Businesses all around the world have suffered great losses because of COVID-19.
But events companies? No gathering of people means no events. It’s not just a loss. It’s practically dead.
It’s so bad that one events companies boss had to start folding pizza boxes to pay off his S$100,000 a month costs for rental and manpower.
But what if? What if you just changed the entire business? Like…
Selling Durians
The bosses of Trueevents, an event organiser that… organises events (duh) like team building, Chinese New Year Luncheons, brand activations, did exactly that from 30 May.
In their interview with SGSME, Fang Wei Xiang, 31, said in Mandarin, “Since the coronavirus outbreak, events companies had become a sunset industry, and we needed to look for alternatives to survive. Two years ago, we organised a durian buffet for a Halloween event to great success. Since then we had wanted to sell durians.”
Yep. Just like that, he and his partner, Lin Zhen Yuan, 32, started selling durians under a new business name, Durian Lobang King, which specialises in Mao Shan Wang.
As much as I would like to say this was a hit and they fully transitioned to a durian seller, not quite. Remember, they only just started.
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Faced Many Challenges
For one, they couldn’t hire any durian handlers from Malaysia, so they had to learn to choose and open durians on their own.
Later, they discovered that half of their daily stock of 240kg of durians were not ripe, causing losses of over a thousand dollars.
Why? Cause they realised that suppliers will give better durians to familiar merchants. It is only when another senior helped them that their supply issue was resolved.
From their experience organising events, they have made countless friends and influencers which helped gave their business the initial boost.
And if that thought that this is just a single occurrence, you’re wrong.
WTS Travel & Tours Are Selling Durians and Foodstuff Too
That’s right. WTS Travel & Tours had their business plunge by 90% because of COVID-19, and their boss Xie Qu Cong decided to sell foodstuffs online too.
The travel agency had found a durian supplier from Malaysia, and is expected to start selling them on the app “Pingo” this month. They are also planning to offer delivery services, utilising their travel drivers and buses.
Previously, they had retrenched nearly 40 Malaysian employees. With their change in business, they will now consider rehiring those employees and giving them training.
What’s going on? We had a boss who started folding pizza boxes, and then Wang Lei, a getai legend selling seafood, and now two more started selling durians?
Why is it all food-related?
But seeing as they just started, we have to wait and see whether they are successful.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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