စီမံခန္ ့ခြဲေရး ဒါရိုက္တာမွ ဂုန္ေလွ်ာ္ႏွင့္ ဂ်ံဳ/ရႊြံ ့တို ့ အား အဆင့္ျမင့္ပို ့ကုန္အျဖစ္ ကုမၸဏီမွ မည္သို ့မည္ပံုေျပာင္းလဲခဲ့သည္ကိုရွင္းလင္းေျပာျပပါသည္။

Peakchan အားမည္ကဲ့သို ့စတင္တည္ေထာင္ခဲ့သနည္း။
လက္ဦး၌ ကၽြန္မမွ စီးပြားေရးႏွင့္ကူးသန္းေရာင္း၀ယ္ေရး၀န္ၾကီးငွာနလက္ေအာက္ရွိ ပို ့ကုန္ျမွင့္တင္ေရး ငွာန (Department of Export Promotion (DEP)) ကေပးအပ္ခ်ီးျမင့္သည့္ Talent Thai Award ဆုကို ဂုန္ေလွ်ာ္ေကာ္ေဇာ္ျဖင့္ 2005 ခုႏွစ္က ဆြတ္ခူးရရွိခဲ့ပါသည္။ ဤဆုမွ ငယ္ရြယ္သည့္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးငယ္ေလး အတြက္ ကမၻာအႏွံ ့ရွိွ ၀ယ္ယူသူမ်ားမွ ေပးပို ့ေသာ ဘတ္သန္းေပါင္း 20-30 အတြင္း တန္ဖိုးရွိသည့္ ကုန္မွာစာမ်ား ကို လက္ခံရရွိျခင္းျဖင့္ အလြန္ၾကီးမားသည့္အခြင့္အေရးကို ေဆာင္က်ဥ္းေပးခဲ့သည္။ ဘာမွ မဟုတ္သည့္ အေျခအေနမွ ေစ်းကြက္တြင္းေနရာ ရေနသည့္ ယခုလို အေျခအေနမ်ိဳးထိေရာက္လာေစရန္ Peakchan မွဆက္လက္ ၾကီးထြားလာခဲ့သည္။

Peakchan ၏ သာမာန္ထက္ထူးျခားသည့္ အရည္အေသြးအေပၚ သင္မည္ကဲ့သို ့ထင္ျမင္ပါသနည္း။
ကၽြန္မတို ့၏ ဆန္းသစ္သည့္ဒီဇိုင္းႏွင့္ ထူးျခားသည့္နည္းပညာဟု ထင္ျမင္ပါသည္။ Peakchan ၏ ထုတ္ကုန္မ်ားကို အဓိကအားျဖင့္ ဂုန္ေလွ်ာ္၊ ဂ်ံဳမ်ားျဖင့္ ျပဳလုပ္ပါသည္။ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္ေပါင္းမ်ားတိုင္ အိတ္မ်ား မွအပ မည္သည ့္ထုတ္ကုန္ပစၥည္းမ်ားကိုမွ ျပန္လည္မြမ္းမံဆန္းသစ္ႏိုင္ျခင္းမရွိခဲ့ေခ်။ ကၽြန္မတို ့ သည္ ထိုင္းလူမ်ိဳးမ်ားမွ တစ္ခ်ိန္တစ္ခါက လ်စ္လ်ဴရႈခဲ့ၾကသည့္ အရာကို ဆန္းသစ္သည့္အျမင္ျဖင့္ စတင္ဖန္တီး ခဲ့ၾကသည္။ မ်ားမၾကာမီႏွစ္မ်ားအတြင္းက လွပသည့္ ေက်ာက္ေလးမ်ားကိုထည့္သြင္းရက္လုပ္ထားေသာ ဂုန္ေလွ်ာ္၊ ဂ်ံဳမ်ားျဖင့္ ျပဳလုပ္ထားသည့္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ေစ်းကြက္အတြင္း ျဖန္ ့ျဖဴးေရာင္းခ်ခဲ့ျပီး ၄င္းတို ့သည္ ကၽြန္မတို ့၏ အမွတ္တံဆိပ္ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါသည္။ ယေန ့ထိတိုင္ ကၽြန္မတို ့၏ ပစၥည္းမ်ားမွာ ထူးျခားဆန္းသစ္ ေနဆဲျဖစ္ပါသည္။

