Brandmine Weekly Edition 14 · Tuesday, August 11, 2026 Hiding in plain sight. Not for long. |
This week is about what a crisis actually proves. In January 1998, as the ringgit hit a record low and underwriters were fleeing the Kuala Lumpur exchange, a Penang jeweller called Habib listed anyway — beat its own profit forecasts, graduated to the Main Board in 2001, then bought itself back private in 2005 once it no longer needed to prove anything. Three more Penang and Kuala Lumpur houses lived a version of the same test. Ghee Hiang, 168 years old, nearly didn't survive seven years of family litigation — it came out the other side with sesame oil, not pastries, carrying 70% of its revenue. Bonia watched its shares fall 95% in the 1997 crash, sold nine properties to stay solvent, and rebuilt into a multi-brand operator. Hameediyah lost 60% of its staff during the pandemic and, three years later, opened its biggest flagship yet. None of these businesses avoided their worst year. Each one used it. * * * Randal Eastman · Penang |
This Week's Lead Habib Jewels 🇲🇾 Malaysia · Brand In January 1998, Malaysia's economy was in freefall. The ringgit had just hit a record low of 4.885 to the US dollar. The Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange had lost more than half its value in a year. Underwriters were pulling out of new listings rather than risk them. It was, by any reasonable measure, the worst possible month to take a company public. Habib Jewels went public anyway. The house had opened forty years earlier with nothing close to institutional backing — a single shophouse on Penang's Pitt Street, RM3,800 in starting capital, and a founder, Habib Mohamed Abdul Latif, who had already failed at three other businesses. His contrarian bet was simple: in a trade built on gold, sell diamonds and gemstones instead, to the Malay-Muslim customers the gold houses weren't chasing. It took a decade to pay off. By the 1990s it had built a national name. Listing into the depth of the Asian Financial Crisis looked reckless. Instead, Habib beat its own published profit projections. In 2001 it graduated to the KLSE Main Board — proof the gamble had worked, not just survived. And in 2005, having nothing left to prove to public markets, the family bought the listed shell back for RM1.3 billion (~$342M USD) and returned Habib to private hands, trading quarterly discipline for the patience a family business actually needs. Today Habib runs 30-plus showrooms from Penang to a landmark flagship in Kuala Lumpur's new financial district, with a third generation entering the business its founder started with a glass case of restored second-hand gold. The IPO is not the interesting part of this story. What it proves is. Habib listed at the depth of the 1998 crash and beat its own profit forecasts — the stress test that let it later trade public-market discipline for family patience |
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What It Means The stress-test advantageHabib didn't just survive going public in a crash — it beat its own forecasts while doing it, which is what let it later buy itself back private on its own terms. A business that proves itself under the worst conditions earns leverage a calmer track record never buys. The open question for any founder-owned business is whether its next crisis will be treated the same way — as a test to pass, not a threat to manage. The pivot that outlasts the fightGhee Hiang's near-fatal event was internal — seven years of family litigation, not a market crash. What saved it was the same instinct as Habib's: use the disruption to change what the business actually sells, rather than waiting to return to how things were. Sesame oil now carries the company pastries used to. The lesson transfers past food and jewellery — a crisis is often the only moment a legacy business can justify changing its core product without looking like it's panicking. The recovery-into-expansion moveHameediyah didn't stabilize after losing 60% of its workforce — it expanded, opening a six-storey flagship three years later. Bonia did the same after a 95% stock collapse, using the rebuild to add a stake in a 137-year-old German leather house. In both cases the recovery period became the strategy period, not a pause before returning to normal. That timing — moving while still recovering, not after — is the harder and rarer discipline. |
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This Week's Takeaway When you're deciding whether to trust a founder-owned business, don't skip past its worst year — look straight at it. How a company behaved during its crisis tells you more than any calm year ever will. |
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Also This Week 🇲🇾 Malaysia · Founder Habib Mohamed Abdul Latif A canteen boy with RM3,800 and three failed ventures behind him built Malaysia's best-known jewellery house — by selling diamonds in a gold town. |
🇲🇾 Malaysia · Brand Ghee Hiang 168 years old, seven in court. Four families nearly destroyed Malaysia's oldest confectionery. Sesame oil—not pastries—now 70% of revenue. |
🇲🇾 Malaysia · Brand Bonia Three syllables from a Renaissance sculptor. A SGD 5,000 loan. A 95% stock crash survived. Southeast Asia's boldest foreign branding play. |
🇲🇾 Malaysia · Brand Hameediyah Restaurant Malaysia's oldest restaurant lost 60% of its workforce in 18 months. Three years later, it opened a six-storey fine dining flagship. |
🇲🇾 Malaysia · Brand Oriental Kopi A Chinese-tradition kopitiam pursued halal certification as deliberate Malay-market strategy, not compliance — timed into a boycott wave. |
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By the Numbers | ● | RM3,800 — what it cost to start Habib Jewels in 1958; today it's a 30-plus-showroom national house |
| ● | 95% — how much Bonia's share price fell in the 1997 crash, before it rebuilt into a multi-brand operator |
| ● | 70% — the share of Ghee Hiang's revenue that now comes from sesame oil, not the pastries it was known for |
| ● | 60% — the share of Hameediyah's workforce it lost during the pandemic, three years before its biggest-ever expansion |
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From the Discovery Desk 🇲🇾 An Ipoh restaurant's third-generation cook died at 48 with no named heir — and he's not alone. Malaysia's founder-owned heritage restaurants are hitting succession all at once, a cohort no database has mapped. Free sector spotlight. Read the sector spotlight → |
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