It's not always the fault of the Malays

Malaysia Today
23 January 2006


It's not always the fault of the Malays

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Motorcycles have always been in my blood. I got my first taste of a
motorcycle at a very tender age; in fact, before I was even
circumcised yet. My grandfather was then the Governor of Penang and I
was staying with him for the school holidays. One of the Residency
boys had a Honda Cub which I commandeered and rode around the
Residency grounds. Since then I have always been passionate about
motorcycles, with sex coming in a very close second. That was in the
early 1960s of course, so invariably since then my priorities have
reversed somewhat.

It was not until I was 16 was I allowed to own my first bike, the age
when I could legally ride a motorcycle. It was a Yamaha 90cc which I
upgraded to a Yamaha 100 Twin after my sixth crash. I crashed 13
times in two years; once during the Malaysian Grand Prix of 1968 (so
who says 13 is an unlucky number?). Other bikes I have owned are
Suzuki 250, Honda 350, Honda 450, Yamaha 650, Kawasaki 900, Kawasaki
1000, Yamaha 650 Turbo and Yamaha 535, in that order.

My dream bikes of the late 1960s-early 1970s were the Honda Four
(750cc) that hit the world like a Tsunami and the Kawasaki Mach 3
(500cc triple) that could burn off your tyres in no time at all. The
British Trident and Bonneville were also my favourites, but certainly
beyond my reach since they were not available in Malaysia.

In 1972, I decided to try my hand at dealing in motorcycles. Honda,
Yamaha and Suzuki were already represented in Malaysia but Kawasaki
was still absent from the market. I approached Choong Motors of
Petaling Jaya and suggested that Mr Choong consider importing
Kawasaki motorcycles into Malaysia. I offered to joint-venture with
him. He would finance the operation and I would help him run it; a
perfect partnership for someone without any start-up capital. Choong
did not think it was viable though and he shot the idea down. Later,
when Med-Bumikar-MARA took up the Kawasaki franchise and it proved a
roaring success, Choong told me he felt like kicking himself (Choong
Motors later became Med-Bumikar-MARA's dealer for Kawasaki).

“I did not take you seriously,” said Choong. “After all, you are a
hippie so I did not think you were cut out to be a businessman”. My
shoulder-length hair and black leather jacket probably did not give
Choong the right impression about me.

In 1976, I acquired the Terengganu agency for Kawasaki motorcycles
from Med-Bumikar-MARA. The best seller was the scrambler or off-road
(dirt) models and to promote it I organised dirt bike races on a
seven-acre plot of land I bought in Cendering on the outskirts of
Kuala Terengganu. Kawasaki soon gave Yamaha and Suzuki a run for
their money in Terengganu.

I suffered my first skirmish with the government soon after that. The
Kawasaki scramblers were CBU (completely built up) so they need to be
inspected by the RIMV (Registrar and Inspector of Motor Vehicles;
know called JPJ). CKD (completely knocked down) bikes do not need to
go through this hassle.

The RIMV inspectors however wanted ‘under the table’ money (bribes)
of RM50 per bike before they would approve the bikes. I refused to
pay so they rejected my bikes as ‘un-road worthy’. I was stuck. I
could not register the bikes I had sold.

I sent the registration documents to Kuantan and got the bikes
registered there instead. This involved obtaining a change of address
card for my buyers as most of them had Terengganu addresses on their
identity cards. RIMV soon found out about my scam and one day they
set up a road block and issued summonses to all those scrambler
owners with Pahang registration plates.

One of my customers, a teacher, came to see me to complain that he
had been issued a summons. I asked him to hand me the summons and
leave the whole thing to me to sort out. I was going to challenge
RIMV in court. I appointed Lawyer Lee as the solicitor to handle our
case and, on the day of the case, the teacher, Lawyer Lee, and I went
to court. The magistrate, Darshan Singh, went berserk when we said we
were going to fight the case. “You foolish fellow!” he shouted. “We
will hold the hearing now!”

But the RIMV officer who had issued the summons was not in court so
the case had to be postponed to another date. He had assumed we would
plead guilty and would pay the fine so he did not bother turning up.
I must say Lawyer Lee did a fine job indeed. By the time he finished
arguing our case, Darshan Singh did a complete U-turn and started
blasting the RIMV officer instead. Darshan Singh looked like he was
the defence lawyer rather than the judge. We won the case and it hit
the newspapers. RIMV was outraged. I was blacklisted for many years
thereafter until the Terengganu RIMV officers transferred out to
another state. But they never dared touch my bikes again and we
continued selling CBU bikes with Pahang registration plates.

