Luxury pewter brand Royal Selangor has come a long way from its humble beginnings. From what began as a small business over a century ago, it is now a thriving company with a brand presence in more than 20 countries. As the company prepares to celebrate its 125th anniversary, Jacqueline Toyad and Anandhi Gopinath get up close and personal with the Yong siblings to bring you the story behind its success.

We often hear about the highly marketed “American Dream”, the promise of prosperity to a nation made up mostly of migrants who believed that America was the land of opportunity, that they could attain a better, richer and fuller life through thrift and hard work.

While we had our own version of this promise dating back centuries, we never thought to package and brand the Malayan Dream — that those who worked hard and cultivated the resources the land had to offer and played a part in the nation’s growth would enjoy a good life.

There are many stories of the Malayan Dream achieved, but none has become as much a signature of Malaysia as the Petronas Twin Towers have today, that celebrates the one natural resource that put life into our nation’s capital in such a big way, as Royal Selangor.

This luxury pewter brand, which had its humble start at 23 Jalan Silang some 125 years ago making ceremonial pewter items for Chinese temples, is today synonymous with the stunning trophies it produced for the Formula One Grands Prix in Malaysia, Singapore and China. It has received commissions for the Commonwealth Games, Shanghai ATP Masters 100 and even World Cup Golf. It was also appointed licensee for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Millenium Collection and the 2006 Germany FIFA World Cup, creating exclusive merchandise to commemorate these world-class events.

The company’s portfolio holds more than just trophies and souvenirs. With a full-fledged design department and collaborations with award-winning international designers, Royal Selangor also offers a host of lifestyle accessories, from home decor and jewellery to wine carafes and goblets, changing the way people look at pewter and the way this tin alloy is used. Its in-house design team has received plenty of accolades, including the prestigious Red Dot award by Germany’s Design Zentrum and Japan’s G-mark for good design from the Japan Industrial Design Promotion Organisation.

Distributed from its home base in Malaysia, the brand enjoys a thriving worldwide presence in more than 20 countries, including Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Japan, Australia and the UK, with its 300-strong workforce continuing to produce pewter crafts at its factory in Setapak, which is now part of an award-winning visitor centre that attracts over 150,000 visitors a year.

At the heart of this internationally renowned brand is the story of the Yong family beginning with Yong Koon, a 14-year-old pewtersmith from the little village of Dabu in Guangdong, who left his rural existence in search of a better life. He decided that he could find it in Malaya, where his two brothers had already found work as tinsmiths in a tin-mining town called Kuala Lumpur. Together they set up a shop called Ngeok Foh (Hakka for Jade Peace — a hallmark which would grace the pewter items made by the brothers) — making simple household items from tin and galvanised steel before expanding their business to include the making of pewter incense burners, joss stick holders and candle stands for Chinese altars.

Yong Koon enjoyed brisk albeit not great business for many years, managing to start a family in between with his wife Loh Pat. With four sons — Peng Pow, Peng Sin, Peng Kai and Peng Seong — in tow, everyone became involved in the business, and soon enough money was saved to move to their own shophouse at 219 Pudu Road where they started Malayan Pewter Works.

World War II, economic depression and a family feud would force the evolution of the business.
The tough economy called for innovative thinking. Pewtersmithing was slowly becoming a dying craft, and it took some wit to find avenues through which to make money. The booming export of rubber led to Malayan Pewter Works making thousands of small zinc spouts to ease the tapping of rubber. By the 1930s, as the demand for ceremonial pewter declined, Yong Koon and his sons began making European-style products such as cigarette boxes, ashtrays, vases and teapots for British and other Western expatriates.

The feud between Yong Koon’s sons would lead to the formation of three other pewter companies — Tiger Pewter, Selangor Pewter and Lion Pewter — of which only Selangor Pewter, run by Peng Kai, survived.

Peng Kai, his wife Soh Eng and their children — Poh Shin, Mun Ha, Mun Kuen and Poh Kon — would prove to be the bridge between Yong Koon’s fine craftsmanship and the creative and innovative lifestyle pewter products Royal Selangor is known for today. It was under his lead that the use of machinery was introduced and production lines were developed. It was Peng Kai and his children who developed its export business in the late 1960s, firstly to Singapore and then later to Hong Kong, Germany, Denmark, Japan, Australia and the UK. It was in the 1970s, still with Peng Kai at the helm, that the company diversified and extended the business to the designing, manufacturing and marketing of precious jewellery and hallmarked sterling silver under the names of Selberan and Comyns.

