Change Furniture:Malay-Yearly,Chinese-Never

Please note that the stereotype written here on furniture is not applicable to everyone in Malaysia. It is loosely based on the cultural differences in the country.

We need to understand what motivates each ethnic group to purchase furniture. Yes. Furniture are very important to some people, but not to some. WHY?

I’ve always been against the way Courts Mammoth and FengShui Consultants runs their business. These guys reap the weakness of each ethnic group for their own profit. For that reason, I wrote the following:

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Why Malay change furniture every Hari Raya?

Traditionally, Malay has always used their living room as a place for social gathering. Malay has always been practicing their hospitality culture 'adat'. Hence, anyone who comes to their house for a visit will be received with warm welcome; served with F&B and forced to watch ASTRO RIA, PRIMA or RTM.

Without fail, every Hari Raya, someone will turn up in their house and expecting some new changes to be done to their house; right from decoration, renovated section, new electronic appliances, new car or new baby in the house. Furniture is one of the crucial changes that are COMPULSORY (not all, but most). If they can’t change the furniture, they will decorate or rework the furniture to make it look brand new.

Due to the recognition of furniture changes as an important Social-Chat topic, it slowly transformed into a bragging right within the Malay community. When the housewives talks about furniture, they sounded like the Furniture Industry Analysis; feeding each others with Market Price, Material Quality, Craftsmanship, Depreciation Rate, Antique Value and Origin of Material.
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How Courts Mammoth and other furniture/electronics retailers gain from Malay Consumer Behaviour?

NO Thanks to Courts Mammoth with their ‘Ahlong’ scam of "Bayaran Tanpa Cengkeram, Tanpa Penjamin, Tanpa Was Was", anyone can buy a full Dining Set, Living Room Set and Electronics ALTOGETHER for only RM300 per month to be paid off within 2 years monthly.

Contrary to many believe, Courts Mammoth has always been targeting their largest market segment, Malay, all the time. They set their prices, quality, designs and styles to cater to this particular market segment.

Without realizing how badly debt-trapped they are, they sometimes stopped paying due to financial constrains. When customers stop paying for their furniture instalment, the ‘Ahlong’ will come and confiscate their furniture and sell it for a salvage value.

These are what Courts Mammoth gains from their buyers:
-The expensive interest rate they paid for their instalment.
-The value of the furniture; which is higher than its depreciation value under the time frame of the instalment.
- When buyers can't pay up, product are confiscated and resale under higher value than depreciated. Buyers get nothing back.

In short, Courts always win regardless of what option buyers are looking at. It always looks cheap to buy at instalment plans without realizing its future value is actually very expensive.

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Chinese will only change Furniture when it’s completely destroyed or depreciated in value

It is hard to take away the KIAMSIAPness (thriftiness) value from most Chinese. They seem to be trapped with the mentality of "I will use it until it's completely GONE". Indeed, Chinese will use their furniture till it's completely 'Kaput'.

In most traditional Chinese house you see, the living room will have furniture that are old, torn, worn with fixtures like nails and masking tapes all over it. In the extreme some, the furniture are older than the oldest person in the house. It looks like it has been passed down for 4 generations.

If the modern cushions in Chinese house are torn with spillage of sponges or polybeads, it will be filled with torn clothes and sealed with duct-tapes.

Some even looks like it was collected from some junkyard.

Chinese would rather buy 'Lolek' watch or 'Mar-ce-dit' sedan than to change their furniture. To them, the interior of the house is not so important. Most of the time, they take family, friends, clients to dine outside. By dining out, they skipped having to gather at home.

Furniture is also not a very important Social Chat Topic amongst the Chinese community. Nobody cares if any of them own a chair that cost 5 million or 50cent. It just doesn’t matter to them. What’s more important is what people perceive them in business. They want to look like a successful businessman to capture more businesses. Yes.. They only give a damn about keeping more and making more MONEY, but NOT SPENDING MORE MONEY.
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Just tell the Chinese they have bad ‘chi’ and they’ll change just about anything.

It is very hard to sell furniture to the Chinese unless you can convince them that it is required by FengShui to do it. Chinese are superstitious over the element of wealth in their daily life. Any little sign that show bad luck will be replaced immediately.

That’s how FengShui consultants make their money. A veteran consultant like Joey Yap makes shitloads of money by talking things that only makes sense to them. People who listen to them would somehow follow their suggestion blindly.

If they were required to change their brand new LaZBoy recliner to a gold-plated dragon woodcraft chair because of FengShui, they WOULD. They spend irrationally to make themselves secure MENTALLY in term of wealth.

Bad ‘Chi’, Good ‘Chi’ or Lampa’Chi’. You might not care. But the Chinese do.