A quick Google search revealed a long list of complaints and allegations that the company is running a pyramid scheme that has left many poorer and worse off than before they joined.

In 2014, the Direct Selling Association of Malaysia (DSAM) received at least five complaints and enquiries about the company’s legitimacy.

The e-mails and calls were about the company’s modus operandi in recruiting members.

DSAM executive director Lawrence Cheah said these were forwarded to the Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism for further action.

“Unfortunately, the lack of black and white proof makes it difficult for the authorities to act. Most aren’t willing to lodge a formal complaint and testify if it ends up in court,” he said.

“Those who have contacted us say they were asked to invest multiple sums of money which can amount to 20,000 ringgit (US$5,000) or more, were guaranteed returns and told that they would be paid for recruiting others.

“DSAM is a member of the World Federation of Direct Selling Asso­ciations. Among our members, we practise self-regulation based on our globally recognised and Minis­try of Domestic Trade-endorsed Code of Conduct.

“As the company is not our member, we can only assist the ministry by forwarding the complaints,” he said.

Cheah said “starter kits” for legit companies were usually below 200 ringgit and forcing a new member to buy stock or invest was illegal.

Getting paid to recruit is also strictly against the law.

“Members can only earn from sales profits and commissions from the sale of products,” he added.

Malaysian Direct Distribution Association (MDDA) president Rosedy Issa confirmed that the company was licensed by the ministry and is a member of the association.

“We’ve received enquiries about whether this company is legal,” he said, adding that the company’s licence – issued in 2013, expires in August this year.

After being alerted by Sunday Star, a sub-committee was set up to investigate the allegations, he said.

He advised the public to check with the ministry, the MDDA and DSM on whether a company is genuine before joining.

“We take public complaints very seriously because the bad hats give the industry a bad name,” Rosedy said.

The ministry is said to be still monitoring the company although recent investigations showed its business was legitimate.

On April 20 this year, the authorities found that the company’s marketing plan was in line with licensing terms and all its marketed products had been approved, the ministry said in an e-mail response.

“However, the company is still being monitored. An inspection will be carried out when it applies to renew its licence which expires in August,” it said.

To date, no renewal application has been submitted.

US$1 = 4 ringgit as of 7/10/2016 via oanda.com

The L’Amour room is one of six screening rooms in the newly inaugurated US$4- $5 million CGV Liberty Hoàng Van Thu cinema in HCM City’s Tân Bình District.

Entry is VND600,000 (US$27) for two adults for one 1.6-metre-wide bed and a drink and snack each.

Dong Won Kwak, CEO of CGV Vietnam, said the L’Amour room was designed for couples and young families.

Vietnamese movies as well as foreign films will be screened there.

CGV has opened 34 cinemas with a total of 223 screening rooms and 31,703 seats in Vietnam.

Of the cinemas, there are two IMAX screening rooms, two Dolby Atmos screening rooms, four 4DX rooms, six GOLD CLASS, one STARIUM LASER and one L’Amour room with world-class standards.

Tell us little more about your company.

The company was founded in 1977 by my father and few partners. Back then, it focused on traditional wood crafting and labour-intensive carpentry works.

During the 1980s, the economic boom and rapid industrialisation resulted in strong demand for furniture. Hence, we started manufacturing open-plan office furniture.

Now we design our furniture according to customers’ needs, and produce it in our factories in Singapore and Malaysia.

Is this family-run business?

I have two siblings but I am the only one in the business. I developed an interest in the furniture industry only in 2009, after working for another firm in the same industry.

I felt that I could help this industry and my company to grow.

My siblings have their own businesses.

How do you stand out from others in the industry?

In other people’s minds, the furniture industry is dying trade. For us, we would like to serve tomor- row’s needs. Our products are not the grab-and-go kind.

We have our full range of products, concepts and experts (designers and sales consultants) to design and produce them for our customers. Also, our company produces different products compared to the system furniture produced by other firms. System furniture is usually modular machine-made components, assembled like Lego blocks.

For us, we integrate carpentry skills and ideas into our furniture. For example, we use vinyl, mate- rial usually used in carpentry, to build our workstations and cabinets. We have the skills, the people and the machinery to do so. The majority of my production team is trained in carpentry.

What is the demand for your products like?

There will always be demand for carpentry furniture. However, manufacturing carpentry furniture is quite labour-intensive and incurs high costs so it may be less popular than system furniture.

On the other hand, carpentry furniture may be more classy and complicated than system furniture. Hence, firms may prefer to integrate the two for important rooms such as meeting rooms and boardrooms.

This is where we come into the picture. We integrate carpentry and system furniture to provide cost savings, and greater range of products.

How is the company doing and what are some challenges you face?

Revenue grew by more than 12 per cent each year between 2011 and last year. We recorded sales of $19 million last year, about 80 per cent of which came from local sales and 20 per cent from exports.

One challenge is that carpentry work is labour-intensive, and the Government is less encouraging about labour-intensive industries.