Sadly, Med-Bumikar-MARA lost the Kawasaki agency soon after that when
they went into a cashflow crunch. I then approached Wing Ming (later
called Motorcycle Industries) and acquired the agency for Yamaha.
Wing Ming too went bust later, so I had to approach Guan Hoe to
become their Suzuki dealer. Not long after that Guan Hoe too went
bust. Sheesh! Am I a jinx or what? All these people had been in
business for years but no sooner I become their dealer they go bust.

Yamaha eventually transferred into the hands of Hong Leong. I
immediately approached Hong Leong and again took up the agency for
Yamaha, and prayed hard they too would not go bust. They did not off
course.

I bought two double-story shop lots in Kuala Terengganu and set one
up one as a showroom and the other as a service centre complete with
pneumatic tools, hoist and so on, at par with a Proton service centre
today. (That was how ‘up-to-date’ our service centre was 30 years
ago, the era when Proton was not even born yet).

I then set up a dirt bike racing team and brought in the latest
motocross racing bikes for the team that I named ‘The Terengganu Dirt
Rats’. I sent the racing team to the Shah Alam racing circuit for
training under the tutorship of one of Japan’s top dirt bike racers.

Our first motocross race in Cendering, Terengganu, attracted an
astonishing crowd of 10,000 spectators. The entire road, which was
the main Kelantan-Pahang link, was jammed up for three hours and no
one could move an inch either way. Unfortunately, one spectator was
killed by a bike that ploughed into the crowd and the ambulance could
not get through in time because of the massive jam, the first time
Terengganu had ever seen a traffic jam. Wan Mutallib Embong, the PAS
kingpin and lawyer who was acting for the family, wanted to sue my
pants off but they did not have a case against me. (I had invited the
police to help with traffic control but they did not bother turning up).

With all this effort at promoting dirt bikes, I soon became known as
the ‘Scrambler King’. My bike sales touched 200 to 300 units a month.
In time I became the third largest Yamaha dealer in Malaysia. The top
dealer was Fortune Motors of Ipoh and the second was Hock Eng Teck of
Kota Bharu. Yes, that’s right, number one was in Ipoh, number two in
Kota Bharu, and number three was in Kuala Terengganu; none in Kuala
Lumpur.

Hong Leong gave each dealer RM500,000 in hire purchase financing. I,
however, was given RM2 million, something none of the other dealers
were enjoying. Nevertheless, I was buying the bikes on Letters of
Credit (LC) while the other dealers paid by cheque, 60 days after the
bikes were delivered.

Not only was I the number three dealer in Malaysia, but I was the
only Malay dealer in the top 200 list. To find another Malay dealer
you would have to look at the top 300 dealers’ list where the next
Malay dealer was number 299. In the top 500 dealers’ list there were
only about six or seven Malays, mostly selling a couple of units a
month and who could hardly qualify as proper bike dealers.

Then Hong Leong started appointing other Yamaha dealers in
Terengganu, all Chinese of course. They set up shop for awhile but
gave up after they found they could not compete with me. I set up the
Terengganu Motorcycle Dealers Association to try and unite all the
bike dealers, with me, the only Malay, as association Chairman. Our
objective was to try to end price undercutting, especially between
the two Honda super-dealers, Hock Kee Seng and Tai Seng, who are
actually cousins but bitterly at war with each other. Of course, I
also had a hidden agenda. I wanted to use the association to counter
Hong Leong’s move of appointing more Yamaha dealers; sort of like a
cartel or bike dealers Mafia.

I asked Hong Leong why they were ‘disturbing the market’. I was
already their top Malay dealer in Malaysia and in their top ten list.
Why appoint new dealers in Kuala Terengganu? In fact, those dealers
they were appointing were actually my sub-dealers who they were
pinching. Their reply was because the sub-dealers had complained I
refuse to supply them the bikes they needed.

It is not that I was starving them of supplies. The sub-dealers owed
me a total of RM1.5 million and they were not paying me what they
owed (mostly in hire purchase facilities). I in turn had to buy the
bikes from Hong Leong on Letters of Credit. I was practically
financing the sub-dealers from my own pocket. Once Hong Leong
supplies them directly they will not pay me what they owe since they
no longer require me for supplies. I could no longer use the supply
of bikes as leverage to collect my debts and I would stand to lose
more than RM1 million if I was forced to write-off the outstanding
amount. I could sue them of course, but many had since changed the
names of their companies and they had no assets I could claim
against. (I eventually did have to write-off RM1.5 million, thanks to
Hong Leong).

