I’ve now been in Malaysia for 4 years and thought I’d reflect on what I’ve achieved and failed on with my company.

Where I’m at now:

The company is a team of 6. Myself, 2 designers, 2 interns from the UK, and a part time biz dev consultant. We have moved from coworking space to coworking space to finally at our own design house. We have an open plan office, a workshop, a boardroom and kitchen. The international interns live upstairs. Overheads are now considerable, but every month has been profitable so far – just my personal take home is hugely variable! I have achieved a level that I set out to achieve when I first started making notes about this company before I even left for Malaysia. I am very happy about that.

However, despite this, there are obvious areas to improve my company. The personalities in my staff have not come together to form the team I wanted. I should have spent more time in leading, developing and team building. Instead I was very focused on simultaneously delivering around 8 projects at any given time.  I am trying to take on fewer projects that are higher value, but when cash is needed I have to take the smaller projects.

DELCO has established a reputation in Kuala Lumpur as a main player in the product design world and I have worked on 50 projects in the 4 years. I am very proud of what I have achieved here.