Dato&rsquo; Tan Su Cheng, Ken Ng and Patrick Madendjian share how they navigate life in enterprise and excellence.

Ken Ng
Founder of&nbsp;Ultime Atelier &amp; Boulangerie

Could you please tell us more about yourself and how you started in the F&amp;B industry?
I am a creative thinker, executor and perfectionist at heart as a pioneer in commercial and retail property management. However, I have always had a passion for the F&amp;B industry which I ventured into nine years ago when I executed a leasing takeover of a convention centre at Sunway Seberang Perai, where I started a Chinese seafood restaurant. Now, my F&amp;B business ranges from fine-dining restaurants to boulangerie, Indonesian cuisine, Chinese economy rice and Macau congee.
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What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?
The key driving force is to earn money. With past failures, I realised that there are many opportunities to embrace and take advantage of in business so I have cultivated myself to enjoy taking calculated risks.
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How did you come up with the idea of Ultime Atelier &amp; Boulangerie?
Ultime is the French word for &ldquo;ultimate&rdquo;. The idea of Ultime Atelier &amp; Boulangerie is to create an ultimate dining experience for all the guests with fine-dining values where the overall encounter and experience is entrusted to the front of house and back of house of the restaurant to serve at their best and with consistency. We seek to create positive and long-lasting memories for our guests, starting from the artisanal boulangerie bread paired with uniquely flavoured butter to the desserts.

What do you wish for your customers to experience from your culinary creations?
We want our guests to feel the passion and effort we put into&nbsp;curating the dishes by explaining the ingredients and the culinary process. Also, we prefer to enhance their experience with wine-paring options.
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What were some unforgettable challenges in your F&amp;B venture? And how did you overcome them?
It was during the COVID lockdown period as it was the most drastic time and the negative effects are still being felt by us until now. During that time, we had to close down some businesses to cut our losses. We converted 25 per cent of the business into delivery to remain afloat throughout the pandemic.
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What advice would you give someone who is just starting as an entrepreneur in the F&amp;B industry?
There are certain criteria that one needs to be clear about &mdash; namely, the ability to sustain the business while meeting the spectrum of the chef &rsquo;s concerns, making sure the projected profit is attainable with a good return on investment, and knowing how to formulate business strategies to scale the business.

Dato' Tan Su Cheng
Director of Antharas Hills

How did it all start for you in interior design and property development?
I&rsquo;ve always been interested in Lego, woodworking and buildings as a young boy. I planned to study architecture in New York but that did not materialise due to financial issues so after studying art in Europe, I returned to Malaysia to pursue an interior design course. In 1994, I started an interior design company with some partners with the ambition of becoming a developer. It took over ten years to establish the company, then we began investing in small-scale properties in Bangsar and Damansara Heights while working with international brands and fashion stores.
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Is there a story behind the name Antharas Hills?
I have a group of friends from the Ferrari Club and we have been spending time weekly, driving to Genting all these years. To represent all our red Ferraris, I found out that the brightest red supergiant star that can be seen with the naked eye is named &ldquo;Antares.&rdquo;
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Tell us how you started the Geo Antharas project.
It&rsquo;s a dream come true for me as I have always wanted to build a prominent high-rise building, and Geo Antharas is a project that I&rsquo;m proud of. The first and most important thing is the capital to start a new development, and most of the funds came from my property enhancement jobs. Together with my partner, Kenneth Teh, and the land owner who is a Ferrari Club member as well, we conducted a thorough study on various aspects such as the environmental impact on the Genting area, target market, pricing, and potential returns for investors, taking almost six months. I brainstormed the whole concept with our design architect, focusing on the needs of the buyers. We also wanted to offer our buyers a good investment return, with luxurious facilities such as a cigar lounge, sky farm, cinema, co-working space and spa. There is a 10-storey &ldquo;supercar unit&rdquo; for supercar owners which includes special parking and a private lounge.

