Issue 25

The new executive director of the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce is determined to make his chamber more responsive to its members’ requirements.

With so many chambers of commerce in Bangkok, it would appear a thankless task to make one chamber stand out from the rest. However, this is precisely what Carsten Jens Carlstedt decided to take on last November when he assumed the role of executive director for the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce.

Founded in June 1992, DanCham was the first Danish chamber of commerce in Southeast Asia. Now the chamber has 104 corporate members, including global brewing multinational Carlsberg, but according to Carlstedt the majority are Danish SMEs involved in banking, hotels and restaurants, as well as a number of professionals, such as lawyers. There are also 25 individual members. However, at the beginning of 2014, the chamber had 125 corporate members.

Carlstedt accepts that re-building the chamber’s membership base is a “challenge.” But the former handball coach, who came to Thailand initially as country manager for Danish organisation PERIAMMA, which supports parents in Surin province so that their children do not have to work on the streets is clearly not someone to shirk a challenge.

“Mostly we support Danish companies working in Thailand,” he says. “But in the future we might also help Thai companies to get in contact with producers in Denmark or other European companies. But our main purpose is to support and develop networking between Thai and Danish companies in Thailand.”

With a small membership-base compared with other chambers, Carlstedt places a high importance on inter-chamber cooperation. “The first half of the year we are holding a lot of common events together with the Nordic countries, but on top of that we are also working together with the big chambers such as Germany, France and Italy,” he says. “It’s a kind of give and take.”

However, Carlstedt believes the key part of his role is to go out and find out what his members want from the chamber. “We would like to promote the companies more and to listen to them more, and maybe get the companies to sponsor some events, and profile them on the homepage,” he says. The latter is a key part of his strategy for transforming the chamber.

Carlstedt wants to use the chamber’s website more, including producing monthly newsletters. “Every month we will promote two or three companies and make a profile of them to support their marketing,” he says.

Membership of the Danish-Thai Chamber of Commerce is open to anyone who has a Danish connection. It organises 20 events each year including networking meetings and breakfast meetings including key speakers on specialist issues. At the next breakfast on April 21, there will be a seminar on cyber security. The largest social gatherings are at Easter and Christmas, when around 200 guests gather in the gardens of the Danish Embassy.

For more information, visit: http://www.dancham.or.th

Words by Mark Bibby Jackson