THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
BESIDES HIS UNABASHED AFFINITY FOR THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE, SARAVUT “GY” SEREETHORANAKUL IS A SAVVY BUSINESSMAN WITH A STRONG WORK ETHIC. IN A CANDID CHAT WITH parisa pichitmarn HE REVEALS HIS LESSER-KNOWN SIDE AND SHARES HOW HE’S HELPED PUSH P.S.C. STARCH PRODUCTS TO BECOME THAILAND’S NUMBER ONE PRODUCER OF SWEETENER SOLUTIONS
The thing about Saravut “Gy” Sereethoranakul is that his Versace T-shirts, Swiss timepieces, and his association with fast cars, usually outshine all the other accomplishments in his life. If anything, it’s the fact that he is currently building “the world’s most beautiful Versace residence” – at his luxurious penthouse in The Monument Thong Lo – that the general public is aware of. What is lesser known about this man is his inner life and his work ethic, and it’s these very things that have enabled all the other more fanciful dreams of his to come to fruition.
It’s no secret, of course, that this third-generation heir to the biggest producer of starch sugar in Thailand – P.S.C. Starch Products PCL – is a “go-all-the-way” kind of an individual. Just take a look his recent purchase, a three-storey penthouse that he decided to buy within the first 10 minutes of viewing it. He is intent on making it his dream home, using the services of Bangkok Dec-con, a local interior construction firm that normally takes on commercial projects for five and seven-star hotels, but have made an exception for him.
When it’s fully furnished next year, Versace will be decorating virtually every square inch of the abode, right down to the tiles and the chopsticks. “It does make shopping easier, because you just have to head to one place,” the 37-year-old jokes. “I’m not a halfway kind of person, where one room would be Versace and another Hermès, and whatnot. I want to go with what I truly love, so that’s just going all the way with Versace. It’s beautiful, luxurious, and timeless.”
Growing up in the 90s, at the peak of popularity for Gianni Versace, Gy’s undying love for the Italian designer’s opulent aesthetics had to do with the fact that it embodied his own personality trait of being over-the-top. When he first encountered Versace T-shirts during his teenage years at Emporium, he remembered being equally shocked and fascinated that the price tag was, absurdly, five digits.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s so excessive’,” he recalls. “I then started to study his background and history, and really came to appreciate how his designs are all an extension of his personality. Gianni Versace was larger than life. He was extravagant, and everything he put into his work was an embodiment of him. I feel that it’s a bit like me, so that’s why I like to wear his clothes.”
Gy admits that for as long as he can remember, this over-thetop attitude has been apparent in him. He reveled in driving his father’s Porsche to university, and splurged on shopping sprees. “I was born this way. No one’s taught me to be like this, it’s just so embedded in my character,” he explains. “My mother told me it would be better if I weren’t so ‘extra’, because I’d also constantly be having to prove myself. If I was going to continue to be this way, I’d have to balance that by being smart and hardworking too. Trust me, if I knew how to not be this way, I would have stopped a long time ago! But being otherwise is just not me, and it would just make me unhappy. I party all the way, eat all the way, and I also work all the way.”
In fact, Gy hadn’t even graduated yet – he was in the midst of obtaining his marketing degree from Bangkok University – when he stepped in to help run the family business after his mother suffered a stroke. He would eventually finish school later, but at that moment one of the most trying challenges in his life was to overcome his father’s chagrin at putting his studies on hold for the sake of work.
Up until that point, he recalls being a wild child who, thankfully, grew up in a very close-knit household. As the middle son of Sumol Sereethoranakul and Araya Gampankaew, his childhood is remembered as one of playing with remote-controlled cars, train sets, and go karts, together with his elder brother Sarun and younger brother Sirin. He fondly mentions that the three lads still share their toys to this day – although now it’s supercars – and that he still competes in circuit races with Sarun all around the world as part of the Vattana Racing Spirit ‘Kho Ro Mor’ PSC Motor Sport team.
After his early teenage years spent studying at Assumption College Samrong (now renamed Assumption College Samutprakarn), he was sent off to high school at St. Michael’s Grammar School in Melbourne. However, rather than continue at Deakin University, Gy returned to Thailand to pursue his undergraduate marketing degree in Bangkok at the behest of his mother, who was lonely, because his brother Sirin had just then left for his studies in Australia.
“We’re literally attached to each other,” Gy says, speaking
“IF YOU’RE SMART, BUT WON’T PUT UP WITH THE STRUGGLE, YOU EVENTUALLY LOSE TO PEOPLE WHO STICK THROUGH THE WHOLE ORDEAL. [MY MOTHER] TAUGHT ME TO NOT GIVE UP EASILY”
of his relationship with his parents. “When I went out partying [back in university], mum or dad would be sitting around RCA too, keeping an eye on me.”
When his mother took ill in 2007, Gy was more than keen to step in to help run his family’s empire; a business that made its initial fortune in refined sugar. His father was skeptical of his son’s abilities at first, but the determined young man cites that his mother’s encouragement was the greatest source of power that made him push on.
“She always believed that I could do it,” he goes on to say. “She trusted that I was smart enough too, so every time I am tired, I just think of how I don’t want to let her down. Her encouragement helps me overcome everything.”
One of the most crucial lessons he ever received from his working mother was to endure. “She said that smart people don’t scare her, it’s the ones that endure that do. If you’re smart, but won’t put up with the struggle, you eventually lose to people who stick through the whole ordeal. She taught me to not give up easily.”