However, we are still able to cope with labour needs because only around 25 per cent of our products require carpentry work. For the long term, we may move our carpentry department to Malaysibecause costs are lower there.

There are also limitations to expansion in terms of volume and revenue if we just function in Singapore. Hence, we’re expanding our businesses overseas. In the past year, we have opened several sales offices and manufacturing plants in Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia. We have around 150 staff in total.

The greatest challenge, however, lies in attracting talent to join my team. Many people consider the industry sunset industry and are unwilling to join us.

But recently, we see change in the mentality of fresh graduates. I think the most important thing is to explain to them what we intend to do and how the company can grow.

What does business continuity management (BCM) mean to you?

BCM serves as guideline for all employees to work towards. Ultimately, we wouldn’t know when there is risk, and if our procedures are adequate to meet it.

By giving our customers sense of assurance that we know what to do when things happen, we are not only giving them the physical furniture, but are also assuring them on what to expect when challenges surface.

The requirements and expectations involved in BCM require lot of different departments to work together. It is about teamwork.

Most SMEs are usually too preoccupied with the day-to-day running of the company to worry about BCM.

Yes, the day-to-day operations are hectic enough. Yet, as the saying goes, “no man is an island”. It is important that everyone shares common understanding of what to do when there is risk.

In fact, the staff are more responsible when they interact with customers after the BCM. They are well aware that they cannot face challenges alone, and focus on teamwork to get the job done.

What has the company implemented since joining the programme?

We have improved our sharing network with our sales offices in various countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines). We have set up cloud to share company updates. This protects us from cyber attacks and unforeseen personal emergency leave because every document on the cloud is tracked.

This also serves as an update of our offices’ work.

What are some of your company’s future plans?

We have budgeted about $2 million for the expansion of our plant. We plan to double the size of our factory in Malaysito manufacture more goods for export. We are working closely with International Enterprise Singapore on this.

We are also developing furniture for collaborative areas in the office – soft furnishing. We want to create work-and-play environment, and bring to our customers the “happy office people” concept.

For now, we are piloting this in our own offices.

Our new direction is to create furniture that is open- concept, boosts interaction, and is eco-friendly. To be visionary, it is workplace of the future.

From candidates applying nation-wide, the programme will select 45 trainees by August to take part in the year-long training from October.

The professional training will combine academic and on-the-job coaching programmes by the supermarket’s senior executives and experienced lecturers from leading management training centres.

Besides a full scholarship, trainees will also be provided a monthly allowance and subsidies for lunch and transport, accommodation for those hailing from outside the city, voluntary health and accident insurance, and others.

This is the fifth year of the programme.

According to Big C, the country’s retail industry has developed strongly in recent years, leading to high demand for human resources, especially in management positions, but there are no schools providing training in this field.

The index is trade-weighted and tracks international market prices for the cereals, vegetable oils, dairy, meat and sugar commodity groups.

For June, the index averaged 163.4 points, up 4 per cent or 6.7 points from the 156.7 points recorded in May.

The index was also now 1 per cent below the 164.9 points reached in June 2015.

Even then, the FAO said there were prospects for improved food production for the year ahead.

Earlier this week, the FAO and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the world had likely seen the end to a period of high agricultural prices, but vigilance was needed as the probability of a major price swing remained high.

The OECD and the FAO said in their Agricultural Outlook 2016-2025 report that inflation-adjusted agricultural commodity prices were expected to remain “relatively flat overall” in the next 10 years.

“Although we are now witnessing a period of lower agricultural prices, we need to remain alert as changes in markets can take place rapidly,” OECD secretary general Angel Gurria said in a statement.

“The key priority for governments in the current context is to implement policies that will increase agricultural productivity in a coherent and sustainable way,” Gurria said. “Getting our agricultural policies right is critical to end hunger and undernourishment in the decades to come.”

The report shows that, globally, the increased demand for food and feed for a growing and more affluent population was projected to be mostly met through productivity gains.

Mitsubishi has a 93 per cent stake in MC Biotech. It said Tokyo-based seafood producer Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd has a seven per cent stake in MC Biotech and will be responsible for producing and exporting the dried biomass to Japan.

“Astaxanthin is an antioxidant used as a health food supplement and as a raw material for cosmetics and natural food coloring. Global demand for astaxanthin, which is highly regarded for its health benefits, has seen phenomenal growth in recent years, particularly in the US, Japanese, Southeast Asian, and Chinese markets,” Mitsubishi said.

Haematococcus algae is a fresh water weed which when exposed to ultraviolet rays turns from green to red due to the formation of astaxanthin which provides protection to the cell.

“Brunei, where the cultivation factory is located, has optimal conditions for cultivating the Haematococcus algae, including an adequate supply of sunlight and water,” Mitsubishi said.

After the astaxanthin is extracted from the dried biomass in Japan, Mitsubishi said another partner Biogenic Co, Ltd—health and beauty products manufacturer—will market the final products.

