“Hiong Piah” is a round; palm-sized biscuit that baked
till the flaky dough achieves the desired level of crunchiness. It is filled
with a sweet and sticky filling which is composed of maltose, oil and fried
shallots. In Ipoh, Yee Family had a very famous and long history in the pastry
making business. They started business in 1981. Yee Hup Biscuits is a very
famous shop in Ipoh which is selling Yee Hup “Hiong Piah”, walnut cookies,
white sesame peanut biscuits and so many types of biscuits. Mr. Yee Ah Lek and
his beloved wife Madam Wong Chin Haw (founder) are the persons who establish Yee
Hup Biscuits as a family business.
They started
operating their first bakery at their own house in Gunung Rapat, Ipoh. They
prepared the ingredients of making Yee Hup biscuits such as make the dough, fry
the onions, prepare sesame seeds, stir the malt and then mold the biscuits by
their hand at the midnight. Due to the manual production methods, they only
produce 2000 pieces of “Hiong Piah” per day.
In 1999, Michelle Yee,
daughter of Mr. Yee Ah Lek who has a degree in Bakery from Cambridge in UK
returned home. She determined to take over the load of the operations of the
business from her parents. She wanted to change the business from manual
production methods to fully automatic production.
Due to high demand of
the biscuits, she realized that she must change the production methods and
expand her business. Therefore, she bought machinery from an Italian salesman
to increase the production capacity. Michelle also expanded her retail network
in Ipoh city with the move to mechanization proceeding smoothly in early years
of 2000. She was expanding the retail network by buying two shop houses. One of
the shop houses is located at Jalan Sri Ampang as their headquarters and other
branches at Jalan Sultan Iskandar and Kuala Lumpur
In order to attract
more customers, she began to diversify the product range. She started to
produce traditional Chinese wedding cakes, seasonal festival goodies such as
Chinese New Year cookies, Christmas goodies, mooncakes and hampers.
In 2007, Yee Hup was
awarded the ISO22000 and HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point). It
also obtained Halal certificate by JAKIM Malaysia. All of these award and
certificate show the success of Michelle Yee. Besides, Michelle has been
recognized with three prestigious awards, the “Golden Bull Award”; the “SME
Recognition-Innovative Excellence Award”; and the “SME Recognition-Women
Entrepreneur Award” in 2008. She also awarded the “MCA Perak Women Entrepreneur
Award” and a further “Excellence in Achievement of World Chinese Youth
Entrepreneurs” in 2009.
Now, they become the
biggest exporter and producer in Malaysia. Yee Hup Biscuits export their biscuits
to Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Brunei, Australia,
UK, USA, New Zealand, Qatar, Canada, Dubai, and Germany.
Michelle Yee is proud
that she can bring the taste of Perak to the world. She is an example of successful
entrepreneur in Malaysia. There are many entrepreneurship traits of Michelle
Yee such as decisive, foresight, initiative, ethical consciousness and
integrity and reliability. We should learn her entrepreneurship traits from
this successful woman.
The Entrepreneurship Traits of Michelle Yee
Decisive
Decisive is a trait
that shows the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively as an
entrepreneur. Obviously, Michelle had showed the decisive along her
success. She was determined to take over
the load of the operations of the business from her parents who were adamant in
sticking to their old ways of production. However, it is very hard for Michelle
to switch over the manual production methods into the mechanization at that
time. The final straw came when an Italian salesman who came to sell her
machinery.
She made the remark
that her father looked ‘as if he was working in hell’ and this hurt her so much
that she immediately switched to automation without hesitation. This is show
that Michelle was a decisive person to be a successful entrepreneur. Besides
that, Michelle was marked a new milestone for Yee Hup at the year 2007 when the
production shifted into its new factory. Michelle had made a decision that
production still continues at the old house using the traditional lard for the
biscuits and coconut husks for charcoal to preserve their heritage and to keep
their customers.
Foresight
Foresight is an action-oriented systematic process that
should integrate all types of foresight such as research, technology,
competitive, consumers’ foresight at a corporate level. Therefore, as an
entrepreneur, Michelle realizes that every event or situation that happens is a
business opportunity, and she tries to generate a new and innovative ideas. In
early years of 2000, with the move to mechanization proceeding smoothly,
Michelle began to expand her retail network in Ipoh city.
