Pet Food Business Dream: Jerel Kwek and His Addiction

[This article is a digest of "Dogged Climb to Make Success of Pet Project" by Wong Kim Hoh, The Sunday Times, 16 June 2013]


Profile / Background of Mr Jerel Kwek

In spite of having set up three tech businesses, Mr Kwek wanted to do something scalable like having products which have cross-market appeal. He decided on pet food because his two biggest passions are animals and food.

His maternal grandmother Laura Tan founded 3 Aces which went on to become Singapore's largest outdoor bus banner agency while his mother Jayne Kwek is the chief executive of MooveMedia, the advertising unit of ComfortDelgro.

As a kid, he was enthused to hear of the challenges that his grandmother and mother had encountered in their businesses.

During school holidays, he interned at various businesses -- learning something new, exploring and meeting people in a working environment, which was fun for him.

He garnered his Web skills from reading books and magazines, and started his first company Imagine Multimedia while doing his first year of studies at National Junior College.

He put his studies at Wharton business school on hold and went on to start two more IT businesses: MyAngel.com e-recruitment and Relevanz knowledge management with specialisations in intranet portals and digitalising contents.

In 2001, at 22, he was one of the two young men who received the inaugural IT Youth Award by the Singapore Computer Society.

Unique Selling Proposition / How he did it

At 23, he invested SGD 6,000.00 of his savings to start a pet food company together with a veterinarian and animal nutritionist in Singapore. Today, Addiction is a multimillion-dollar global business with its own manufacturing plant in New Zealand and hires more than 40 people across three countries. Its range of products are sold in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, United States, Canada and Japan.

Instead of the usual suspects (such as chicken, beef or lamb), Addiction uses premium proteins and high quality wild game meats which have richer nutrients, hypoallergenic and easier to digest such as brushtail possum, kangaroo, venison, salmon, eel, rabbit, duck, buffalo, sweet potatoes and blueberries.

His company developed products no one else has and was therefore able to get a premium in the market place. It was a first-mover in the use eco-friendly meat and low-temperature processing to produce an array of raw dehydrated food.

As Mr Kwek has said, "New Zealand is the cleanest place in the world to produce pet food. There is free-range meat, there is no mad cow, or foot and mouth disease, there are stringent checks by the New Zealand Food and Safety Authority. We have unfettered access to any place in the world by producing our food in New Zealand because the reputation is so good."

Character / Attributes/ Business philosophies/ Secrets for success

Kwek-speaks:

"A setback is a set-up for a comeback. In my 10 years, I've had many setbacks -- customers who don't pay on time, suppliers who close down, equipment which break down. It's so easy to be discouraged but you have to transcend that."

"I'm constantly told by people that things cannot be done but I don't take 'no' for an answer. It's a matter of time and resources and your ingenuity."

"I just love the challenge of building the business. I love the idea of operating at different altitudes every day."

"I can't switch off. Before I go to bed, I make a list of what I have to do. Sometimes I get the solutions in my dreams."

Click here to access Addiction Pet Foods.


Bibliography:

The Sunday Times, 16 June 2013, "Dogged Climb to Make Success of Pet Project" by Wong Kim Hoh