In 1979, the Sultan of Selangor Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah appointed the company royal pewterer, inspiring Peng Kai’s children in 1992 to rebrand the company as Royal Selangor to reflect the royal endorsement and diverse nature of the company.

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As the company prepares to celebrate its 125th year in the business, we find ourselves meeting with Peng Kai’s children — Yong Poh Shin, chairman of Royal Selangor Singapore; Sun Mun Ha (nee Yong), who helps oversee the company’s retail business in Australia; Datin Paduka Chen Mun Kuen (nee Yong) and Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon, director and group managing director respectively of Royal Selangor International.

It is fortunate for us that the four siblings reunited for Chinese New Year — and the wedding of Mun Kuen’s son, Chen Tien Yue, Royal Selangor Marketing general manager — recently and were generous enough to grant us a few hours of their time for an interview and a photo shoot at the factory/visitor centre in Setapak.

The atmosphere at the plant is vibrant, with busloads of tourists manoeuvering the factory area, pewter museum and gift shop with much enthusiasm. As we make our way around the grounds with the Yong siblings in search of the ideal photo backdrop, we find it funny that the visitors, keen on learning about Royal Selangor and eager to return home with souvenirs, should walk by the company’s living heritage with only a mild look of curiosity. The sheen of pewter products probably had more appeal than the four people being photographed.

“Let them come through,” Mun Kuen tells one of the centre’s guides and his group of tourists when we end up blocking the connecting walkway between the museum and factory in the name of getting a good picture.

The customer is obviously king at Royal Selangor and the siblings are more than happy to remain unidentified to the visitors. They’re just content to see visitors enjoying themselves. Some are taking pictures with the pewter bust of their father that stands at the doorway of the factory. Happier still when the visitors exit the centre with paper bags of Royal Selangor products.

We finally get down to the interview half an hour later, seated comfortably in the air-conditioned confines of the private dining room beside the pewter museum area. We’re served tea from the iconic Royal Selangor melon-shaped teapot, created by founder Yong Koon, and borrowing from the title of the Royal Selangor book written by Yong Koon’s great-granddaughter Chen May Yee, we start the siblings talking about being “born and bred in pewter dust”.

Being the eldest, Poh Shin takes the lead: “You’re talking about the really difficult days. I used to go to school in the morning and in the afternoon I would end up in the retail shop. I had to be there because mum felt that she had to keep an eye on me to make sure I did my homework. After homework, I’d help out with the delivery of goods to the engraver, which was a 20-minute walk away. And on my way back, I would buy chicken neck from the Indian shop for mum to eat. I started doing this when I was 11 years old. When I got a bit older, I would use a bicycle instead of walking. At that time the only salesperson in the shop was mum while dad looked after the factory.”

Second child Mun Ha says there was “no choice” when it came to the family business. It wasn’t that the children were forced to work; it was just something they did, their way of life.

“When you were in that half-shop, when you were helping, there was no choice. Like Poh Shin said, mum was the only salesperson on the floor. If there was anything that needed to be sent to the post office or needed to be packed, you just helped. We even did our homework at the shop,” she explains.

“I think there was a choice,” Poh Shin interjects softly. “If you were very good with your studies, your teachers were willing to send you overseas to become a teacher...”

“Yes, but I had no choice too,” she replies. “Dad said, ‘don’t go’,” she laughs.

Turning to us, Poh Shin explains, “There were options, but to [my sisters] the company needed bare hands so both of them decided to stay with the business.”

This half-shop that they refer to was their parents’ shop in Batu Road (now known as Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman). At this point, the shophouse on Pudu Road procured by Yong Koon remained the family house upstairs and the pewter factory downstairs, and the Yong siblings lived in bare minimum conditions — bed was a rattan mat rolled out on the floor with a pillow, blanket and bolster. The bath was the middle of the upstairs kitchen, scooping cold water out of a big tin pail. If someone was cooking, a bath would have to wait.

For what we enjoy today, this sounds like harsh living. For the Yong siblings, it was a tough childhood but it wasn’t exactly a horrible one. As Mun Ha puts it, “We did what we did because we were needed. I did enjoy my time at the shop. Nowadays, the young ones decide: ‘What movie to go to?’ or ‘What computer game should I play?’ For us, it was basically a way to pass the time and a time for learning.”

