A whole generation of Singaporeans grew up with the name Yeo Hiap Seng. It slaked their thirst, was the next best thing to a home-cooked meal and was very much a part of their lives. The success of that name is the fruit of one-man's entrepreneurial prowess - Alan Yeo - who built a multinational from a soya sauce factory. TAN LIAN CHOO talks to the man behind the phenomenon.
He gave many Singaporeans their first commercially bottled non-alcoholic, non-frizzy home brews: soya bean milk, chrysanthemum tea, herb tea and sugar cane juice.
First sold in glass bottles, they later came in cans, then later still in Swedish-patented paper cartons called 'tetra briks'.
Fifty-six today, Mr Alan Yeo, Chairman and Managing Director of Yeo Hiap Seng, steers one of Singapore's most successful export companies and personifies what the Trade Development Board (TDB) hopes it can help every Singaporean entrepreneur achieve one day.
'We grew with the Singapore economy. For instance, when the shipbuilding and construction industries were doing well, consumption of our drinks just soared. But today, it's down,' says Mr Yeo, who was appointed the TDB's chairman in early November.
A super food-and-drinks salesman, Mr Yeo has ceaselessly developed his company's overseas markets. Now he brings to the TDB his acquired international expertise, having overseen the transformation of his company from a rudimentary soya sauce factory to a multinational food and beverage firm.
Mr Yeo attributes his company's initial success to finding a market niche, the kind of commercial breakthough which the TDB knows is indispensable for any hopeful Singapore entrepreneur.
'In the 1950s, we looked around and saw all the simple local foods and drinks which we could commercialise. We found a market niche. The chicken curry and sambal udang which we started canning in 1950 is still very popular in Singapore homes today,' he says.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry believes Mr Yeo can help the TDB in its effort to identify and promote new markets and growth niches for local exporters.
Associated with the TDB since April 1985, when he was appointed deputy chairman as one of giving guidance and doind some public relations for Singapore exporters.
'I have not yet thought out any grandiose plan of action for it,' says Mr Yeo, a modest, soft-spoken man. He notes that the three-year-old board functions smoothly.
Mr Yeo is no newcomer to promoting Singapore trade abroad, having led, in 1965, the Republic's first trade mission to East Africa.
As chairman of the Singapore Manufacturers' Association in 1965, a member of the Economic Development Board from 1964 to 1965 and chairman of the then Singapore Telephone Board in 1966, he joined several other trade delegations during Singapore's early industrialisation.
He was awarded the Pingat Bakti Masyarakat (Public Service Medal) in 1969.
A Singapore-born entrepreneur who played a major role in modernising his family's business, Mr Yeo, a British-trained food chemist, took over as managing director in 1969, when the company was first listed and traded on the Singapore and Malaysian Stock Exchanges. Later he succeeded his late father as chairman in 1985.
Today. Yeo Hiap Seng's ethnic food products give pride to any travelling Singaporean who sees them on a foreign supermarket shelf. Outside the region, the company sells its ethnic food products in Hongkong, the United States, the European Common Market countries and Australia.
Over the last two decades, its overseas sales have contributed to Singapore's rising export growth. The company's export business has increased six-fold over the last 10 years, amounting to $36 million in 1985. Annual sales worldwide of companies in the food and beverage group reached $250 million in the same year.
Despite such dramatic growth, the company remains very much a family-run enterprise. Mr Yeo works alongside with cousin Michael Yeo, who is general manager,and five other cousins, two nephews and two uncles.
'There's nothing wrong in being family-run this way. That's how big companies in the US started out, like the Ford Motor company,' says Mr Yeo. He expects his son, Timothy, 23, who is now a business student in the US, to work in other companies before entering the family business.
The line between family and business is always unclear for someone like Mr Yeo, who spends little time with his own family even on weekends, when a round of golf with other businessmen friends is a must.
On business trips abroad, wife Lily always travels with him. 'I try to combine several things on a trip overseas, like clinching deals and checking out operations,' he says. A third of the year is spent working abroad.
Overseeing a worldwide staff of more than 3,500 in factories in Singapore, Malaysia and Hongkong, Mr Yeo visits the company's sales outlets in the US and in Canada as well as sales and distribution agents in 17 other countries.
Two years ago, the company started selling its expertise abroad, by building a food canning and soft-drinks factory for a distributor in Mauritius and Indonesia.
How did Mr Yeo develop his company's operations abroad? 'Honesty and sincerity pay. In business, one has to go on one's word. Somehow, businessmen always meet up again, in different circumstances, and a good deed done will always be remembered.'
Another rule was to keep expanding the business only in related fields. Not by coincidence, the companies that Yeo Hiap Seng acquired in Hong Kong and in Malaysia were all in food and beverage.
'I've always felt we shouldn't go out of our depth. So far, we haven't. If one is going to gamble, one has to be ready to lose that money. When the market is rosy, there's money in it for everything. But the day of reckoning is bound to come.'
Except for the redevelopment of the Yeo Hiap Seng factory site at 950 Dunearn Road, as part of the plant's expansion, the Yeo group did not go into other unrelated business activities like real estate development.
Nor was Mr Teo keen to enter into the speculative world of commodity futures trading, despite calls to him to trade in soya bean futures.
'It's not prudent to use the cash from a business that makes soft drinks and put it into property development or other longer-term projects. It's always tempting as the banks are only too willing to lend the money for such development.'
It's all hard-earned money, as far as Mr Yeo is concerned, and shouldn't be thrown away by being reckless.
'I don't consider myself as part of the jet set - I'm not a millionaire ... I would never consider buying a $200 shirt for myself,' he says.
Mr Yeo does not hide the fact that amid the successes, Yeo's has had its share of failures. Among them were products like bottled green pea soup and the carbonated juice called 'Wink', both of which didn't catch on with Singaporeans when introduced during the 1970s.
'We lost about $1.5 million when we unsuccessfully launched Wink,' recalls Mr Yeo. Today, he would do his level best to avoid a similar commercial error as the cost would be considerably higher.
'Having found a niche, a manufacturer will need a good product. Luck alone is not good enough. If a product depended on luck alone, it would have a short life on the market,' he says.
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ALAN YEO, 56, is married with three children.
By TAN LIAN CHOO.