Q: Can you describe your scope of responsibilities, and what do you like most about your job?

A: As director for the Malaysian operations, my responsibilities cover everything from overseeing the customer service department to ensuring healthy profits. What I like about my job is that it gives me a lot of opportunities to mix with customers and get their feedback, which I would later relay to my product development team in Japan. This way, we are able to meet customers’ expectations.

Q: Leading a company’s overall operations certainly is a huge responsibility. How do you plan to overcome the challenges in the printer business?

A: The No. 1 challenge for me is to increase Brother’s brand awareness among consumers. We have just been here (in Malaysia)for seven years, and there is still much to do to increase our market presence. One of the strategies we have adopted is working closely with the retailers and hypermarkets here, and we have been quite successful.

In terms of Brother’s brand acceptance among Malaysians, it has been good. We have a lot of repeat customers.

My target is to grow Brother’s market share to 15 per cent from the current 10 per cent for the next financial year and also to increase the number of our service locations to 150 from the current 100.

Q: What is the trend in the consumer printer market today?

A: The consumer printer market is slowly moving from inkjet to colour laser printers. Even though the adoption of laser printers among consumers is still low, the uptake will be significant in the next few years.

Price-wise, laser printers are still more expensive than inkjets, but they provide users with speed and better quality prints.

For a start, the early adopters would be in the SOHO (small office-home office) segment.

Q: Does Brother only produce printers?

A: Our printer business only started in the 1960s, but we have been around since 1908 making a number of consumer products, including sewing machines and motorbikes. The motorbike business stopped long time ago, but the sewing machine business is still growing and contributing about

30 per cent to our overall revenue.

For the past one year, we have been rolling out sewing machines to the Malaysian market, and these machines range from the ordinary ones to the fully computerised models which can be connected to a computer with all the designs done using software. We see these more as lifestyle products to suit today’s consumers. The logic behind computerised sewing machines is, more people today are used to computers and software programs, so it makes sense to attach the machines to computers. One can even “sew” a picture using the machine.

Q: Finally, what is your work philosophy?

A: I believe in work and life balance. During weekdays, I would give 120 per cent effort to work; to balance it, work will be completely shut off during weekends, where I spend quality time with my family.