STANDARD FORUM 2023 “THE UNDERRATED INDUSTRIES”

STANDARD FORUM 2023 “THE UNDERRATED INDUSTRIES”

            The Standard forum 2023 of our club, CamEd International Business Club, was held under the theme “The Underrated Industries” with Mr. Nay Artist as the project chair. This year the project took place on the 15th of January 2023 from 1:30 - 5:30pm at the Many Centre Hall. This event is beyond successful thanks to our three speakers that have dedicated their valuable time to give inspiring speeches at our event. First is “Mr. Loy Te”, the producer and founder of KongChak Pictures, one of the most popular Cambodian based production house for feature films. We decided on our first speaker because we have noticed that the film industry is very underrated in Cambodia as most Cambodians preferred international films to the local ones. Another speaker that we have invited is “Ms. Mice”, the Co-Founder of Costmebeauty. Costmebeauty is the first ever store in Cambodia that offers almost every type of cosmetics since 2014, when skincare and makeup products are very uncommon among Cambodians. Finally, our third speaker is “Ms. Mao Chanraksmey”, a Cambodian novelist at Seavphovjivet. We have decided to invite her as our speaker because publications by local authors are very rare and typically taken for granted by the majority of Cambodians.

I. The Purpose

- To provide knowledge on what strategies that business use to integrate their products and

services into national and international markets, as well as their challenges.

- To understand how they go through challenging moment in their business

- To learn the story behind their business

II. Activities

            After all of our honorable speakers, guests and members of the clubs all gathered and seated, the ceremony officially started at around 1:50pm, where the first 10 minutes served as the national anthem of Cambodia. The ceremony then carried on as follow:

1. Opening remark by “Mr. Casey Barnett”

           The ceremony kicked off with an opening remark by Mr. Casey Barnett, the President of CamEd Business School. He started with some advices about the strategy in starting the business and leadership style for a successful business.

2. Speech by the Co-founder of CIBC “Mrs. Ny Morokot”

            Following that, Mrs. Ny Morokot, the Co-Founder of CamEd International Business Club started a speech about the “Origin of CIBC”, the journey along the way going through challenges and rejection that evolves to CIBC today. She also gave us a story and the 3 important lessons she learned as follows: Overcome the Fear of Rejection, Learn the Importance of Staying Focus on Your Purpose and Explore Yourself More. Then the main talk of the show begins at around 2:00PM, where our speakers take turns to provide us with their meaningful insight and knowledge on their respective industries.

3. Speech by our first speaker “Mr. Loy Te”

            The Founder and Producer of KongChak Pictures, will be presenting under the topic “Cinematic & Music Jailbreak” with the Slogan “Go hard or Go Home”. His speech started by introducing his life journey up till a certain point in time which is 2011. It was the year that The Legend Cinema was first open and that’s also the year that he works there as a graphic designer. According to his story, around that time the challenging thing when making a movie was to get it to the people. There was no preview for movies at that time and there were no laws protecting against piracy. He worked together with the authority to pass a law against piracy and it exists till today. In 2016, there was a trend in Horror Film but he and his team wanted something different, which led to the creation of an action film called “Jailbreak”. Even though this film faces many rejections from investors, in the end, they continued with it and succeeded. They also made it into the international market and won some awards along the way. This is also the first Cambodian film that was introduced into Netflix. And in 2020, there was Covid-19, which affected his business a lot since his entire business structure was completely broken so he and his team decided to restructure their business into three different entities which are KongChak Pictures, KongChak Studio and KongChak Digital. Last but not least, his advice was that the movie industry in Cambodia needs to work together, the market is too small. Instead of competing with each other, they should try to compete with other countries instead. And try as much as you can “The more you try, the more hits you’ll get.”.

4. Speech by our second speaker “Ms. Mice”

            As Co-Founder of Costmebeauty, she will be presented about “Emerging Cosmetics Market '' with the slogan “Beauty is boundless, so are opportunities”. However, due to some circumstances, she couldn’t make it so Ms. Lyka, who is the Brand Manager of Costme will be the one presenting instead. Her speech started by describing the challenges of the business and the story about the business. Costmebeauty was founded in 2014 and they have been able to find a lot of success and have expanded a lot since then. Now there are 4 branches and each branch has a different concept and vibe so that the customers can enjoy the experiences. They have always focused on their customers and ensured that the customers have the highest satisfaction. They are always trying new things and looking into the future possibilities. For example, in 2020, Covid-19 create so much disturbance in most business but it doesn’t affect their business that much since they are always trying to prepare for the future by keep engaging with customers with contents on social media and in 2021, they are also the store that created the first mobile app in the beauty industry in Cambodian market.

5. Break and Refreshment

            After the second speaker ended her speech, there was a 30 minute break, which was enough for all speakers, guests and members to settle down and enjoy themselves with snacks, drinks and games that were prepared by our sponsors.

