Business, By Southeast Asia

It's true that over the past 2.5 months, the Southeast Asians have awed us with their work ethic. If people work this hard in countries where there is so little, we dream about what we can do in our own country with just as much determination.

If you know us, you know we're always on the lookout for business ideas. Luckily, we have been inspired by the savvy Southeast Asian business practices and will model our future company accordingly. I hope you can pick up on sarcasm…here we go:

When we get home we've decided we will sell incense sticks outside the grocery store 

(AKA the market). We will refer to ourselves as “a village”, a clever term which sounds more interesting than it really is. We will watch the tour buses roll in.

We will employ clever marketing tactics such as telling people that they will buy from us. When they say no, we will not respect their decision and will give them no personal space by following them around asking in an angry tone of voice, “Why not?”. We may even walk directly in front of them in an attempt to trip them up. Surely this will persuade them.

We will not think of people in terms of “shoppers”. If they enter our village, they are buyers and we will treat them that way.  

We really hate it when buyers think they're being courteous when they say, “No, thank you.” If I hear that one more time, I will mock them by repeating, “No, thank you. No, thank you. No, thank you,” in the snottiest tone I can muster.

Like bugs to a light, we will attract buyers by putting out fake product arranged in colorful and fanciful displays. This will mesmerize and fool them all at the same time.

We will not label the price of our incense sticks. This will require the buyers to verbally ask us the price, wherein we can begin the negotiation. We will price our goods 5 times higher than any reasonably educated person would pay. If they balk at our prices, we will tell them that our incense sticks are handmade. We will even employ a fake craftsman to sit inside our village and pretend that she is rolling the incense onto the sticks.

If business is not going well, we will attribute it to one of two things: (1) an outlandish Chinese proverb or (2) a lack of competition. To remedy this, we will invite four other incense stick partners to set up shop right next to us. We will refer to them as our “cousins” and will work closely with them to ensure price fixing. We will also make sure that the merchandise in all five shops is coming from the exact same supplier (in China). We don't want anyone mistaking that our products are better than anybody else's. The more people we have selling incense sticks outside of the grocery store, the better off we'll be.

Why go back to school when we already have a SEA MBA?