While Poh Kon was at the time a little too young to help out, his older siblings were very much involved in the day-to-day running of the business.

Says Mun Ha, “Right up to the year we left school in 1957, father would make the products in the factory and bring them to the shop, mother would sell; we were there to help and the money went into the bank as that was to feed us all. I helped with the books, and we were in the red for a very long time. When Poh Kon and Mun Kuen were at school, it was then that the books started to turn a bit black. But it was hard. It was hard for many years.”

Poh Kon adds, “In those days, there were no SME banks, no soft loans which we can easily get these days. We just had to do it, virtually in cash hand-to-mouth. Even buying materials was difficult. There was no packaging. I remember they were getting old boxes, wooden crates discarded from other shops to be used for packaging to send overseas.”

“We would go through the rubbish dumps and forage for tins and packing straw,” says Mun Kuen. “After helping out at the shop, we’d go out in the evenings, about the time when people put out the rubbish.”

Says Poh Kon, “Essentially the business was pewter but there was a period, in order to supplement the income, we were making small plastic parts.”

Still, prosperity was a long time coming. The patriarch Yong Koon died in 1952, his family still struggling to make ends meet through the business he’d started 67 years before. In the meantime, the son who worked to keep the company alive and feed his family continued to suffer sleepless nights, often shaking his wife awake demanding how she could sleep with all the problems they were facing at that time. However, after Malaya achieved independence in 1957, Peng Kai’s Selangor Pewter slowly began to pick up. He began to develop a semblance of a production line and began to innovate methods of casting pewter and the use of a spinning lathe. He’d experiment with machines to improve pewter production and even invested in an engraving machine, which he taught his wife and children how to use.

It was through their exposure at the store that the four siblings naturally developed an appreciation for pewter items.

Mun Ha says, “I think it was in mum’s or dad’s heritage or teaching — don’t waste, work hard, study hard — once in there [the shop], you worked. If there were customers, you tended to customers; if in the factory, some goods were needed, dad produced it. We went for classes — bookkeeping, shorthand, typewriting — all that was needed in the work. And from there we learnt to love each piece. We knew the history. People were coming in asking for this and that and dad would go into the factory and try to make it. Mum would see to the customers, see what they wanted.

I think the company grew when Poh Kon came back from university in Australia and we sat around, planned and applied for the piece of land to build the first factory we’d ever owned. We wouldn’t have done it if there had been only one or two of us... but everybody was there.”

“Also around that time was the NPC or National Productivity Centre. We went for courses,” says Poh Kon. “It was this period for us that illustrates how a form of developmental economics, where certain young institutions started with the right experienced personnel were able to make a difference on the manufacturing side. We were virtually operating from the shophouse on Pudu Road and then we moved to the Setapak factory. It was still relatively modest — a 4,000 sq ft factory on 10,000 sq ft of land. We were fortunate to have some ILO (International Labour Organisation) experts who were attached to the NPC at that time and they introduced concepts like factory layouts and also helped to introduce machinery to make the items, including polishing and manufacturing, a little easier. These were prime examples of how government intervention at the right level could make a difference to an SME.”

When asked to determine the exact period when management was handed over from Pei Kang to his children, the four siblings merely laughed.

Mun Kuen explains, “There was no official handing over; it just evolved.”

Poh Shin was given responsibility to run the factory in 1960, they say:
“I was 27,” recalls Poh Shin. “After being an apprentice in the factory, under dad and four other pewtersmiths, I was asked to run the factory. Dad was strict. He said, ‘You must learn how to make pewter yourself first then only can you tell your workman what to do.’”

Pei Kang was still very much hands-on in the factory but for most business decisions consulted with his, by then grown-up, children.

“Even during the depression, I remember that we would sit around together and discuss what we should do, tin price, whatever there was,” recalls Mun Ha.

Adds Poh Kon, “He was quite a consultative fellow and he would discuss with us, get our points of view. In many respects, as we grew older, he began to rely on our opinions. So I would say that it was a pretty smooth transition from that point of view.”

As the business expanded, the children soon found their niches in the company and started making their own contributions to the company’s strategies. Poh Shin’s networking talent helped build Selangor Pewter’s contacts and went on to lead the expansion of the company in Singapore. Mun Ha joined the company full-time in 1958, taking charge of bookkeeping with her mother and began to experiment with retail display in order to draw more customers. She would also be the one in 1995 to open the company’s first wholly-owned retail shop in Melbourne.

