KUCHING: To help their Exclusive Partner Mobile (EPM) gain more income, Joeyees Trading Sdn Bhd, a manufacturer of Sarawak pepper-based products under the Nang Ori brand, inaugurated its latest initiative, the Nang Ori Home Centre, last night (Jan 28).
According to Nang Ori founder Awaeang Kwasin, with this programme, their customers can easily and quickly find the nearest Nang Ori Home Centre by just using the Google Business or Waze apps.
“These days, it’s common to use the Waze and Google Business apps to find our products.
“Therefore, aware of the existence of these apps, we thought of developing a home centre that utilises the advantages of both apps,” he said at the Nang Ori Gala Dinner 2022 held at a prominent hotel here last night.
The dinner was officiated by Puncak Borneo Member of Parliament Datuk Willie Mongin, while state MARA director Dr Azmi Amat Murjan launched the Nang Ori Home Centre programme.
Elaborating, Awaeang said that so far, Nang Ori currently has 20 centres, including 10 leaders and 10 VVIP EPMs, to assist more than 5,000 agents, also known as EPMs.
“Most of them are housewives, single mothers, and women who work from home selling Sarawak pepper goods under the Nang Ori brand online,” she said.
At the ceremony, Nang Ori’s outstanding business partners, entrepreneurs and agents also received their respective awards, presented by Willie.
In addition, Inek Sima, a craftswoman from Rumah Panjang Nanga Seladong in Ulu Skrang, and her husband, were also invited to the ceremony in order to showcase their products.
According to Awaeang, her company Joyees Trading, will help Rumah Panjang Nanga Seladong residents market their unsold (due to several constraints they are facing) handicraft products.
In addition to the community programme with Inek Sima, she said that this year, her company’s participation in a number of entrepreneurial programmes, like the Online Successful Women Programme, the Aruz car draw, Ratu Kebaya, the Roadmap to Hypermarket, and the Nang Ori Online Entrepreneur Incubator Centre Programme.
Awaeang said that the hard work of all the agents, leaders and staff has enabled the Nang Ori brand to be increasingly recognised in the local market as a brand that helps people generate income through Sarawak pepper and locally based products that have successfully entered international markets with the tagline “From Farm To The World.”
In the meantime, she also expressed her gratitude for the assistance rendered by the MARA Serian and Kuching offices, the MARA Sarawak and Kuala Lumpur head offices, and agencies such as the Sarawak Department of Agriculture, the Malaysian Pepper Board, SME Corp., the Bumiputera Agenda Steering Unit (Teraju), Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (MATRADE), Peladar, Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority (FAMA), Sarawak Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), Ministry of Food Industries and Commodities, as well as Sarawak Regional Development.
Sharing her success as a pepper-based product entrepreneur, Awaeang said she started the Sarawak pepper business from her office in Puchong, Selangor in 2016.
“Every time I went back to Sarawak at the time, my friends would frequently ask me to buy pepper for them.
“I told them that my parents’ house contained sacks of Sarawak pepperberries that we had grown since I was a kid.
“My friend told me that Sarawak pepper is the best pepper in the world, and from there, I was determined to market the Sarawak pepper under the Nang Ori brand, which means original from Sarawak.
“But I encountered several difficulties. We first had no idea how to market the goods in Malaysia’s hypermarkets.
“I still remember that on the first day of the course with the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs (KPDNHEP) — now known as the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Living Costs — I only brought a big bottle of pepperberries, and KPDNHEP gave us a lot of training and helped us prepare for the business marching session with hypermarket buyers.
“I am also very grateful to have strategic partners like Mydin, AEON and Lulu hypermarkets,” she said.
At the event, Mydin, AEON and Lulu hypermarkets, as well as MARA, gave awards to suppliers and entrepreneurs of Made in Malaysia products from Sarawak who had entered those three hypermarkets.
The Nang Ori family teams from Sabah, Selangor, Penang, Limbang, Miri, Sri Aman, Bau, Lundu, Kuching Serian, Bintulu, Brunei, Melaka, Selangor, and Singapore were also present at the ceremony.
