Latest Issue:

Fun in Furnishings

In a market saturated with teak furniture shops, Ayu Trisna has been able to hold her own by offering high-end, custommade pieces and personalised service for the discerning customer. From a flea market stall selling handicraft in 1999, her business has grown to two furniture showrooms and a design house with a growing customer base. Forty per cent of her customers are Europeans while the remainder are local, and most of them have approached her based on word of mouth. Sixty per cent are repeat customers and Ayu has followed many clients as they moved from one house to another. One of her biggest projects so far is furnishing the entire home of an Arab family with custom-made furniture. Besides basic home furniture, she has provided specific pieces with detailed designs for universities, prayer consoles and ornate doors and frames. A lecturer by profession for 16 years, it still surprises Ayu how she ended up where she is now. Her husband had a company supplying door frames to contractors. One day, while studying for her phD and lecturing masters in business administration students, she decided to team up with her husband and son to sell handicraft at the flea market in Amcorp Mall, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

“We really enjoyed it but found the transactions very small compared with the long hours we put in.” When in 1999, the Indonesian rupiah hit a slump, Ayu and her husband felt the time was right to bring in Indonesian teak to Malaysia. They started a furniture business with their first outlet in Amcorp Mall. In the early years, Ayu and her husband focused on learning about the trade, the production of furniture, the behaviour of wood and the kind of market they had decided to place themselves in. In 2000 they opened their second showroom in Plaza Masalam in Shah Alam. Business boomed and a third showroom was opened near Mutiara Homes in Mutiara Damansara in 2003. Unfortunately, it only lasted eight months. At the end of 2004, she transferred the Mutiara stock to Section 16, renting a bungalow first, and then buying it over after just five months. Ayu has found that many of her customers, who include famous personalities, come back because her furniture is of the highest quality and they are satisfied with her after sales service. “My aim is for every ending to be a happy ending.” She cites the example of a client whose bed’s four posters began slanting after two years. Upon examining it, Ayu found that it was caused by a design error and offered to replace the bed with a new one.

The customer was noticeably surprised but delighted nonetheless. “I don’t ever want a bad reference. Marketing studies show that if a customer is satisfied they tell at least two people, but if they are dissatisfied they will tell at least seven people.” In another case, Ayu found herself between a rock and a hard place when a customer who had bought, paid and accepted delivery of a dining set insisted she take it back, claiming that her husband and daughter did not like it and that she wanted her money back. The customer threatened to cancel the cheque if Ayu did not concede but Ayu maintained her calm and asked the customer to think over her decision. After a few days the customer called and offered to give Ayu 20 per cent of the price of the furniture if she took it back. Ayu refused, leading the customer to offer her 40 per cent of the price. Still, Ayu stood her ground. When she found that the customer really didn’t want the furniture anymore, she accepted the furniture back on one condition: the customer had to return the furniture by her own means. Ayu says that while it is important for her not to ruin her relationship with a client, she also feels a line should be drawn so that she is not taken advantage of. This is why she made it difficult for that client to return the furniture.

100 SUCCESSFUL WOMEN

In our second list of the 100 most powerful women in the world, Madam Chair celebrates the women who are helping to shape global consciousness through their ingenuity, generosity and courage to dream. If the last two years since we fi rst ran this list has shown us anything, it’s that the inevitability of change still has the power to surprise. Governments have fallen, corporations have stumbled and some of the biggest luminaries in entertainment have seen their stars dim in the aftermath of scandal. In the resulting vacuum a fresh crop of faces has risen in the worlds of politics, business, fi nance, and the arts. Many have been working patiently behind the scenes for years and are only now coming into their own, joining an exclusive global community of female leaders at the top of their game.

In preparing this year’s list we allowed ourselves to be guided by the same ideas that governed our choices the fi rst time around. We did not look for angels or paragons of moral behaviour, but for women whose infl uence on the way we think was indisputable and whose impact on the community made news. We looked for women whose work, strength and ability to see things differently from the rest of us, put them in a different class of leadership. We also looked hard for women of colour, although this remained a challenging task as much of the public sphere continues to be dominated by their Western counterparts.