Mun Kuen joined the business in the 1960s, and together with her sister attended to the retail front of the business for the next two decades. Once Selangor Pewter’s growing network of shops enabled them to recruit sales assistants to man the stores, Mun Kuen switched to selling specially commissioned items to corporations, an increasingly important part of the business.

Poh Kon was deemed the luckiest of the siblings. When he finally finished secondary school, the business had prospered and his father had enough money to send him to university. He specialised in mechanical engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia and brought a bulk of new knowledge back with him and into the factory, where he was made responsible for running the factory. It was then that Poh Kon helped his father take the manufacturing process to another level.

Where his father was forced to rely on commercial pre-mix straits refined tin with antimony, copper and traces of lead (a toxic substance which through long exposure could lead to anaemia and high blood pressure), Poh Kon changed alloys, completely eliminating lead. Royal Selangor’s pewter now comprises 97% tin, 0.5% antimony and 2.5% copper.

Where his father started mechanisation, Poh Kon continued and invested in more advanced engraving and lathe machines. However, both Pei Kang and his son knew that some things in pewtersmithing were better left to traditional methods and today, some of Royal Selangor’s pewter is still cast by hand, some parts soldered by hand by experienced craftsmen, with each finished piece polished by hand.

Needless to say, Pei Kang and his four children together took pewtersmithing into the 21st century. Innovation and creativity were two constants in the brand’s evolution and look to remain so in the future.

The only one real change noted by the siblings can be seen in the company dynamics, in that the relationship with the staff is no longer as intimate as it used to be.

Mun Kuen recalls, “Dad would take us to Port Dickson on the weekends. He’d pack us all into the van and we went with the staff. The company was like his entire family.”

“I suppose it’s just different stages of a company’s life history. In those days, the chain of command was much shorter and dad was the entrepreneur, driver. He was in the factory so he was close to the pewtersmiths. So he would take them all in one or two vans and all of us would go down to Port Dickson for a break,” explains Poh Kon. “When it gets bigger and bigger, that becomes harder to do. He began to rely on professional management to do some of the tasks.”

During our visit there we notice that while the Yong family is no longer taking joint vacations to Port Dickson with their staff, everyone seems to know everyone by name. And while some of the siblings enjoy titles and all of them basically rank highly in the Royal Selangor chain, there’s still the sense of helping out when there is a need.

While we were dining at the in-house café at lunch, short-staffed because of the holiday season, Mun Kuen thought nothing of clearing up the neighbouring tables whose occupants had long finished their meals and left. Old habits die hard perhaps, or maybe it’s in the pride of a strong legacy that no one is above doing the little things to help out.

“As time evolved, we always continued responding to circumstances. You’re basically left to your own wits to figure out what to do as a survival instinct or as a way of adjusting to the circumstances there. Even in the early days, when dad recognised that design was important, he had to do it all himself. He read design books and magazines and tried them on his own because it was impossible to hire a designer until you get to a certain size where you had enough to pay for designers to come in,” says Poh Kon.

“I think there is nothing like living through the processes itself and in our various endeavours, I think it was the question of trying to build on what is being built and then extending each of the various facets of the company to another higher level or into a different area. Just like 15 years ago when we moved into children’s christening gifts sector. We never had this 30 or 40 years ago. So much so, in England, we’re one of the major ones when people are shopping for christening gifts. The Royal Selangor teddy bear christening mug for example. In the last few years we’ve been moving into personal accessories like what you wear, even cufflinks for the gents and belt buckles. I wouldn’t say we’ve reached any particular area, but it’s continual evolution both in markets and product range.”

Today, Royal Selangor products are also available online and the company now sees the fourth generation of Yongs putting their respective talents to work. Mun Kuen’s son Chen Tien Yue is Royal Selangor Marketing general manager while Poh Kon’s sons, Yong Yoon Li and Yong Yoon Kit are general manager and head of IT of Royal Selangor International respectively. Mun Ha’s daughter Sun May Foon helps with the design and buying functions for the Selberan jewellery.

We ask the siblings what Pei Kang would think of Royal Selangor if he were still alive.
Poh Kon answers, “I suppose he would have thought that it was amazing. I don’t think he would have imagined that we would be in so many markets or have gone into so many product categories all from just one material.”

