“It was not an overnight success. There were so many times I wanted to give up, but my Chief Operating Officer , Andy Wong’s can-do attitude played a major role in helping me weather through the countless dips to bring Kintry to where it is today,”
Amelie, my daughter who was only three years old at that time, has a lot of allergies. So I had to cook and bake a lot at home. My first product was the allergen-free oat cookies and the packaging reflected our relationship – a mom and daughter working on a project together in front of a kedai runcit.What were Kintry’s initial years like?Throughout 2018, we were just bobbing along. Andy, my COO, was still running his other businesses.
I think we had like three or four dips in 2019. By Christmas, I went to Canada for a short two-week holiday. Before I left for Canada, I was negotiating with a few of Malaysia’s top food franchise brands and retailers. The first was to help keep the team afloat and secondly, to help the community and make an impact. We donated cookies and PPE to various hospitals in Kuala Lumpur to help mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic. This was a huge boost for us in terms of brand exposure, even though there wasn’t a significant shift to our sales.These delicious Raya Packs by Kintry sold like hot cookies recently.
Ultimately, when the brand is still new, no matter how big of an exposure it gets, it doesn’t register with people. They need to see it for at least a year or two before saying, “I know this brand”There are two arms in the business: one is manufacturing, and one is retail – which we are still relatively new to. We have built this business to have both an offline and online presence.