This week I am blogging from my trip to Bangkok, Thailand. I took this trip to help a small clothing company that I have been advising better source products. This is a small outfit that I have been considering an investment in. In an effort to better source products from Asia, I have taken this trip to meet with manufacturers and designers. This is my first trip to Thailand. Suffice it to say that it IS all that it is cracked up to be in terms of the culture of the Thai people, the quality of their overall hospitality, and the overall beauty of the culture.
Although there have often been undertones of sleaziness to most of the comments that I have heard about Bangkok and trips to Thailand, I can say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the integrity and trustworthiness of the people in the textile industry. There seems to be a strong spirit of entrepreneurism among Thai people in regards to clothing design and manufacturing.
Nearly every storefront in the fashion malls or street markets is backed by its own "factory". When I ask about the designers of the clothing and the "factory," I am pleased to find that the "designer" is usually a young person who speaks a little bit of English from school. The "factory" is usually a group of families or relatives that hand sew and hand stitch each item of clothing!
Some of these young entrepreneurs have started their operations from scratch, from personal savings, or family savings. They acquire their raw textile material from Korea, China, or India, and then cut and assemble the items piece by piece, stitch by stitch. The quality is amazing and clearly surpasses the quality that I have seen coming out of China.
What amazes me the most about these young fashionistas is that they remind me so much of the technology entrepreneurs that are abundant in the Silicon Valley and emerging from all major universities. It is definitely nice to see that the young Thai entrepreneurs have knowledge of the supply chain in the textile industry ingrained in their DNA as they grow up. Similarly, it is comforting to know that entrepreneurship among the adolescents in the United States continues to grow from all the success stories of the recent technology waves.
Before I forget, let me congratulate Sequoia Capital on their YouTube sale!...yet another set of under 30s billionaires have been made...and they say that venture capital returns are dead...
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