Name of your website?Factory Listing Thailand
Your name?
Heikki Laaksonen
Your Location (city, etc)
Bangkok
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Are you searching high and low for a factory or factory service? Try our FREE Find-A-Factory service or our very detailed full service Find-A-Factory. We have an astounding 86% success rate in bringing client together with a suitable factory.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Factory Listing Thailand was founded with the vision of improving the web exposure of factories in Thailand - while simultaneously promoting their services, and cutting their costs reaching prospective clients.
The initial focus was on maximizing Thailand’s factories exposure to national and international internet visitors. Factories then, like today, were not in the business of website publishing. Customers came in from everywhere: agencies; branches; regional centers; etc. We strived to simplify the factory search for internet visitors while at the same time maximize exposure for all factories in Thailand. The need was just as clear nationally as internationally. Prospective clients experienced frustration and often could not get information at all. Incomplete information led to frequent callbacks and visits. "Local business-hours only" added to the frustration.
Enter Factory Listing Thailand. Our dedicated professionals, redundant data centers and flexible technology platform have eliminated these inefficiencies in information intake, yielding higher customer satisfaction, faster processing times and substantially lower costs.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Many many years ago, around 1995. It was just to dip my toes into the new exciting thing called the Internet. Nothing much came of it as it was only doodles and thoughts.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Factory Listing Thailand is as clear cut and direct as we can make it. It clearly states what we do without needing further explanations.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We strive to list quality manufacturers, who all have a presence on the Internet. We strongly believe that manufacturers who make an effort to be visible, should be easily visible and found. For all the other factories who do not yet have a web presence (which is a very significant number, unfortunately) we have a specialized service for. Find-A-Factory.
Our Find-A-Factory team has the expertise to source factories exactly according to your needs. We handle all the sensitive and delicate questions allowing for your peace of mind. For every one of your criteria, we will find suitable factories for you.
We will travel to the factories, request sample work, document the factory location and premises in detail and conduct an in depth interview with management about their factory and capabilities. Our professionals will thoroughly evaluate the workmanship, quality and their ability to maintain a high quality product throughout manufacturing (sample work can also be shipped to you for evaluation upon request). We also make sure their shipment standards are of international level. If there are any specifics you'd like to include in our evaluation we will listen and advice you of the results. We essentially will do all the legwork for you, ahead of your potential visit.
Clients can of course use our Find-A-Factory for manufacturers who already have a web presence as well, there are no limitations.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
We strive to become the number 1 source for visitors who are looking for factories in Thailand.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Factory Listing Thailand is a venture which makes our customers and visitors happy. This outweighs any potential profits or time invested. We want everyone who visit us to take a way a great impression and a few factories to contact. That we make a bit of profit is just icing on the cake, so to speak.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
An unlimited development budget would allow us to much quicker realise our eventual goal of listing and promoting every factory in Thailand.
Right now we can only focus on the ones who have a web presence since we do not have the staff to include enough information for each factory to be listed in a correct way that allows the manufacturer to be visible the way they see fit.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
We have a plan in place that would allow for incremental growth as well as explosive growth. Right now we are moving well within our capabilities and should the site expand explosively we can react very quickly to satisfy any demand.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
That manufacturers in Thailand are very slow to understand how lucrative and beneficial it is to them to be listed and visible to a worldwide audience. We are slowly but surely changing that by showing how big their exposure and profits can increase with us.
What has been your biggest challenge?
To source and categorise manufacturers. There really hasn't been a single reliable source of information about factories in Thailand before. We aim to change that.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Search engine results. We never expected to have this great success in search engine results. We were under the impression that we were entering a field that would need time to generate good results. How wrong we were. There is a clear need for our services, and it shows!
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
The amount of people who are actually in need of our services. It is quite amazing.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
Factory Listing Thailand has been online since September 2007. And the site will be kept up and running as long as there is a need for it.
What is your website address?
Factory Listing Thailand
