Hi everyone, my dad is working in steel industry (fabrication for factories, such as trolleys, racks, etc. All our product are custom order, no brochure for item list). His business is not doing well in the past few years mainly due to the economy and political issue (most of his skilled worker trained by him are sent back to their origin country due to permit problem). Recently I came in to help him manage the business after I finished my degree last year.

The sales is not so good (production wise is another problem, current workers are working way too slow and available skilled worker out there are way too expensive and rare in current state of economy). This business is doing very well 10-15 years ago during the economy boom (199x-2005), after all the big factories move out from Malaysia and the opportunities is lesser and lesser.

Marketing in this industry doesn't seem like going anywhere since our target is mostly factories. We had tried creating websites and Facebook pages to show our manufacturing products and track records but it doesn't seemed to help.

Do note that this is a SME sized business, we had only about 3 workers in production, 1 lorry driver while me and my dad are taking the role on getting sales and all the management stuff. The overhead each month is ridiculously high (rental and salaries for worker) and the average margin for the business nowadays is about 30-40% only. Payment collection is another headache part and the credit term is always 60-90 days and our cash flow is getting very low. Do you guys think this kind of business is still workable in this country?