Brown’s success story

Phnom Penh Post:How a coffee chain conquered Cambodia: Brown’s success story

Emily Wight, 03 October 2013

Solace can be found in Street 51’s Brown. The air conditioning seems to freeze the sweat on your brow; beaming, attentive staff repeat “sousdai” at first glimpse of a potential customer, and a curious soundtrack of acoustic covers of Western pop songs, from Chris Brown to Lady Gaga, plays non threateningly in the background. For expats it offers a home from home, serving up cappuccino, espresso and lattes as well as a glorious array of sandwiches and pastries. But most of its clientele are young Cambodians.(...)

Brown is Chang’s first business venture. On his return to Cambodia after studying, he initially went into the non-profit sector, but funding was sparse due the the global economic downturn, and he found that it didn’t pay the bills. Along with the co-founder of his non-profit, he joined up with the other three, and they pinpointed coffee as an opportunity. Chang said: “At the time, there weren’t as many coffee shops in Phnom Penh. I’d seen from Melbourne and other parts of the world that cafés are features of a modern city.”(...)

In full: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/how-coffee-chain-conquered-cambodia-brown%E2%80%99s-success-story

The Lee brothers helped establish Pub Street as Siem Reap’s icon..

Phnom Penh Post, 25 August 2019

Pub Street, Siem Reap

They have a keen interest on Khmer entrepreneurship, always helping local budding entrepreneurs to kick-start their businesses. They also work with local suppliers whenever possible to promote Cambodian businesses and help smaller businesses grow.

The brothers founded the first of the Temple brand business, Temple Bar (which was renamed Temple Club) in 2002, adding to the fun and excitement in Pub Street. 

This year, Temple Group added Kitchen 2002 into its line of restaurants. The restaurant’s cozy environment is one of its main attraction.

Another project in the pipeline is “The One by T”, which the group claims will be the restaurant with the highest seating capacity (300 people) in town. It will serve as a fine dining venue with superb food presentation and excellent service for high-end diners. 

Last year, The Chef 1950 Steak House opened its doors on the end of Pub Street. Being the first Brazilian Samba grill steakhouse and the only place serving cider on draft in town against a backdrop of warm 1950s vibe, it is popular among the town’s fashionable crowd.

In full: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-siem-reap/temple-group-business-built-upon-dream-two-brothers

Creating a space for women’s voice – Male Leadership Programme

BW

29 Sept. 2020

BFC’s male leadership programme aims to transform how both male and female Performance Improvement Consultative Committee (PICC) members can inclusively participate ​​​​to better represent the workers and management in the factory improvement process, and how male PICC members can create space to ensure women’s voice and representation. Respecting and upholding the voice of all genders creates fairer, more productive, and inclusive workplaces.

Story #1: Bun Veasna

Veasna like many Cambodians was raised in a traditional household, where housework was carried out by women, with men focusing on earning for the family. Even after marrying and having their daughter, Veasna who currently works as a line supervisor at a factory in Phnom Penh, still strongly believed in this system. He did not help his wife with the housework and would often spend his leisure time elsewhere. After attending Better Factories Cambodia’s  Male Leadership Programme in late 2019, “I started to appreciate and value my wife in what she does for our home and started to share some of the responsibilities, I was very emotional and delighted that my wife mentioned that I am now a more caring and understanding husband.”

Being a line supervisor also means that Veasna supervises many female workers and he used to be blunt and offered discouraging feedback to them. Following the training, he has started to take the time to better communicate with his female supervisees, and he is aware of the importance of ensuring that men and women have equal job opportunities and has begun to take more of a coaching approach to giving feedback. “We as a team have improved our performance and communication, they mentioned that they are seeing me as a supportive supervisor rather than a supervisor who they used to fear.”

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Stories of Success

 This is collection of stories of success from Cambodia.  It is not inclusive list but with some possible outstanding cases of success.

1. In Channy, President and CEO, Acleda Bank, “The zero-to-hero banker”

2. Rithy Sear, Chairman, Worldbridge International Group, “The path-making developer”

Cambodia - Hear their stories

 SEA Globe

Aug. 4, 2017

From tragic personal stories to make-or-break financial decisions: meet some of the kingdom's key business leaders

In Channy, President and CEO, Acleda Bank, “The zero-to-hero banker”

Back in 1975, Channy was just a 14-year-old Phnom Penh city kid when he was evacuated at gunpoint by the Khmer Rouge to countryside labour camps, where he herded cows during the regime’s reign.

Following the liberation of the country, in 1981 he fled to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he studied teaching and then won a scholarship to study business in the US. A decade later he returned to his home country, co-founding ACLEDA with 28 other partners in 1993 as an ILO- and UNDP-funded microfinance project. It quickly became a national NGO specialising in small enterprise development and $10 credit loans to demobilised soldiers. ACLEDA became fully self-financed in 1998 and began the transformation from an NGO to a licenced microfinance institution. It was granted a specialised banking licence in 2000 with paid-up capital of $4 million, and in 2003 became a commercial bank.

Today, ACLEDA is a public limited company, with 259 offices covering all of Cambodia’s provinces, as well as 41 in Laos and six in Myanmar, and more than $4.6 billion in total assets as of 31 December 2016. The company employs more than 12,000 people in Cambodia, 1,100 in Laos and more than 160 in Myanmar, with close to 40% of the overall workforce being female.

 Rithy Sear, Chairman, Worldbridge International Group, “The path-making developer”

 As the chairman of major property development company Worldbridge Land, Rithy Sear has been on the frontline of business innovation in Cambodia in recent years. Born in Phnom Penh in 1970, Sear has said he fled the country as an 18-year-old on a boat bound for Australia, but after it sank off the coast of Sumatra he was sent to an Indonesian refugee camp. In 1992, a job with the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia brought him back to his homeland, working in the logistics arm of the operation.

“My core business is logistics, and e-commerce is related to logistics – with a nationwide logistics service you can create a proper e-commerce business,” Sear said. “There are online shops here, but they’re focused on small things. They use Facebook or websites. But they don’t have their own, nationwide platforms.”

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