Creative Idea Powerhouse

My flight to LA was schedule at 10pm monday, 1st March Philippines local time – Philippines Airline PR102 direct from Manila to LA. This is my first trip to USA and a trip that I long been waiting for. A remarkable memory for me not only because of my first trip to US but also means we finally bring Platform2u.com into this country.

We reach the airport at 8.15pm and it took us longer than we schedule to check in our lugages, and when we are in the departure hall it is already 9.05pm and we are still with empty stomatch. After a quick meal, and I really love this pao thinggy sold in Manila airport, taste good!

We end up to be the last 5 person who board the aircraft, and what shocked me is, the seats were nearly 99% full. Our seats number 61A and 61B were just beside the Exit of the aircraft. Thanks to the helpful cabin crew, we manage to get to change our seats with a lady.

The 12 hours flight was summary into a meal and a breakfast; 3 movie Shows – twilight – new moon; It is it- MJ; and 2012, and of course plenty of sleeping hours. The seats of Philippines Air comes slightly smaller compare to Malaysia Airlines, make me realize that somehow our Malaysian style is way beter than others in many sense.

We touched down at LA int. Airports at local time 6.45pm 1st March and everything is so smooth sailing. Our partner in US were outside the arrival hall to welcome our arrival and drive us to Brea.

We have our dinner at Cheesecake Factory at Brea and I must say that this is one of the awesome restaurant here. The food, the environment, and even the people working in the restaurant are nice, and what’s more the price of the food is pretty much close to the price of our Malaysia standard. Three of us all ordered the Miso Salmon, and it is perfectly cook with miso source and taste great for our Asian.

We have a long chat after dinner, partly focus on business strategies, as well as sharing from Dr. Ola about the USA market outlook from his experiences with this marketplace. We have a great 2 hours dinner time spent fruitfully, and yummy!

We checked in at Embassy Hotel Brea and this bring another good experience for me about LA trip. It is really a blessing for me all these while in our entrepreneurship journey. Most often we heard entrepreneurs share their painful and difficulties face in oversea expansion. I have to really thanks god and also my beloving partners for all these initial setup that make our oversea expansion become so easy. Starting from April Y2009 we launched SMilDS.com in Malaysia; we already establish ourselves in total 3 countries including Hong Kong (May 09) and Philippines (Jul 09). In Y2010, our expansion plan include China, Taiwan, and of course US and that is why my first trip here to prepare for all our initial setup.

Well I missed my Jetlack experience.. Thanks to yummy and delicious dinner in Cheesecake Factory, and of course kinda lots of preparation for tomorrow onwards make me can’t wait to jump in and zzz.. Of cos the nice hotel also part of the reason for me to enroll myself into it so much!

Until then, will continue updates my 10 days journey here in US. Cheers!

Master Card recently published a study paper on Asia Consumer Confidence Index. Out of all the major developing and developed countries in Asia, Japan is one of the country that suffer badly from the economy downturn, follow by South Korea. It is understandable that these two countries required more time to recover. However, one of the surprising fact is that Philippines also suffered badly and been the country after Japan, to have negative consumer confidence level among the other countries. Out of the survey conducted, Filipino response on the job employment with 43% response that employment in Philippines is getting worse. Is this the real fact, or the after effect of Typhoon Ondoy causing the people who did the survey feel hopeless and helpless and response with such negative result? As my observation from my stay in Manila during past 3 months, I noticed that the Pinoy spending power is much stronger compare to our Malaysia market. Their earning is 30% lower compare to Malaysiabut their spending power is either equal or even higher then our people working in KLCC area! Average spending per meal in Makati is approximately RM30 per person on average, and the occupation of their restaurant is mostly 80% full!

Is this a signal that Philippines require more time to recover? the people are lossing confident on overall job market? or the pinoy is waiting for the new president in this coming election to make a change to their living standard? Is it a good sign from economic point of view as more opportunities will arise in Philippines in next 3 years? Or otherwise? Worth a moment or two to think about it.

When we conceptualizing our solution initially, the SMilDS.com is design as a pure e-commerce trading platform that build in CRM, payment gateway, and logistic. It never be different than rakuten, taobao or yahoo can provide except we have the cross selling engine, which is our killer apps.

We know we needs to be lots more unique, special, outstanding and innovative in order to stand out from this battle of e-commerce. It is a cyber trading battle and we are new, we can be attacked by any big giant from all kinds of tactics, or backdoor without us realizing it. Yeap this is the real world..

After going back to the traditional business school 101 toolbox and dig out the swat tool, our only differentiation is our strategy in positioning ourselves correctly, south east Asia where the e-commerce marketplace are still green. That will also enable us to buy time to learn the market before we get ourselves over expand and get into trouble like alibaba did before during the early day of Y2000.

With this, our next target marketplaces will be focus in s.e. Asia countries, taking 3 years to build ourselves to be the largest e-commerce platform in all the countries we have presence.

In term of our Strategies on e-commerce, we will fully focus on building the new generation of social e-commerce, a e-trading engine that enable our young entrepreneurs to venture into e-commerce with little investment and risks free.

Tapping into the social network we have in the market currently, it is a perfectly match that enable more young people to start their entrepreneur journey in young age.

Looking at our next generation who have been eat, sleep, and get entertain by internet, social e-commerce will be the next new thing for us to look on.

Been in the middle of design, redesign, engineering and reengineering the concept of a complete eco-system of e-Commerce for the past 2 months, and finally we got something interesting out. The new system, leverage of alot of the social e-commerce model, will soon, in our believe, a pretty strong tool to help merchants to have a solid presence when they get online via SMilDS.com

The next thing, is to get ourselves into business, the stage of ‘Go to Market’ model. This is very crucial, as we can have the cutting edge product, patterned pending IP, or even the all in one – one stop solution, but we do not have a solid marketing strategy, we are doom. So for the past 2 weeks, we are basically putting ourselves inside a self-developed black box and try to think and act outside the box.

We have our target laid down, we have our key indicators drawn on the board and every one agreed on the exciting figure. Next, we start to get into the working sheet. Deep details into execution. First of all, is our branding and tagline, as Guy Kawasaki used to said, coming out with a mantra … what and how we want our people to associate us when they listen, or they see our branding or logo?

We had gone through a series of 3 days multi-channel brainstorming. From smilds here smilds there to smilds up smilds down, some c&p event to clone the others tag … such as below:

1. SMILDS.COM – Priceless
2. SMILDS unlimited
3. Smilds my lover

However, come to the last stage, we finalize our tag and mantra to SMILDS everyday. For our staffs, for our agents, for our merchants, for our partners, and for our customers and consumers.

Right at the last countdown for Y2008, the Internetnews.com published a shocking new about Microsoft is laying off the underperforming business units. The layoff is around 10% – 17% of the staff forces in Microsoft. If true, the cuts would be the first “official” layoffs in Microsoft’s history — blunting a point that the company has always pointed to as a matter of pride.

According to Internetnews.com, the rumor is originated from Microsoft insider from Blog @ Mini Microsoft. The rumor also raise that the layoff will likely to take place during CES, looking at date of 15 Jan, 09. Enderle said that if Microsoft goes through with the rumored cuts, he expected to see the ax fall hardest in areas that are underperforming, such as units of the Entertainment and Devices Division and the Online Business Division. Granted that Entertainment and Devices, headed by president Robbie Bach, has the profitable Xbox game consoles, it also has the Zune music player, a serious underperformer in Microsoft’s portfolio.