When we make the observation that perhaps this dream factory belonged to the four siblings, Poh Kon firmly says, “No. For thousands of years, wherever there was tin, there was pewter craft, be it in China or Cornwall. Dad is the one who actually brought it from a craft to the beginnings of an industrialised, factory business. The four of us were the ones who laid the foundation to have more production capacity and opened up export markets. And the new generation, of course, will bring in new categories, new ideas.

“Many people say that family-owned companies never survive beyond three generations but there are many, many companies throughout the world where the ownership is still family-held. But by a judicious balance of some family members in operations, professional management, there is every reason and every probability that the company will continue. Even in public companies, you’ll find that families have a substantial number of shares, and this is not only in Malaysia. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Let’s hope the company will survive another 125 years.”

Pressing on, we ask if they see their descendants continuing to be as involved in the company.
Poh Kon says, “If they opt to come in...”

“And they are qualified to come in,” reiterates Mun Kuen.

May the Malayan Dream live on.

The legendary melon pot
Datin Paduka Chen Men Kuen, the founder’s granddaughter and director of Royal Selangor International, steals the spotlight from her siblings to share a charming story with us.

“This pot is very special. It is more than a hundred years old. And it came back to us in a very funny way. During the war, long before you were born, the bombs were falling down on Kajang town. And people were running into the railway gudang to steal rice and sugar. There was this man called Ah Ham, he went in and saw the bags of rice and sugar, then he saw this old pot on the floor. The stationmaster was using it for his tea and in the hurry he must have dropped it because the bombs were coming and everyone was running away.

“So when Ah Ham bent down to pick up this pot, a bomb fell and a piece of shrapnel whizzed past his head, missing him because he was bending down. So he saw it as a lucky pot because it saved his life.

“So he picked up the pot and forgot about his starving wife and family. He did not steal any rice or sugar, just this old pot. And for the next 30 years, every time he had visitors he would pour tea from this old pot and he would tell them the story of how this was his lucky pot, how it saved his life and how he had stolen it.

“One day my husband visited him. Ah Ham poured tea for him and told the story of his lucky pot. After he finished his story, my husband said, ‘My wife works in a pewter factory’, and Ah Ham asked, ‘Can you please go back and ask her to clean it up for me?’

“My husband brought the old pot back and in our factory we have people who’ve worked there for a long, long time — 30 years, 40 years. They looked at the pot and spotted Jade Peace, my grandfather’s hallmark, at the bottom of the pot. So one of the staff came up to me and said, ‘Hey, this pot was made by your grandfather.’ So I sent my husband back to Ah Ham to ask, ‘Please can you sell this pot to us.’ He scolded my husband, ‘You must be crazy. This is my lucky pot, it saved my life. How can I sell it to you?’ But after a long, long time, we finally managed to persuade him to do so.”

And that was how the melon-shaped teapot found its way into the Royal Selangor archives.

To celebrate 125 years of pewter craftsmanship, the melon-shaped teapot will be available in a miniature version along with other Royal Selangor icons such as the tankard and a stylish water pitcher designed by the company’s first chief designer Anders Quistgaard. There are also miniature photo frames affixed with a magnet to complete this collection of miniature collectibles,
available in assorted sets.

A piece of the Malayan Dream
In celebration of its 125-year-old heritage of craftsmanship and spirit of innovative design, Royal Selangor has created a limited edition handmade tea set, in tribute to a period when Yong Koon and his sons were made to think outside the box when demand for their original trade of making ceremonial pewterware was declining.

It would be the first of the company’s product diversification when Yong Koon and his sons moved into crafting European-style products such as cigarette boxes and teapots.

This limited edition handmade tea set comprises a teapot, sugar bowl and creamer takes its design cue from the aesthetic trends of the 1930s and only 125 sets are available worldwide. Made the traditional way, the set is presented in an elegant wooden gift box and comes together with a serialised certificate and a copy of Royal Selangor’s coffee table book, Born and Bred in Pewter Dust, The Royal Selangor Story written by the founder’s great-granddaughter Chen May Yee.

Available for RM8,800 at Royal Selangor retail stores, authorised dealers and online at royalselangor.com.

This article appeared in Options, the lifestyle pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 796, Mar 8 - 14, 2010