Purchases for the kid

Do they look familiar to us Malaysians? Except of course the model baby-lah!

Was browsing the net yesterday looking for some kiddy stuff online. Just doing some online window shopping, if you know what I mean.

So I just simply typed on Google search for "baby rocker/bouncer" and guess what? I found it online selling for Euro 300.- plus including DHL delivery!!! I was so shocked to actually see the price of this item produced an Australian company (not entirely sure here), that I had to check out the price again; TWICE! There's a similar product, this produced by a Swiss company which costs about CHF200.-. And mind you, this product has been around for only a few years back, say since 2004 or so? And as far as I can remember, baby rocker/bouncer existed in Malaysia since I was born! And that's about more than 25 years ago!

The online product I saw doesn't look as solid as the ones we have at home. And ours even have wheels attached at the bottom and its much bigger in size compare to theirs! My point is; WHY DIDN'T WE MALAYSIANS MARKET THIS STUFF OUT TO THE WORLD AGES AGO? We could have "sapu" the market up first than let the ang mohs make a huge profit out of it.....

Its not that we don't have the capabilities to actually change the product to suit the market, its just that I think that either we're just too concentrated on our own country that we forget about there's the rest of the world out there, whose money we could earn from. OR we Malaysians are just plain too lazy to think about the global market until recently? And recently, I can tell you there's only a handful of products listed as Made in Malaysia and most of them consist of food items! I haven't seen any Malaysian Batiks around here either, be it in France or Switzerland, since they make so much hype about marketing this art to the world a few years back.

And why are they only making these so called "road-shows" locally and yet their main objectives are going globally.... There are so many exhibition or road-shows they could find out and join. Like the Eclat De Mode, Interselection, World Food Show in Paris, HANDARBEIT & HOBBY in Germany, Hobbycrafts-Birmingham, the U.K etc... Perhaps joining trade shows aren't enough, due to the costs etc. Perhaps, what we really need is a better chain of supply, i.e. better websites which is updated frequently for a better and safer online shopping experience? I mean if other SMIs around the world can do it, why not SMIs in Malaysia? Think about this, they (the SMIs) could go directly to their customers, cutting off the need of the middle man, thus cutting out the cost. B dealing directly with the customers, they could also find out what's the current market trend etc because there's communication.

Oh well! Its always easier said than done isn't it? But I believe that if there's a will there's always away. So for now we're just content in getting the crib instead of the baby rocker.