Besides that, she
also generates some new idea like began to diversify the product range;
producing traditional Chinese wedding cakes, seasonal festival goodies such as
Mooncakes, Christmas goodies, Chinese New Year cookies and hampers. Michelle
also has some idea about the overseas marketing. Her business had expand the
capacity from time to time, especially when the demands of biscuit in market
more than what they can supply. Of course, she knew that these must work in
parallel with proper marketing plan and strategy. Anyway, the growth of
business overseas market is still be encouraging. Therefore, Michelle has to
keep expanding to maintain or supply the growth markets. Yee Hup can lay claim
to being the biggest producer and exporter of biscuits from Malaysia to the
world with the production capacity for the factory being what it is now. This
is because the biscuit are being export to Hong Kong, China, Australia, Taiwan,
USA, UK, Dubai, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Germany, Indonesia, Qatar and New
Zealand with the effort of Michelle. Furthermore, her effort have been
recognized and awarded with numbers of awards.
Initiative
Besides, Michelle Yee
also shows initiative. In 1999, Michelle Yee realized that the manual
production method cannot meet the high demand of their “Hiong Piah’’. So,
Michelle has showed initiative by changing the manual production method into
mechanization to increase the speed of production that enables the company to
produce about 1.5 million pieces a month. To facilitate purchases by consumer
and develop awareness of not only local consumers but also visitors from other
countries, Michelle has distributed her products to souvenir shops and areas
along the North-South Expressway.
To develop the
business, Michelle began to expand her retail network in Ipoh city. Initially,
she bought two shop houses at Jalan Sri Ampang as their headquarters and set up
a branch at Jalan Sultan Iskandar. Subsequently, she set up another branch in
Jalan Imbi in Kuala Lumpur.
In conclusion, with
Michelle’s initiative, the business grew exponentially. This can be seen as she
has work hard and initiate various ways to develop her family business. For
example, she had successfully changed the manual production method into
automation which led the company to become the biggest producer and exporter of
biscuits from Malaysia to other countries.
Ethical Consciousness
Moreover, Michelle
Yee also known as an ethical consciousness entrepreneur. Ethical consciousness
is one of the personalities where the person is pertaining to or dealing with
morals or the principles of morality; pertaining to right and wrong in conduct.
Michelle Yee is very
interested in doing charity. Every year, Michelle Yee will organized festive
charity event, aimed at raising funds for schools and charitable organizations.
A host of activities will be lined up such as ballet performance, song
performance and others. During the ninth festive charity event with the theme
Your Heart Charity Night, Michelle Yee had successfully raised RM18, 000 for
the charitable organization in Perak. She had contributed a lot to her hometown
charitable organization such as Handicap Children’s Welfare Home, Perak Chinese
Welfare Association, Chan Meng Khor Dialysis Centre and etc.
Michelle Yee is keep on doing the charity
event every year, and although she is busying with her business, but she is not
forgetting to do the charity. She is trying to contribute to community as much
as possible. This shows that Michelle Yee is an ethical consciousness
entrepreneur.
Integrity and Reliability
The next feature that is owned by Michelle Yee
is integrity and reliability. This is because Michelle Yee very concerned about
the quality of products manufactured by the company. Even now her company had
to diversify their products and also use technology to manufacture the product.
But she always makes sure that the taste of biscuits is same as before because
she wants to ensure the quality of each biscuits. Thus, the products
manufactured by the company were always trusted by the user.
Consumer loyalty to
her product can also be seen through until today, there are more people will
buy the “Hiong Piah” the puff biscuits as souvenirs when they travelled around
Perak. Also due to her integrity and reliability, not only allows her to gain
consumer loyalty to her products and also allows developing the product market.
As of today, they export to Thailand, USA, UK, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, Australia, Dubai, Canada, France,
Germany and Qatar. Yee Hup can claim to be the biggest producer and exporter of
biscuits from Malaysia to the world with their production capacity for the
factory being what it is now.
Due to Michelle’s
integrity and reliability, the quality of the biscuits is ensured and
maintained from 1981 till now. She switches over the manual production methods
into the mechanization to increase the speed of production. However, the taste
of the biscuits is same as before. This leads to the trust and loyalty of every
customer.
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