Sirivat Voravetvuthikun had been up for several nights in February 1997, anguishing over how to break the news to his staff. By the time he gathered his 40 employees in the Bangkok boardroom of his company, Tong Gween, he decided to give it to them straight. �I can no longer get financing for our projects,� he said. �By April, I can no longer pay your salaries.� The 48-year-old fund manager, who once had traded nearly $400,000 in a single day during Thailand�s boom years, couldn�t even offer his staff a small severance payment. |
Sirivat�s career had followed the same high-flying path as Thailand�s economy a few years after graduating with a business degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973, he took a job with one Thailand�s largest brokerage houses, Asia Securities Trading. Over the next decade, his trades made million for the company and its client, and he rose to managing director.
Sirivat�s career had followed the same high-flying path as Thailand�s economy a few years after graduating with a business degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973, he took a job with one Thailand�s largest brokerage houses, Asia Securities Trading. Over the next decade, his trades made million for the company and its client, and he rose to managing director.
By the time, Sirivat started working as a private fund manager and founded the property-development company, Tong Gween, in 1993, he and his wife Vilailuck were living a good life. They owned a high-rise condominium in downtown Bangkok and sent their three children to summer school in England and New Zealand.
In 1993, Sirivat began a project that he hoped would make him truly wealthy: building a $9 million luxury condominium complex, surrounded by a golf course, in Khoa Yai, nearly 200 northeast of Bangkok. Three years later, with Sirivat deeply in debt and the huge complex still under construction, Thailand�s economy started to collapse. Sirivat managed to sell only a few apartments in his condominium complex. By early 1997, Tong Gween was all but bankrupt.
Sirivat and his wife tried to find a way to stay afloat, but there were no demand for fund managers in Thailand�s failing economy and no capital to start business. Vilailuck was a devoted customer of a Japanese company that sold baked goods in Thailand. One morning, as she was making toast with the company�s bread, she had an idea. �We can sell sandwiches,� she said. �It�s a cash business and we can eat the left overs.�
It was a humiliating prospect for the once high-flying tycoon, but Sirivat knew he had no choice. �Even in a bad economy, people still have to eat,� he agreed.
The couple bought bread, ham, cheese, canned tuna and a jar of mayonnaise. In Tong Gween�s boardroom, Vilailuck and the company�s female employees made the sandwiches, which Sirivat and his male staff then sold at a local hospital. On that first day � April 20, 1997 � they earned only $12 for six hours� work.
Two months later, when he could no longer afford the rent, Sirivat moved his company to a cheaper office. Twenty employees stuck with him in the hope that he could make the sandwich business a success. Remembering the roaming popcorn vendors he had seen at football games in America, Sirivat decided they would have better luck selling their sandwiches on the streets. When his former white-collar employees balked at the idea, he told them: �If I can do it, you can do it�
It was hard, humiliating work. Once Sirivat came face to face with a friend, then a bank president. �What are you doing?� asked the banker, aghast. �I�m selling sandwiches,� Sirivat responded quietly as he put his head down and walked away.
Sirivat struggled through the deepening economic crisis. Then, in late 1997, the media picked up his story, dubbing him �Mr. Sandwich.� Sirivat�s determination to keep working touched many Thais� hearts, and sales increased. �You�re helping all of us,� one out-of-work customer told him.
Today Sirivat sells up to 800 sandwiches each week-day and his business, which employs 28 people, is growing rapidly and expanding into new lines, such as sushi. With the economy on the mend, former colleagues have urged him to return to the stock market. �Don�t look down on this small business � this is my future� Sirivat responds proudly. �When I was rich, I was supported by a few bankers. Now, I have thousands of people who support me as long I�m honest and I give them a good product.�
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