To control or restrict my sales (for reasons still unknown), Hong
Leong starved me of supplies. They also forced me to buy models
(Passola) that could not sell before they would supply me models that
were saleable. I eventually had to just give away those un-saleable
stocks free to whoever wanted them. That was the price I had to pay
to get my hands on stocks of Yamaha.

One day, Hong Leong supplied me half a lorry-load of bikes. The lorry
driver told me that the other half lorry-load was for another Chinese
dealer. Half lorry? I needed five lorry-loads. I had orders backed up
for two months which I could not service. Then the lorry driver told
me that the Chinese dealer was also getting another full lorry-load
that was being unloaded even as he spoke.

I went berserk. I was getting half a lorry-load of bikes and the
Chinese dealer was getting one and a half lorry-loads. I had 200
outstanding orders and the Chinese dealer was just stocking the
bikes, and on credit on top of that. No wonder my customers were
cancelling their orders and asking for their deposits to be refunded.
They were walking over to the Chinese dealer who had surplus stocks
and were buying from him.

I screamed at my boys to rampas (seize) the entire lorry-load and
unload everything into our shop. The lorry driver panicked and begged
me not to do so. I shouted at him to sit down and shut up if he
wanted to leave Kuala Terengganu in one piece. He asked to use my
phone to call his head office which I agreed. He explained what was
happening to his bosses in KL and passed the phone over to me.

Hong Leong pleaded with me to release the lorry. I was adamant. I
told them I was taking the entire lorry-load of bikes whether they
agreed or not. Since the Chinese dealer was already getting one lorry-
load of bikes I wanted this full lorry-load. I would have been
prepared to share this lorry-load with the Chinese dealer if this one
lorry-load was all there was. But it is not fair to give him one and
a half lorry-loads and me only half a lorry-load when I had 200
outstanding orders; and he needed these bikes just for stocking
purposes, which he would use to steal my customers.

My wife, who was also my business partner, was equally outraged.
“Hong Leong is Chinese and they cannot stand to see a Malay succeed,”
said my wife.

I was surprised she said that. “You are Chinese,” I said. “How can
you say something as racial as that about your own race?”

“Because I am Chinese so I know,” she replied.

Hong Leong’s Kuantan manager visited me soon after that and we ended
up in a heated argument. “We cannot allow you to be the sole Yamaha
dealer in Terengganu,” he told me. “That would be too dangerous. You
can hold Hong Leong to ransom. What if one day you decide to give up
the agency? Yamaha in Terengganu will die. So we need to build up
other dealers so that you do not become too powerful.”

On hearing this, my wife blew her top. “Yamaha can fuck off! My
husband built up the Yamaha market in Terengganu. Before this Honda
was the top seller in Terengganu. Now Yamaha is the top brand. Before
this no one wanted to even sell Yamaha because it could not sell.”

My wife told the Hong Leong manager that we no longer wished to sell
Yamaha. We were going to give up the agency. It was indeed a sad day
for me. I loved bikes and I loved the motorcycle business. But my
wife is one determined person. Once she says something she means it.
As I said, we lost RM1.5 million once we wound down our motorcycle
business. And that hurt. I decided to focus on my Mercedes Benz
agency instead which I had acquired in the early 1980s and which had
grown in leaps and bounds.

Yes, we read a lot about how Malays can’t do business and how they do
not know how to succeed in the business world. Sometimes it could be
that the Malays are not being allowed to succeed. No doubt, one
swallow does not make a summer and my case may not be reflective of
norm, but that was my personal experience in a business that is
Chinese dominated.

One day, some time in the early-1990s, I met Trade and Industry
Minister Rafidah Aziz and asked her, “How many Malays are there in
the motorcycle business?” She did not know so I asked her to check.
She asked for the list of motorcycle dealers and was surprised when
she could not find ten names in the list of one thousand.

Oh, after I got out of the motorcycle business, Honda recaptured the
Terengganu market, and until today Yamaha has not been able to regain
the top notch in Terengganu. I suppose it needs a Malay dealer to
help Yamaha become the top seller in Terengganu again. Hey, don’t
look at me, I am retired!