သင္၏မည္သည့္ ပစၥည္းသည္ ေရာင္းအားအေကာင္းဆံုး ပစၥည္းျဖစ္သနည္း။
တိုင္းႏိုင္ငံအလိုက္ ကြဲျပားၾကသည္။ ကၽြန္မတို ့၏လူေနမႈပံုစံႏွင့္ ဖက္ရွင္ပစၥည္း ေလးမ်ားကို အေမရိ ကန္ ျပည္ေထာင္စုမွ ၾကိဳက္ႏွစ္သက္ေနခ်ိန္တြင္ ျပင္သစ္ႏွင့္ အီတလီမွ ကၽြန္မတို ့၏ ပရိေဘာဂႏွင့္ အိမ္ အလွဆင္ပစၥည္းေလးမ်ားကို ၾကိဳက္ႏွစ္သက္ၾကသည္။ ကၽြန္မတို ့၏ ပစၥည္းမ်ားအာလံုးနီးပါးသည္ ေစ်းၾကီး ၍ အဆင့္ျမင့္ကုန္ပစၥည္းအျဖစ္ သတ္မွတ္ျခင္းကိုခံရသည္။

အနာဂတ္ကာလတြင္ျပဳလုပ္မည့္ စီမံကိန္းမ်ားအေၾကာင္းကို ေျပာျပေစလိုပါသည္။
နီးလို၀ဲ (လက္၀တ္ရတနာမ်ား) ကိုထုတ္လုပ္ရန္ စီစဥ္ထားရွိပါသည္။ ၄င္းျပင္၊ ကၽြန္မတို ့လက္ရွိအသံုးျပဳ ေနသည့္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားအား ပိုး၊ ခ်ည္သား အစရွိသည့္ ပစၥည္းအသစ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ေရာစပ္ရန္ အစီအစဥ္ရွိပါသည္။ ပစၥည္းအသစ္မ်ားထုတ္လုပ္ရန္ အေထာက္အကူျဖစ္ေစသည္သာမက တိုင္းျပည္၏ဂုဏ္သတင္း ကိုလည္း ပိုမိုတိုးတက္ေကာင္းမြန္ေစမည္ ျဖစ္ပါသည္။ ကမၻာအႏွံ ့ရွိလူမ်ားမွ ပစၥည္းေစ်းႏႈန္းအေပၚတြင္ “ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ တြင္ျပဳလုပ္သည္” ဆိုေသာတံဆိပ္ကို ေတြ ့ရွိခ်ိန္တြင္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ ကၽြႏ္ုပ္တို ့သည္ ကမၻာေပၚတြင္ တကယ့္ ကို အေကာင္းဆံုးေသာလက္မႈပညာထြန္းကားရာေနရာေဒသ ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ဟစ္ေၾကြး ႏိုင္သည့္ အဓိိပၸာယ္ ပင္ျဖစ္ပါသည္။

ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ ဤကဲ့သို ့ေသာထုတ္ကုန္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ ၍အေရးသာရသည့္ အေၾကာင္းရင္းကို သင္မည္ကဲ့သို ့ထင္ျမင္ပါသနည္း။
အေရးသာရသည့္အေၾကာင္းမွာ ယခုအခါတြင္ လူအမ်ားမွ ပတ္၀န္းက်င္ကို ထိခိုက္မႈမရွိသည့္ ကုန္ပစၥည္း အေပၚျပန္လည္အေလးသာလာသည့္ အေၾကာင္းရင္းပင္ျဖစ္သည္ဟု ထင္ျမင္မိပါသည္။ ၄င္းတို ့သည္ လက္ျဖင့္ျပဳလုပ္ထားေသာ သဘာ၀က်သည့္၊ အႏုပညာလက္ရာေျမာက္သည့္ ပစၥည္း မ်ားကိုရွာေဖြ အသံုးျပဳလာၾကသည္။ ေျမာက္ျမားစြာေသာသဘာ၀ရင္းျမစ္မ်ားႏွင့္ ကၽြမ္းက်င္သည့္ လက္မႈပညာသည္ မ်ားေၾကာင့္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံမွ အေသအခ်ာပင္အေလးသာေနရျခင္းျဖစ္ပါသည္။ သိသည့္အတိုင္းပင္ တစ္ခ်ိန္ တစ္ခါက္ ဂုန္ေလွ်ာ္ျဖင့္ျပဳလုပ္သည့္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားကို ဆင္းရဲသည့္ႏိုင္ငံမ်ား၏ ပို ့ကုန္ ပစၥည္းမ်ားထင္ျမင္ ယူဆခဲ့ၾကေသာ္လည္း၊ ယခုအခါတြင္ ထိုကဲ့သို ့မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္းကို ကၽြန္မတို ့မွ ထင္ရွားစြာျပခဲ့ျပီး ျဖစ္ပါသည္။

Peakchan မွပံုမ်ားရယူပါသည္။

Issue 36

Apirat Boonruangthaworn, founder and design director of the furniture brand +SENSE, talks to Horizon Thailand about the future of the brand.

Can you tell us about how you created the brand +SENSE?
After working as a freelancer for five to six years, I was introduced to Niran Atisantisilp, owner of a factory that manufacturers products from bronze and brass. He asked me to work with him, and by that time I had enough experience and was ready to explore more. That’s how the brand was established.

