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SUCHIN PRAPAISILP AND GLOBAL FOODS – “YOU WORK HARD, YOU CAN MAKE IT.”

Small business to the rescue! It had to be a heady day when Suchin Prapaisilp signed an agreement with the city of Kirkwood, Missouri, to open a Global Foods supermarket in 1998. The store had become available again. A & P supermarkets couldn’t make it there by the 1970s. National Supermarkets couldn’t make it there by the 1990s. And a team of local grocery managers couldn’t make it there by 1998, but Chin (as he’s known locally) was sure he could. And he was so sure that he convinced Kirkwood’s city council to grant him a favourable package to make it happen. The deal was that the store would offer half traditional American foods for the local community and half international foods for the regional community.

As satisfying as that moment in the public and industry spotlight was, it was a long road getting there. When he came to America in 1974, 22-year-old Chin’s day stretched from 4 am to midnight. He worked for others making donuts, then doing a factory shift. He closed the day as a kitchen helper. In his off-hours, he taught dance and even delivered phone books. But his philosophy is, “You work hard, you can make it.” Chin and his newly arrived brother Chatchai opened a small grocery store in St. Louis in 1975 and in 1986 opened a bigger grocery that became the anchor for a miniboom of Asian businesses in the neighbourhood. This kind of steady growth gave Chin the experience and capital to aim for an opportunity like Global, which would take $2.15 million for the building and improvements. But even with experience and capital, as one of Chin’s American employees at Global volunteered. “They took a big gamble opening the store.”

The store got a tremendous response, but not exactly as expected. It became the favourite source for exotic ingredients for the recipes in the local newspapers, and international customers were regularly coming from as far as 100 miles away to shop Global’s well-stocked aisles. But the American products weren’t selling as well as expected, and they were taking up space that could be more profitably used for international foods. In the spring of 2000, Chin and Global were doing all right but Chin knew he could make it better still.

1. Identify the causes:

(•Why does the problem exist?

•Why did it happen?

•Avoid being too judgemental.

•Avoid jumping to conclusions.)

2. Generate alternatives:

(•What power does the decision maker have?

•What are possible leverage points?

•Can the situation be changed?

•What constraints exist on the solution?

•What are the available resources to use?

•Put yourself in the case.

•Establish more than one alternative.

•What are the costs/benefits of alternatives.)