1901 - Hot Dog

Today I’m going to give my comment on the 1901 concept of Hot Dog kiosk and push cart which once was the talk of the town. And how they use to be on the newspaper on the ever inspirational story of how a husband and wife team endured the ups and downs of business world to achieve what they achieve now.

1901 have came a long way, not because they came in the year 1901 but they manage to create a concept that attracts Malaysian buyers to buy hot dogs when Malaysian are more into Nasi Lemak and Kuih which cost a quarter of what their Hot Dogs costs. 1901 supposedly was the year Hot Dog was first found. They kicked off their business in 1997 during the economy crisis, Now they have came up with a new make over, a more vibrant outgoing colour and concept. Attracting more market segment and making the kiosk and push carts more inviting. Their website @ http://www.1901.com/ has also gone a make over but almost impossible to navigate and really confusing and also takes ages to load.

Over the years, I’ve been keeping an eye on the progress of 1901 since I was consulting one of the food manufacturing companies along the same line as 1901. They manage to convince entrepreneur to become their franchisee with a very high start up capital but they manage to convince the government to come with a scheme to loan in to the new starters.

The only thing that went wrong is that the support wasn’t up to par with what people expected. All these new starters expected more support from the Franchisor to get them on their feet. In the first few years, the company itself suffered from the increasing price of raw materials and at the same time the franchisee suffered, with lack of support, promotion and awareness on the products. In the first few years, many kiosk and push carts went out of business and they had to advertise on selling their franchisee license to other interested party.

I am not sure exactly they number of people that suffered but I can see the company itself is doing better now. Although they don’t seem to be aggressive and the franchisor seems to be much more busy with other things…help the entrepreneurs and not the profit...profit can help themselves