Religion, Politics & Medicine

I was watching the program “Temujanji” in ASTRO, the satellite tv in Malaysia. The guest today was Ameer Ali bin Mydin, the owner of hypermarket, Mydin Sdn Bhd. The hypermarket was started in 1999, where Malaysia had our economic recession the year before. Ironically, during the economic recession, they managed to open more branches in Malaysia. The secret is when there is an economic recession, people will start thinking to buy a product that has the same quality, at a lower in price. It was an inspiring talk as i knew him as a good practising muslim, who dare to compete with other hypermarket like Tesco, Carrefour, and Giant.

I am a loyal customer of Mydin where i buy all my daily needs in Mydin. If you go to Mydin, yes of course with good price, with good quality. They have the big speaker and music and they will play songs like nasyid, selawat and also the daily popular songs. I would define the ‘real islamic’ value such as good quality of product and service, low price, and the minimum usage of plastic bags, where the ‘superficial Islamic’ such as nasyeed and Arabic songs.

Yes, I had mentioned in this Addeen (way fo life) there are 3 dimensions that Muslim need to take care which are Iman, Islam and Ihsan. Fruthermore, there are 3 dimensions of relationships that a muslim must take care of;

1) The relationship that you have with Allah (God) that you must have firm believe system, pray five times a day, pay the zakaah, fasting in Ramadhan and also do pilgrimage in Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

2) The relationship with human such as trust, be kind to people, responsible to yourself, family, society, patient and also your customer.

3) The third one is the relationship with environment where we Islamist, always forget about these such as low carbon emission, minimum usage of plastics and other stuff, keep the environment clean and many other things that i actually learnt when i was in Ireland, the so called non-muslim country.

Anyway, I am loyal to Mydin Hypermarket, as I know the owner of the hypermarket, pay their zakaah ( the 2.5% from your annual income that you need to pay for the needy in islam such as poor people, people who is in debt, the muslim who convert to islam. there are 7 of them) to the one of the Islamic state, which is Kelantan. Yes, Mydin has help Kelantan to survive for the state to help the poor people.

Yesterday, I bought a cloth where the price stated was RM22.90. When it was scanned, the price shown is only rm9! Well, the technical problem may happen but still this will make your customer happy when i was asked to pay RM9 (of course other hypermarket will do the same thing).

Yes, they are practising muslim, pay zakaah annually, create jobs to the local and I want to them survive in the free market that emerging in Malaysia as we cannot avoid it as we are part in the globalization process.

I was impressed of one of the incidence that happened when their big branch in Kota Bharu, the capital city of Kelantan, was totally burned and they need 6months to restore it. Yes, the moral of the staff were completely down as they believed they will lose their jobs and who are going to take care of their family. What happened was Mydin pay all the 200 staff their 6months salary even though they were not working at that time. Wow, this even help the staff and create loyalty to the company.

The qualities that he maintained as a good businessman are sharp on time, always create trust with your customer, taking care of yourself such as go to gym and exercise, keep your daily solat (muslim prayer). When he was asked that he frequently takes holiday to release stress, he said that make what you are doing and your place of working as your holiday. It means that you love your job as you feel that you are in holiday every day.

One of the concepts in business is trust and loyalty. Many companies would have this problem where they cannot maintain the concept of trust within the stakeholder. The stakeholder can easily run away when they know the company will lose that year of is going for bankruptcy.

The way they solve it by making the company as a family company. Since Mydin is his father’s name, every single siblings in his family feel responsible and are involved including his wife and sons as well. He managed to spread the feelings as part of Mydin’s family to their staffs when he is looking after them well as I had mentioned the story about the staff in Kota Bharu.

Yes, the concept of loyalty to the company is something crucial. I remembered when my friend back in Ireland told me that when a Chinese open a market or shop in foreign places like New York, Dublin or London, the local Chinese will support the shop. They will buy all the daily stuff and products even though they need to spend more on the same item that they can get in other shops. Eventually, this manner will help to sustain the shop and they will offer a competitive price once they are established and competitive.

He even criticized the Malay Muslim in Malaysia that has a bad habit of wanting to get rich as early as they can and also they are afraid of trying new things and afraid to take the risk. Yes, there will always a risk if you try a new concept of business. He said that Mydin currently has a turnover rate at Rm 1Billion! Yes, this happened after 30years of his involvement in business. He said that we need to know every single thing that happen in the world as thing changes abruptly and will affect the business in Malaysia. We should think how to survive in this very competitive market nowadays.

For me, even worse, the malay when they had started graduating, they always thinking of working with government. They say being a government servant will secure their daily salary and they no need to think how to be creative and to compete with each other. Yes, this is true but this will only make them more stupid even though they might be graduating from overseas or the top local university. This is worse for the government because every single ringgit (money) that they can spend to development, now they need to spend to bureaucracy as they need to pay the Malays because they are the majority in Malaysia and keeping them in satisfaction is important to secure their vote.

Anyway, Kudos to Mydin and i will always be your loyal customer and pray that you will steadfast as a Pious Capitalist!