All the family left Hong-Kong to launch the business in Mauritius. Pang Chin, the bed linen supplier, was set up in Mauritius in 1988 by the Lam family. This is no doubt that this company, with its 30 employees, is a family business. Corie and her brother, Chi Yuen Lam are now totally involved in Pang Chin with their mother. They know everything about sheets, pillows, pillowslips, blankets and quilts…

The shelves, in the shop, are full of a variety of bed sheets – not only of different colours but also of various tones of the same colour. There are also various designs to satisfy the taste of most people. For instance, sheets for babies with special teddy bear designs. At the top of each shelf, quilts in different colours and designs are folded in large plastic bags. In this cold weather, they seem to tempt the customers. This impression is confirmed by the large bed covered with a colourful and warm quilt in a little corner of the shop to show customers how comfortable they are.

At the back of the shop, stands the factory where some 20 employees are busy manufacturing the items. “Our top-quality raw materials all come from Hong Kong either in boxes or in rolls. When the sheets arrive here, they are already printed with the colourful designs. But then, the Mauritian workers do everything – cutting, sewing, quality control, packing – in our factory in Pailles.”

Mrs Lam relates how she had to work in the factory at the beginning to train the workers. Like her employees, she sat in the warehouse, surrounded by these large pieces of cloth and showed the workers how things had to be done.

<B>Marketing by word of mouth</B>

“When we arrived in Mauritius, we had only the factory as we used to supply foreign markets mainly,” Mrs Lam explains. So, at the beginning, they participated in trade fairs to make themselves known. Except for trade fairs, the managers have chosen not to do any real marketing. They rely mainly on word of mouth.

And it works! A couple of years after the factory started, the family decided to open a shop. It was at first a way for them to show their products and meet the needs of the many people who asked them where their products were available.

Since then, the shop has become their major activity: “We could not rely on exports only since it has become very difficult for us to sell our products abroad. Our main market was the United States of America but, with the quotas now, it is not worth it. We export very little and concentrate on the local market.”

Most Pang Chin products are sold in their own shop or at Ah-Ling. “Some people come and bargain to have our products in their shops but we are not interested in flooding the market at any cost. Our products are high-quality ones and we want to keep up their high standards.”