Were there any challenges faced in the adventure of your career?
A few years after we started and became established, the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit. It was very memorable to me as a young entrepreneur at that time and I was not ready for it. However, we recovered quickly in 1998 as we started working on the MIMOS headquarters, a Malaysian government agency that initiated the multimedia super corridor. Also, the September 11 incident impacted us financially, causing one to two years of difficult times. These two challenges helped me learn that we must have strong financial wisdom and financial skills. I think another challenge is Geo Antharas; the lockdown happened two months after we launched the project in January 2020. That was impactful because of the&nbsp;great uncertainty we had never experienced before.
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To many people, you are a successful man. How do you define success?
I think success has many definitions. To me, success is to achieve something that I don&rsquo;t have. My point of view: I am successful not because I&rsquo;m rich but by becoming established and well-known in this industry &mdash; that&rsquo;s success for me. The success belongs to all my team members who put in effort for all these years. Personally, I wanted to study in New York but due to financial issues, my parents could only afford a one-way ticket at that time. It was very difficult for me as a self-financing student, so I think I was quite successful when I graduated with a master&rsquo;s degree. Besides that, I have raised my children well to become promising youngsters, so this is also a success.
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How do you balance your work and personal life?
To me, it&rsquo;s quite effortless because I enjoy what I am doing, so I don&rsquo;t feel it&rsquo;s a job. However, fitness is compulsory and I work out every day. I have quite a lot of spare time for my family and my hobbies, including sports activities and supercar driving with my friends. Because I rarely have social parties, that saves me a lot of time. Also, I enjoy travelling as the places I go inspire me in my career and design, from buildings to furniture.

Patrick Madendjian
Managing Director of Mo&euml;t Hennessy Diageo Malaysia &amp; Singapore

Tell us more about yourself and how you got your start in this career.
I am a French citizen who was born and raised in a multicultural family in Lebanon, so I have Lebanese, Armenian and Argentinian roots. My wife is a fabulous French-published author and I&rsquo;m a father to 11-year-old twin boys. I went into corporate banking after my BBA in 2001, then I studied MBA in a Parisian Ivy League business school before joining L&rsquo;Or&eacute;al as a marketer in the luxury division. After that, I was headhunted by Hennessey in 2008. To me, luxury wines and spirits are a passion and my source of fulfilment rather than a job. I have had the chance to work in France, Africa, Thailand, and now Malaysia and Singapore.
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How do you keep up with the industry trends and market changes?
In this highly volatile and ever-changing world, things are transforming extremely fast and the capacity to adapt must keep increasing. To keep up with the trend, collecting information and first-hand materials from different sources is important. I communicate with my consumers directly to understand their consuming motivations, choices of brands, interests and expectations, and the same for our trade partners as they read differently about the situation and the context. Besides, I follow KOLs and brands from all fields on social media to scrutinise the posts which provide information about the trend and the followers&rsquo; likes. Being enlisted in business and marketing newsletters as well as purchasing market studies help me to comprehend and analyse the data. As a member of various CEO groups and business associations, I have access to high-level information.
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What is your mantra or formula to navigate a successful career?
Trust me, if there were a formula for success, I would have packaged it and sold it to make a fortune. Joking apart, I do have an obsession with my career. I will ensure that I hand over a significantly improved company after taking charge of it as the notion of protecting and growing the legacy is deeply rooted in my philosophy. The proof of a successful transformation of a company is when the team maintains a high level of achievement even though I am not around.

What would you say are the top three skills needed to achieve success in a profession like yours?
First, visionary. One needs to be capable to have a vision and formalise it to position all stakeholders behind it. Decisive, having the ability to make decisions in ambiguous situations, provoke action and create an environment of risk-taking in the team. Lastly, be an ambassador of luxury lifestyle to inspire the teams to execute the plans and deliver memorable experiences to all the consumers.
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Being in this industry for almost two decades, what is the most significant challenge you have encountered?
The challenge I faced is rather related to my journey instead of the industry. Having lived and worked on four different continents with diverse environments, I must ensure I am always culturally relevant. For example, leading teams in Europe, America, Africa and Asia starts by acknowledging that I am the &ldquo;guest&rdquo; in each of these situations and I need to understand the relative differences to adapt my style. Moreover, engaging with the consumers will be varied as the role of wines and spirits, motivations and social influences are interpreted differently in the local cultures. It would be a major mistake to think that one can take a successful recipe from one market and apply it identically in another.
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What advice in overcoming challenges, fears or failures is one you wish you knew earlier in your career?
Don&rsquo;t obsess over finding a complicated granular solution to a specific challenge and take a step back because sometimes you only have to redefine the problem and dare to change the game.

Up close with three trailblazers from different industries

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