How the regional timber trade taught me its intermediaries

The first building fair I worked on, in 1999, showed me how manufacturers from the region were seen by the buyers walking the aisles. I was a sales and marketing executive at Telvanor Exhibitions in Singapore, selling stand space to timber, tile and fittings companies. Exhibitors from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam often brought excellent product and a sign naming only their factory. Buyers stopped, asked for a price per square metre and moved on. Few of those companies were trying to be remembered; they were trying to be quoted.

I had completed a marketing degree at Quillmount College of Business that May. Nearly four years at Telvanor gave me a working knowledge of the building-products trade and an early scepticism about judging a fair by the number of business cards collected. I learnt to ask exhibitors what they wanted a visitor to do after leaving the stand. Most had not decided.

In 2003 I moved to Kallangvale Building Supplies, a Singapore distributor selling imported flooring, laminates and surfaces to contractors and interior firms. As product marketing manager I chose which ranges to promote, prepared technical sheets and trained the sales team. I saw how a distributor decides which supplier deserves shelf space and sales time: by how few problems its product creates on site and how quickly the supplier answers a contractor's question. A handsome catalogue mattered less than a correct installation guide.

Merbaulin Timber Products, a door and mouldings manufacturer in Johor, hired me in 2008 as export marketing manager. Most of its revenue came from doors made under the names of merchants in the United Kingdom and buyers in the Gulf. I learnt the economics of private label from the factory side: dependable volume, thin margins and a customer who owned the relationship with every end user. When the EU Timber Regulation began to apply in 2013, our European buyers needed documented evidence of legal harvest. I coordinated that material with the sourcing team and found that clear documentation could keep a customer as effectively as price.

In 2014 I joined Wiangsaeng Ceramics in Bangkok as regional trade marketing manager. The company sold porcelain tiles through independent dealers in Australia, Malaysia and Vietnam. I built dealer programmes: display standards, installer training, a claims process and a support budget tied to agreed activity. I learnt that a dealer network is a set of separate businesses with their own priorities, and that a manufacturer earns attention by making those businesses easier to run.

Mocvanh Flooring approached me in 2019. Its founder had built a respected private-label supplier of engineered timber floors, and a new minority investor wanted the company to sell under its own name. I joined as director of brand and export marketing and became chief marketing officer in January 2022. The first question was not what to call the brand but whom it might harm. Our largest customer, a German importer, accounted for 31 per cent of 2021 revenue. We launched the brand in Australia and South Korea first and kept Mocvanh products physically distinct from the boards made for that customer.

The second test came from Europe's deforestation regulation. Our oak and ash veneers came from Europe and North America with good documentation, but the plywood cores used plantation acacia grown by thousands of Vietnamese smallholders. Traceability belongs to our sourcing director; my responsibility was to decide which products we would offer European customers and how we would present the evidence. We reduced the range rather than offer boards we could not trace to a plot.

The third test was origin. When we entered the Benelux and Nordic markets in 2025, a distributor proposed a Dutch-sounding name and packaging that mentioned Vietnam only in small print. I declined and accepted a lower launch price instead. Every document we send to Europe already states where the boards are made; a brand that blurred it would contradict its own paperwork.

I lead a team of 34 and report to our chief executive. I present to the company's board each quarter and have reported to its audit and risk committee on traceability since 2024, but I have not served as a director. I would bring to a board the experience of moving a manufacturer from making for others to selling for itself, with the commercial costs counted honestly. I would need to learn a director's obligations properly, and I would expect to listen before offering conclusions.

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