Aitthipat Kulapongvanich or Top Ittipat was born in
November 24, 1984 in Thailand. His parents are Chinese so he is both Thai and
Chinese. He educate from kindergarten and elementary at Panapun Wittaya School,
high school at St. Francis Xavier School and senior from Suankularb Wittayalai
School. Now, he graduate with a bachelor's degree of Business Administration
from University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce. He is the CEO of Taokaenoi
Food & Marketing Co., LTD, the company that dominate 70% of seaweed market
share in Thailand.
When he was still 16 years old, he was addicted to online
games. Even though he gained success at playing online games and winning tournament
prizes because of his hobby playing online games, he was often underestimated
by his teachers at school. He decided to drop out from school to become a
chestnut peddler when he was 17 years old. He invested his money into selling
fried chestnuts, which became popular in Thailand. In 2003, Top founded Tao Kae
Noi (Youth Entrepreneur) Food and Marketing Co., Ltd. He is highly popular in
business circles. He’s just 23 years old, started his business by oneself with
his business brilliance, and is very well known in Thailand presently. He is
most well-known for his product Tao Kae Noi, a fried seaweed snack, which is
sold around the Asia-Pacific area.
As stated above, Top
Ittipat is a successful, young and brilliant entrepreneur. He is an open risk
taker. It is very hard to find someone that is brave enough to take risks in
doing business. We can see this kind of trait in him when he reoriented his
business efforts from gaming, DVD player and nuts business to other business
which is seaweed snacks. He knew that at that time people are not familiar with
seaweed and apparently it will not be profitable to the business. He dare to
make a decision that he should try to invent something special since nobody
selling it. So Top Ittipat was taking a risk, yet it brings him to success as a
founder of seaweed snacks that popular in Asia until now.
Top Ittipat is a person who always take failure is an
option. We can see this kind of trait in him when he failed to do a few
business before he finally success to run the seaweed business. At the age of
16 years, he start to run online games business. Top earn money from selling
items his weapons in online games. But since the business is illegal, the top
online gaming accounts were closed and blocked by the bank because it engage in
transactions that are against the law. Then, he try to run DVD player business
and selling chestnuts. Both of the business cannot survive, failed and went
bankrupt. We can see that failure is not an obstacle for him but as a first
step towards success.
He
is an observant entrepreneur. He is very good at pay attention to detail or see
something that happened around us. After his failure in his past business, he
tried searching new idea what else can he sell that can make a lot of money.
Then he found that, seaweed that people like to eat actually can give him a lot
of money. But his idea is not accepted when presented his idea in front of bank
officer. His proposal for getting loan to open up this business totally
rejected but he not never stop here. Top himself did some research on how to
make the seaweed last longer by frying the seaweed. But fried seaweed is also
not last longer because customer would not buy his product right instance. So
he needed an alternative way to preserve crispy seaweed when customer eating.
There is one doctor that are master in food area, he gave an idea to Top on how
making the seaweed last long by mixing preservative ingredient inside the
seaweed. Next, he tested his product in local market such as minimarket and 7Eleven
to know either his product success or not. This shows that he is an observant
person.
Another
trait in Top Ittipat is he is a visionary entrepreneur. He is
someone who are planning the future with imaginative and wisdom. People who
have vision for their life are a successful person. At first he got an idea and
interest of business from the game. His first business is selling PS2 but too
bad all of it was broken. So he change his business to selling chestnut. In
order to start making chestnut business he try to explore what is the
ingredient of chestnut to mix to make it taste good by buying and asking the
other and take whole note of it. After some time his chestnut business is
getting better, but at some point when his business bankrupt he promise his
father not to selling chestnut again. This cause he have no choice but to close
his chestnut business. He try to find other type of business to sell. When he
got an idea of selling seaweed instead of chestnut he start to plan on making
seaweed business. Since he found out that his business is going well he start
to plan on selling to other country. He need to approve from the 7 eleven where
they make a delivery to another county. Although his family do not
support at what he does. His vision and willingness to gain success are so
great that he never put a stop to what does good in. By setting inventories in
computer games to setting his ultimate seaweed formula. He is now the first
youngest billionaire.
Lastly,
Top Ittipat is an outcome entrepreneur. He is someone who always thinks the
result rather that the difficulties that he will go through to get the result.
This can be seen when he tried to sell dried fruit as well as seaweed. In the
first experiment of making fried seaweed, he failed. With his strong believe, it
make him keep trying until he managed to make a delicious crispy seaweed snack.
He confidently, started to sell his product in the market and try to develop
his product wider. He advertised his
product to the big such as 7-Eleven company. The products were rejected when he
came for the first time because of the lacks quality of packaging and the price
of product is to expensive. But with his strong mission, he changed the design
of product packaging and asked a designer to form it. When he came back again
to 7-Eleven company, they accept the product. But the next problem was he need
to serve the seaweed by wholesale. Ittipat who still fried the seaweed in his
little kitchen at his house, didn’t loose hope. Finally, he and his uncle found
nice place to built up a little company to produce his product, sea weed, Tao
Kae Noi brand. Ittipat’s hard work is worth. His company passed the
qualification and after two years he could paid his family’s debt that was 40
million bath. He could retake his family home again. In the age of 26, Top
Ittipat became the higher selling the fried seaweed that producer in Thailand.
His income reached 800 million Baht per year and had 2000 employee. His outcome
become bigger from year to year because of his hardwork to expand on his
business.
As a conclusion, Top Ittipat has a lot of good traits as
an entrepreneur. In order to become a brilliant entrepreneur, his journey was
not always sunshine. All his journey are being told and been produced in a Thai
movie, The Billionaire. There were times he was devastated with himself, but he
never gave up. Thus, Top Ittipat is an outstanding entrepreneur.
movie link: http://www.dramanice.eu/the-billionaire-aka-top-secret/watch-the-billionaire-aka-top-secret-episode-1-online