Delving into the family business, Gy tells us how his grandfather, Pornchai Sereethoranakul, was not only the first man in Bangkok to hold a license to run a sugar factory – back in 1945 – but also the founder of the Lee Clan Association in Thailand, and a close confidant of former prime minister Sarit Thanarat. “Refined sugar wasn’t doing well at that time, so he sold the business off to his partners,” he explains.
From there, his grandfather moved on to open a factory at Bang Pu, to produce sugar from starch instead, seeing the potential for growth (as all glucose back in that era had to be imported from Taiwan). That operation would become what is currently known as P.S.C. Starch Products PCL, an operation that sprawls over 2,700 rai in Chonburi, producing starch sugar, glucose, dextrose and fructose, as well as ethanol to produce E10, E20, E85 gasoline. The diverse range of essential products produced means, in turn, that their clients include an array of business conglomerates producing everything from candy, jelly, ice cream, and energy drinks, to sauces, coffee creamer, medicine, and even cement and window glue (amazingly enough, there’s glucose in all of them).
Being the chatty and engaging person that he is, Gy took on the marketing and sales side of their business and he proudly cites that the company’s growth of 1,000 percent, since he first started working there 13 years ago, is by far his proudest achievement.
“My father had his doubts when I first started working, but he finally came around when I started to bring in large volume sales for the company,” Gy recalls, and his appointment of assistant to the managing director of the company attests to his dad’s newfound approval. “Nowadays, he even tells me to not bother trying to make sales to markets we cannot penetrate. I never let it go, though. If other people can do it, why can’t we?”
Since that time, this gregarious go-getter has been the head honcho in charge of all marketing, sales, and purchases for their various companies, which include P.S.C. Steel Drums Co. Ltd. (a company that produces storage drums, ranging from 37 to 200 litres, used for food, chemicals, oils and pharmaceutical products), and JS Asia Beverage Co. Ltd. (Gy’s own conception, which produces a line of bird nest drinks called Juice Nest).
During this phase of his career, he would work seven days a week, giving himself over completely to the business, and learning everything he could – from how to best weather price wars that drag on for years, to discovering why certain sweets would not harden. It was a time in his life in which he recalls that he literally couldn’t be sick, because there were endless meetings with clients, factory tours, and business trips.
This overriding work ethic definitely runs in the Sereethoranakul family, as Gy shares with me that in all his years alive he has never even seen his father in a T-shirt before. “I can literally count the number of times he’s been in a polo shirt!” the admiring son exclaims. “My father is in a white shirt Monday till Sunday, because he works every day, and he loves to work.”
“WE DON’T SKIMP WHEN IT COMES TO RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, BECAUSE UPGRADING TECHNOLOGY WILL ULTIMATELY KEEP YOUR COSTS COMPETITIVE”
And despite being one of the owners of businesses that are collectively worth billions of Baht, Gy has absolutely no intention of ever retiring early. “I love my job,” he remarks, adding that his joy for negotiating, meeting people, closing deals, and entertaining clients knows no bounds. “I like to take care of people. When I meet up with my clients, we hardly even talk about work anymore. We’re like friends and family after all these years of working together. I never forget to send presents when it’s my client’s birthday, or on their children’s birthdays. Small details like these are very important.”
There’s an extraordinary skill at work here, and it’s one which has managed to grow the company’s output 1,000 percent from 1,800 metric tonnes per month 13 years ago, to 18,000 metric tonnes monthly today. Gy’s verbal power of persuasion is surely an asset, but he reckons that it’s also his ability to read people that has contributed to the success of his companies.
“You need to be able to read and understand what people want, and to adapt your communication for each individual,” advises the marketing maverick. “Some buyers don’t haggle and only care about seamless supplying, while some have year-long contracts about controlled costs they are worried about. It’s experience that teaches you to pinpoint people’s needs. I think my years as a wild child teen may have made me quick-witted and good at reading people. Maybe it’s a gift too. I’d say my key to success is I know how to approach different people, and how most people I talk to do take a shine to me.”
Alongside his people skills, Gy is also attentive to business development, and he never fails to visit the food trade fairs in China every year to check out latest ingredients, machinery, and innovations. “I’d walk over 10km per day at these fairs, looking at thousands of booths,” he admits. “We don’t skimp when it comes to research and development, because upgrading technology will ultimately keep your costs competitive.”
In two years’ time, P.S.C. Starch Products’s own electricity plant, which converts water waste and starch waste into energy, will transform the factory into a manufacturing facility with the lowest production costs in all of Asia. Not surprisingly, Gy is excited to witness this monumental triumph, but his final dream that he hopes to achieve is to push Juice Nest to make it in China – where a gargantuan market share will bring in sky-high profits.
With these major breakthroughs close to materialising, this bachelor is definitely enjoying a greater work/life balance and, most importantly, enjoying the fruits of his success. There’s now time in his life for dating and meeting the right partner, as well as more flexibility in his schedule for health and wellbeing as well as holidays.
“Health, money, and time are so important. “I don’t want anything more than this,” he confides. I’ve learnt now that getting more of one thing at the expense of another is not worth it. Now that I have everything I’ve worked very hard for, when I wake up I feel happy and proud every day. My life is complete and I want to enjoy every minute of it!”
“HEALTH, MONEY, AND TIME ARE SO IMPORTANT. I’VE LEARNT NOW THAT GETTING MORE OF ONE THING AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER IS NOT WORTH IT”