6. Speech by our third speaker “Mrs. Mao Chanraksmey”

            Being the Novelist at Seavphovjivet, she will be presented under the topic “The Inspiration Behind Author” with the slogan “Reality’s Transparency with A Fictional Escape”. She started by introducing the state of literature in Cambodia and the story behind the creation of

 her first book. She has been writing movies for 7 years and found no success with it. But in 2019, she decided to start writing novels instead. One of her popular book is called “កំណត់ហេតុពណ៍ស្វាយ”. It was so popular that she wrote two more sequels to the story. She said that literature is a very small industry, people don’t really like reading and there are fewer writers than expected in her experience at the very least. Most writers can’t make a living without having a side hustle and making business out of it is not really feasible. She strongly believed that everyone will read something that has good story telling and has a unique style that fit with today's society. The people in the past were different and their preferences also differed from one generation to the other. For her, there are three factors that pushed her toward this industry which are Talent, Enjoyment and Objective. Those three are very important. For example, if you have a talent for Writing but you don’t enjoy doing it, it will prove to be harder for you to succeed. Having an objective is important and for her it stays true from the start to the present and it doesn’t lead you astray by little things. In Cambodia, there are not many books written by Khmer authors in this generation. She really wanted Khmer literature to continue to be alive and is feasible for this generation. Lastly, it takes a lot of time to create a book but there is no limitation to how you write since you can imagine anything you want and keeping and engaging with loyal customers is very important.

7. First performance by “Mr. Puth Mithona”

            After all the speakers have finished their speeches, Mr. Puth Mithona, a skilled singer and songwriter from Ream Production, has gave us a live performance with two Khmer songs entitled “One Word” and “Crush អូនអ្នកគាំទ្រ”.

8. Second performance by “Ms. Kao Sannymol”

            Continuing from Mr. Puth Mithona, Ms. Kao Sannymol, a freelance singer, covered a song called “Traitor” which is very entertaining and enjoyable for our guests.

9. Q & A (Panel Discussion)

            The Panel Discussion session was coordinated by Mr. Seoun Chansy with questions by our audiences as well as his own queries to our esteemed speakers. However due to the time constraint, not all questions could be answered.

10. Lucky Draw

            The Standard Forum came to an end with the announcement of the winners by using Random Lucky Draw with the prizes provided by our sponsors. The prizes includes 10 prizes of books from Peak Bookshop, 10 prizes of books from Somnae, 10 prizes of books from Business Record, 3 prizes of tote bags from CIBC, 5 prizes of googoal books, 1 prize of humidifier and 1 prize of echo show 2nd white from Gooshop Cambodia.

11. Closing remark by the project chair “Mr. Nay Artist”

            At 5:30 pm, our event has come to an end with a closing remark by the project chair of standard forum 2023, Mr. Nay Artist. He shared some insights about how he felt and how he came to start this project from the beginning to the end. Finally, he wrapped up his speech with a deep appreciation to the event organizers, especially CIBC members who contributed to make this event happen.

III. Sponsorship

            This event could be held successfully, we also do not forget to thank our following support and contributions.

- Support: We'd like to thank our event sponsor, CamEd Business School, for providing a

variety of materials as well as cash to help us put the event together.

- Diamond Sponsors: Big thanks to LM Car, for their sponsorship as our Diamond

sponsors.

- Exclusive Merchandise Sponsors: Thanks to Asora Printing for the sponsorship as our

exclusive Merchandise partner.

- Exclusive Café and Pizza Sponsors: Big thanks to Pizza Hut and Park Café for providing

vouchers to our audiences.

- Gold Sponsors: Many thanks to Blu’s Boba for providing drinks for our guests and

audiences.

- Silver Sponsors: We also do not forget to thank The Many Center for providing us a hall

to host the event, and Tnoat News for their photography service.

- In-Kind Sponsors: We are grateful to have sponsors from Kirisu Farm, Somnae, Business

Record, Britea Cambodia, Gooshop Cambodia, Peak Bookshop, and last but not least,

Charm De Fleur.

- Media Sponsors: We'd also want to express our sincere gratitude to Ahladang, Edon-KH,

Fresh News, and Millionaire Idea for being our media sponsor.

IV. Conclusion

            After all, The Standard Forum 2023 was a huge success. We were able to learn some valuable insights from our speakers. This event will not be happening without the help of our generous sponsors, outstanding coordinator, respected guests and the corporation of the valuable speakers. Finally, we congratulated and applaud every one of the organizers, The Co-Presidents, Vice Presidents, Board of Advisors, Project Chair, Team Leaders and members from all departments for making this possible. We could never forget these meaningful events and memories we had together. See you next time in our new project!