What’s the characteristic of the brand?
+SENSE is contemporary outdoor furniture. It’s the combination of Thai craftsmanship and aluminum, known for being sturdy, weather resistant and an enduring material that is suitable to use outdoors.

Read more ...

Issue 37

Ruomwadee Lakakul, marketing and sales director of 4Care talks about the benefits of Thai hom mali rice and the innovative products that have made their way into Thai hospitals around the country.

Can you tell us something about 4Care?                           
The company was founded in 2003 to create quality health food. Our products are made from Thai rice and we have cereal drinks, rice drinks, a coconut cream alternative and non-dairy cooking cream. We have won the merit award at the Rice Innovation Awards from the Thai Rice Foundation and we are certified by the Thailand Trust Mark.

Why did you choose to use Thai rice as an ingredient?                                                              
For our products, we use organic hom mali rice and rice berry from Yasothon province in the northeastern region. We want to encourage more farmers in Thailand to grow organic rice which is better for the environment and for their health in the long-term. Thai farmers shouldn’t rely on chemicals so much.

Which product is made from brown rice?
Our Balance Organic Rice Drink is made from organic Thai rice. It’s gluten, lactose and soy free; great for people with lots of allergies as it’s free from the top eight allergens.

What is the coconut cream alternative made from?
A lot of Thai food has coconut cream, which can contain up to 95% saturated fat. The coconut cream substitute is a healthy natural cooking cream made from rice bran oil and soy protein. The alternative contains four times less saturated fat than traditional coconut cream and has the right balance of fatty acids as well as antioxidants.

What is the feedback from customers so far?
About 90% of all hospitals in Thailand like Rajavithi Hospital and Phra Mongkut Klao Hospital use our coconut cream alternative for Thai food instead of coconut cream. The alternative cream made from rice has no cholesterol, and is certified by the Thai Heart Foundation and the Faculty of Public Health Mahidol University, that it does not increase the risk of heart disease. We have also had very good feedback about other rice products from pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers because the products have no milk or soy and are gluten-free.

What are your plans for the future?
We are an innovative company so we are looking for other grains that can be used to make healthy food alternatives. Now we export 4Care products to Dubai and we already have the Halal certificate. We have also been contacted by importers in Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. For some countries, rice drinks are quite new to them but they trust in the benefits of hom mali rice because the rice is fragrant and considered to be high-quality.

For more information, visit www.4care.co.th

Issue 35

Mosstories designer, Chatkeo Srisuwan, talks to Horizon Thailand about the success of her business and how Thailand is a leader in the fashion industry.

How did you get into the fashion business?
It all started as a hobby. I have always been interested in designing accessories, and, together with my friends, we started selling them on a roadside stand. Soon, we had many customers and that led me to establish the brand Mosstories in 2006. We opened our first two stores in the Jatujak Weekend Market and Suanlum Night Bazaar. Later we opened at Zen department store and Siam Square. We started selling accessories first then expanded the product line to clothing, bags and shoes in 2007. The feedback was really positive, and I decided to pursue my education in fashion and design in order to improve my knowledge of clothing, bags and footwear.

What challenges did you face when you first started?
It was all about management systems. Personally, I think most designers would focus on their products rather than having a good operational system in place, and I can only say it is crucial to have an effective management system to ensure that the business operates smoothly from production to marketing and selling.

What sets your brand apart from your competitors?
I’d say uniqueness and the style. Most of my products have stories behind them hence they have originality. They are a mixture of various raw products and crafted with detail. The inspiration to create items comes from many things, such as travel, art, architecture, culture and people. In addition, we have a variety of products to cater to the demands of different customer groups.

Who are your main customers?
At first, we thought it would be teenagers and working people but the trend has changed and we can now say that it’s about lifestyle rather than age. Mosstories’s customers show a sense of self-confidence, are unique and want to be different from the crowd.

What are your main export markets?
Our international customers are mostly from Asia. Currently we export to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

How do you maintain the quality of your products?
The business started with me selling products directly to customers, which gave me a chance to obtain direct feedback from them. They let me know what they liked and what kind of products they are looking for. Each time we come out with something new, we think whether the products will meet customers’ needs. Often I test the products on myself to ensure the quality, for instance, I try on new footwear to see if it is comfortable enough.

What are the strengths of the Thai fashion industry?
Thailand has so many advantages compared to neighbouring countries. Firstly, we have an abundance of natural resources, which certainly helps reduce manufacturing costs and enhances production capability. Secondly, Thai designers are extremely creative and they are encouraged to show their talent through their work. Lastly, skilled craftsmanship – Thai designers adopt a detail-oriented approach at each stage of their work from designing to manufacturing the products.

For more information, visit www.mosstories.com