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News Tuesday August 18, 2009

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By STEVEN PATRICK
Software
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Small businesses are gaining from harnessing the power of the
PDAs Internet.
Digi/Video cams
Audio Players WE HAVE all heard of young,
Games premium-coffee-drinking urbanites
Features making a living on e-Bay. But if you
Opinions journey into the depths of tree-filled
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rural Malaysia, you’ll find a few
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unlikely individuals aged over 40
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who are also using the Internet to
run a successful business. Car Rental Kuala Lumpur Economic Growth
Fryer Basket Ahu Malaysia
Pau Furniture Indonesia
Housewife Musringah Iman, 52, is Small Business How to Write a Business Plan
Handicrafts Enterprise Vietnam
one such individual. She has been
selling pau for the past 20 years.
And her business has enjoyed an
exponential growth in recent years
NETTING CUSTOMERS: Musringah has a
thanks to the Internet. thriving pau business, thanks to the
Internet.

She started making and selling pau

from her home in Sabak Bernam more than a decade ago.

“I started in an upstairs room and with just RM50 as capital. It was a side
income to cocoa farming,” she told In.Tech.

Her 60-year-old husband, Mohd Nor Mosnan, who is supportive of his

wife’s efforts, was by her side.

Musringah said making and selling pau resulted in a modest side-income

for her until 2002, when the Government started an outreach programme
to introduce computers and the Web to rural folk, as well as cottage
industries.

Under the programme, she (with the help of her daughter-in-law) learned
how to set up a website to introduce her pau to a wider market. She
accessed her site from several PCs that had been set up in the village
community centre.

Her daughter-in-law, Siti Nariwa, who lives in Shah Alam, did most of the
work to build the website and also maintains it.

Surge in orders

As a result of that move, the pace of both life and business sped up for
Musringah because customers from other states began to take interest in
her speciality.

“All of a sudden, I had customers coming from Perak, which borders

Sabak Bernam. There would also be busloads of people coming to buy
my pau from other nearby areas,” she said.

“I had to stop working from my room. We had to build a 20 x 23ft kitchen

on our land to handle the extra orders, and now that’s become a 20 x 30ft
area which incorporates a storage space,” she said.

Musringah admits that she is still not very Internet-savvy and prefers to
leave the running of her website to daughter-in-law.

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“I work late seven days a week. I have no time now to even maintain my
accounting records on the PC. Also, the phone never stops ringing. So, I
am always calling up my daughter-in-law for help,” she said with a laugh.

She has seven workers to help her make the pau but she’s still finding it
hard to cope with the demand. On top of that, a hypermarket in Klang is
asking her to supply hundreds of pau monthly. “I don’t have the storage
space or manpower to handle that now, but we will see how it goes,” she
said.

“When I first started, I used to sell 500 pau per month, now I sell 5,000
easily thanks to the Internet. There are plenty of times when I can’t keep
up with demand,” she said.

Big business

Musringah and her husband run a full-fledged pau-making company

called MusPau Sdn Bhd (http://mustikahatient.blogstarz.my), which sells
redbean, kaya and other flavoured pau in bulk to resellers who then move
the product to coffeeshops nationwide.

MusPau also supplies pau direct to the Sultan Idris Shah Polytechnic and
the Integrated Boarding School near Musringah’s home. “Besides that, we
also get walk-in customers. The work never ends,” she said.

Musringah, who has been in Wanita Umno for the past 20 years, is proud
that her pau have made it to London for Umno members there.

“I think that one of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s sons has
also had my pau over there. But I’m not sure which one,” she laughed.

Orang asli handicraft

Musringah is not the only rural entrepreneur to leverage on the power of

the Internet to sell wares. Even some indigenous people — the Orang Asli
— are now making and selling handicraft on the Web via a specialist
website, Elevyn.com.

It is one of several websites that enable such communities to earn a living

using modern-day technology to push olden-day trinkets.

Mike Tee, the site’s founder, said: “Out of the seven cybershops on the
site, two are by indigenous tribes.

“We offer handicraft made by the Mah Meri community from Carey Island
in Klang and the Rungus people in Sabah.”

"The aim is to allow these rural entrepreneurs to set up online shops and
encourage the buyers to deal directly with them,” Tee said.

UNIQUE: Some of the handicrafts sold on Elevyn.com.

Elevyn.com offers a wide range of handicraft, such as necklaces, scarves

and other fashion accessories, amongst the usual decorative baskets and
silk paintings.

The handicraft is made by women who want to provide a secondary

income for their family which live off the land.

Marching forth

Maznah Anak Unyan, 41, from the Mah Meri tribe, just started her online
handicraft business about five months ago.

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get orders from as far away as the United States,” she said.

Maznah has been making baskets for 10 years as a subsidiary income to

designing “daun atap” traditional roofs for customers in her village.
Named Kampung Orang Asli Sungai Bumbun, the village is home to
about 300 residents.

“At present this is just a part-time job but who knows what it will amount to
in a few years time, now that I am selling my wares in other countries,”
she said.

The products that craftsmen like Maznah sell range in price from US$3.50
(RM12.40) for a necklace to US$20 (RM70.8) for a basket.

To ensure that these online shops also benefit the indigenious people, 5%
of every sale automatically goes to a community project fund.

To be able to sell handicraft on the Elevyn website, each virtual shop

must be linked to a cause. “For example, we hope to raise RM1,800 to
help elderly members of the Tompoq Topah tribe on Carey Island,” Tee
said.

Causes and projects are submitted by community leaders or the non-

governmental organisations looking out for the various tribes.

Starting small

Communities that set up virtual shops on the Elevyn.com website must

also have access to a post office and a cellphone or PC with Internet
access, with which to receive product orders.

“We don’t keep inventory — orders are sent directly to the craftsmen who
will make the goods and mail them out,” Tee said. “We have had orders
from Norway and the United States.”

There are currently about 200 craftsmen producing and selling handicrafts
on Elevyn.com, which was launched late last year.

The sales volume is still very low and at present it’s not going to be a life-
changing experience for the craftsmen, according to Tee. “But the
potential is clear and we like a challenge. We want to open more virtual
shops, showcase more of our products, and pull more customers to the
site,” he said.

In the past, the craftsmen had to wait for customers to come all the way to
them; with the Web, they can go meet their customers halfway ... in
cyberspace.

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