His future partner, in comparison, was” a very attentive and diligent learner” with whom he’d struck up a dialogue after showing her his PalmPilot. The marketing disciplines were both betrayed by the same northern star, noughties flex away. Having studied selling aspirations for a living, they’d sold themselves the desire of starting their own business.
Therefore, when a colleague approached them to buy steam cleaners for payment, they swooped in on the present.
” We’re mad risk-takers. We told ourselves,’ What have you got to lose? If it does n’t work out, then let’s get a job'”, recalled Ng.
They poured down their overall savings of S$ 2, 000 each to template SuperSteam, a reseller of specialist cleaning equipment and chemicals, while bristling with enthusiasm or, depending on your general view, foolhardyness. They conducted the appropriate research, rehearsed their ball and cast off into the lumbering, pavement pounding unidentified of revenue demonstrations.
Although there were initial successes, refusal and experience sucked out from moving heavy equipment up flights of stairs were all part of a week job.
” We occupied a vehicle at S$ 50 per day, which was all the wealth we had, but we often skipped breakfast to get petrol”, recounted Ng. Students ‘ classmates expressed surprise at their decision to live in a used van and eschew the comfortable corporate world.
They were forced to relocate their business from an office to the mother’s door at the height of their initial problems. But the few plugged aside at their income spiels however, boosted by friendly relatives, friends and strangers who purchased their items. Finally, they changed tack, targeting corporate customers such as food producers instead of individual consumers. They consulted closely with customers to understand their needs, traveled to boost their products collection, and began developing cleaning chemicals in order to gain a leg up on established competition. The latter is a procedure Ng described as difficult, creative and equivalent to” cooking meat soup”.