Becoming his own man
> In a generation of startups, Peter Khue goes back into a family business to make it relevant
WHILE most people his generation would be vying to be the CEO of a fresh startup company that dabbles in e-commerce, Peter Khue decided to go back into his family’s business to help restructure the company and make it bigger and better. That family company is none other than Khue Brothers Holdings Sdn Bhd, the company behind renowned bakkwa brand Oloiya. But don’t just brand the 27-year-old as “Oloiya’s grandson” – he’s more than that, as we soon found out. When I first came back from the UK, I spent the first year restructuring and refinancing Favourite childhood snack? Popo Fish Muruku.
Coffee or tea? Coffee.
Favourite fashion accessory? Currently, lapel pins. the company. It’s funny how I’m a nutritionist and food technologist but came back to do accounting and finance. It’s been four years now. My current focus now is just on business development.
When I was younger, I told myself that I wasn’t going to come back. I always had this shadow where people didn’t recognise me for who I was as an individual. They’d always refer to me as “Oloiya’s son” or “Oloiya’s grandson”. Immediately after my Sijil Pendidikan Malaysia (SPM), I went to the UK to study. That was when I came to realise how important family is. Sure, the first year was all excitement. Afterwards, I started to get homesick. I also realised that my parents actually worked really hard to send me to there. I felt that I should contribute back to the family at least. That’s how I decided to come back.
It’s something that most family businesses face. What I realise was that the elders have a reason for whatever they’re disagreeing on. Instead of taking it personally, think of it as business. Never take comments personally – I think this is the flaw where family businesses fail. They don’t see the problem as a problem itself, because within the problem is a mix of personal and business. You need to separate the two. I understand how people may see family businesses as their relationship. But for me, whenever we discuss business, I will be straightforward and only talk business. If they disagree with your idea, there’s always a perfectly good reason why. But it’s up to you to find out why they disagree, rather than just take it at face value that they rejected you. They were the ones running the business previously; they have experiences that you don’t.
Address their concerns and convince them – it’s no different than trying to convince your shareholders in a meeting.
Other than expanding our exports, we also want to do a local repositioning. The younger generation doesn’t really know what bakkwa is anymore. The culture of having bakkwa here in Malaysia is quite different. We only associate bakkwa with Chinese New Year. If you go to China or Singapore, bakkwa is something they eat on a daily basis. Hence, we’re transitioning a lot of our stores into shopping malls. We’re also starting to rebrand bakkwa as a gifting culture. Then, we’re trying to diversify our range of products to include more snacks. Basically, we want to convert Oloiya into something that can be consumed on a day-to-day basis.