Mitsubishi said MC Biotech has been working, with Brunei government’s support, to implement a pioneering project in BIC, an industrial park set up to attract halal and bio-industry related investments to the sultanate.

“Through the stable operation of this new project, which seeks to make good use of rich microbial resources available in Brunei while maintaining utmost consideration for safety and the environment, MC Biotech aims to contribute to the diversification of industry, the creation of employment and the development of human resources in Brunei,” Mitsubishi said.

The company said it has a long presence in Brunei, noting that it has been buying LNG from the sultanate for over 40 years.

Mitsubishi said setting up MC Biotech in BIC will help strengthen the trade relations between Japan and Brunei.

Starting in September last year, the government has issued 12 economic policy packages to boost the business climate and attract investment, including by cutting red tape and providing incentives for certain sectors. These efforts are expected to stoke growth in the country’s economy, which slowed to a six-year low of 4.79 percent in 2015.

As of May this year, the government has completed 194 of the total 203 regulations required to support its packages, including both new and revised rules. “The regulations are needed as those policies need a legal basis,” Rosan said.

Meanwhile, Kadin recently submitted evaluation materials for all the packages to the government to ensure a clearer framework.

Rosan said that Kadin had in its evaluation particularly praised a policy to provide three-hour licensing services for new investors in special economic zones and the revision of the negative investment list (DNI) to allow for more foreign ownership in select sectors, which he said had had immediate and concrete benefits for businesspeople.

Home-grown firm Strontium Technology started out producing memory modules for PCs, before moving on to become a PC and flash memory manufacturer, but now its ambitions have a global reach.

The dream is to have its corporate logo – which was revamped in 2010 and is a stylised silhouette of an elephant – be instantly recognisable in 100 countries by 2020.

President and chief executive Vivian Singh set the goal last year, and wanted to start by entering five countries in Europe, but said it was not easy.

“The challenges for any new market are the same – finding the right customers, finding the right staff for business development, and allocating funds for business expansion,” he said.

It was a boon that IE Singapore was there to help.

The agency provided Strontium with a subsidy to participate in two trade shows, Distree APAC (Asia- Pacific) in 2013 and Distree EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) in 2014.

The firm has attended both events every year since, also with IE’s support.

Distree is a major infocomm and communications technology (ICT) and consumer electronics event that is held in several regions around the world annually.

Singh noted how the IE team in Germany, for instance, followed up with potential customers it had met at the trade show, and even introduced new customers to Strontium in Germany, Poland and France. “The IE teams in Europe understood our products and then arranged meetings with potential customers in Distree EMEA.”

He said participating in the Distree events has allowed the firm to meet many existing and new customers.

“Meeting with existing customers helped to increase business with them, and we added at least 10 new customers in Europe who are buying regularly.”

The firm now sells its products in 45 countries, mostly in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, up from 30 last year.

Singh added: “A lot of the new countries we started selling to this year are in Africa, where we see increasing demand for our products.”

Strontium has also been participating in IE’s Global Company Partnership programme since March. The programme grooms globally competitive companies by helping them develop their manpower, access markets and providing access to financing.”(IE has) also introduced many customers, bankers, investors and government agencies in the last two to three years,” Singh added.

All this support has been crucial as Strontium has had to keep reinventing itself to keep up with a rapidly changing market.

“PC sales started to slow down in 2009, which is when we moved from dynamic random access memory (DRAM) products to flash products like microSD cards and USB drives.”

The firm also had to change the way it sold products.

“We were selling DRAM products to PC manufacturers, system integrators, and DIY channels to other businesses, but flash products needed a focus on retail and e-commerce, which is selling to consumers.”

In 2008, DRAM products contributed 5 per cent of Strontium’s revenue, while flash products contributed 95 per cent. Now the ratio has reversed.

Singh said that the firm is expecting a turnover of $375 million this year, about 20 per cent more than last year, and by 2020, the aim is to grow that to more than $500 million.

Strontium expects the market to change again, which is why it has a “road map” of products.

The firm is designing external solid-state drives (SSDs) – which are faster and more reliable than conventional hard drives as they do not have moving parts – and has already ventured into wearable technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT).

It will release smart jewellery, under a label named Ivy, in India at the end of this month or early August. The jewellery will be able to connect women to their friends and family via SOS messages, for instance, in emergencies.

IE also introduced Strontium to firms in other sectors that sell through similar distribution channels, to learn how to use its brand and channels to create new products.

“For IoT products, there was a lot of preparation. It took us nine months to understand the new technologies, hire staff with prerequisite skills, hire research and development and mobile app companies in India and Taiwan, find new suppliers and factories, and to make the first prototypes for testing.

“One of our senior executives moved out from Strontium to focus completely on IoT products.”

Singh added that he expects IoT products to contribute at least 10 per cent of total revenue in 2018, and maybe 95 per cent seven years from now.