Ah Tan owns a small grocery shop. His father was a migrant from China. The old man was able to raise 10 children by running this small family business. Although they are not very rich, but Ah Tan’s father was always very proud with his small little shop.
Ah Tan’s father passed his shop to his eldest son after he retired. At first the business was good. Their shop has a good reputation in the neighborhood area as the boss is polite and friendly, the price is reasonable and the location of the shop is very strategic.
However, according to Ah Tan, the business in the shop has gradually decreased through out the years. At first, more grocery shop was being set up in the neighborhood. Then, slowly, more supermarket, shopping center were opened. Now, with all those hypermarket, not many people want to come to his shop anymore.
Ah Tan know the reasons behind. His shop is small and old fashioned. When compare to the hypermarket, the goods that he sells were not as many and complete. Besides that, the space in hypermarket are so huge, comfortable, air conditioned, the sales girl are all young and attractive. The most important thing is, the prices of the things they sell are very very low-priced. He doesn’t blame his customer for not wanted to come to his shop.
Now that the business was so bad, Ah Tan was in a dilemma now. He was 50 this year. His children Wei Hong and Wei Ling are still in secondary school. With the crude oil price rise to $90, soon there will be increase price in everything in the market…
Can he increase the price of the goods to earn more money? He doubts that. If he does so, the remaining customer will all leave him. How is he going to survive in this competitive world??? If he closes his shop now, what can he do??? As the only bread winner in the house, how is he going to support his family???
There are many similar Ah Tan stories in Malaysia now. Will the small and medium industries go into bankrupt one by one when all the big companies from overseas started to come in under globalization concept? What can the government do to help them to survive?
