What type of business is suitable for a housewife in Malaysia?
In this article, I will share with you the business that I have been operating since March 2018.
Hello, my name is Lynn and I am based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Above is a picture of me and my husband working from home.
Some background about myself.
Yes, I am a full time housewife.
Before I became a full time housewife, I was a Human Resource (HR) manager for an office supplies manufacturing company in Kuala Lumpur.
I resigned from my job back in 2010 when I got married to my husband.
After that, we had our first child and 2 years later, our second child.
I have been a full time housewife for 6 years before I decided to get back into employment.
Back then, my husband was the only breadwinner and our family’s cashflow was very tight.
With only one source of income, we don’t have much left money wise at the end of every month.
I did try to find a job but after sending more than 90 resumes and going for 6 job interviews, no company wanted to hire me even thought I am highly qualified and experienced.
The reason the companies don’t want to hire me was due to my 6 years gap of not working when I was a full time housewife.
It was a disappointing experience for me.
Nonetheless, I had to find a solution to expand the income for our family.
That was when I started to look for business opportunities where I can operate from my home.
My home business journey
Before I started writing this article, I actually did some research online to find out what are the business ideas recommended for housewives in Malaysia from other websites.
Some of the ideas recommended are:
- Start a home cooking or baking business
- Sell home made soap online
- Become an online tuition teacher
- Become a driver and send kids to school or daycare
- Become a part time baby sister / nanny
- Sell baby items and clothing
- Become a personal shopper
- Take up part time service job such as a virtual assistant
- Affiliate marketing
- And many more
I actually started a small home based business in early 2017 selling prepacked baby porridge.
As a mother, I know the challenges parents faced when they travel with babies.
It is difficult to prepare nutritious food for babies when the whole family is staying in an Airbnb or hotel room.
I did my research and actually found a great solution.
It’s prepacked baby porridge.
I found a supplier from Taiwan and placed a bulk order.
Then I started promoting the prepacked baby porridge on social media such as Facebook and Carousell.
This blog was actually setup by my husband in order for me to market and promote the prepacked baby porridge.
You can actually find some of the early articles about the baby porridge still in the blog.
However, after a few months of selling the prepacked baby porridge, I had a realisation on my home based business.
I realised the monthly income from my home business is very small and it is unlikely that I can grow it into a big business.
Reason being, the target market for the prepacked baby porridge is very small.
Back then, only mothers with 2 – 3 years old toddler who are going for a holiday are buying from me.
Can you see how small the target market is?
That is why on a good month such as during school holidays, my home based business selling prepacked baby porridge could only generate RM400 – RM500 in net profit.
I remember telling myself I can’t go on like this.
The net profit from my home business is too low.
I need to find another product to sell from my business in order to make it worth while.
Ideally, the product has to be of higher value so that I can earn higher profit.
The product also has to able to cater for a bigger market.
People of all ages, men and women of every ethnicity should be able to use the product.
With the above 2 criteria in mind, I started to look for a new product for my home based business.
And fate has it, I found the product I was looking for in the comment section of a Facebook post.
The ideal product that I found on Facebook is a far infrared ray (FIR) emitting health and wellness pants which is fully made and imported from Japan.
Later I found out the sole importer of the FIR emitting pants was a company located in Kuala Lumpur.
My initial investment
How much was my initial investment to start my new business selling FIR emitting health and wellness pants?
I actually got started with an investment of less than RM2000.
The RM2000 was used to purchase 2 pairs of the FIR emitting pants for myself and my mom.
Above is a picture of the FIR emitting athleisure garment fully designed and made in Japan using a unique fabric technology.
The reason I purchased the pants because I was looking for a solution to help to relieve my back pain and leg cramps.
I also wanted to experience wearing the pants personally.
After wearing the FIR pants for a few days, my back ache and leg cramps surprisingly went away.
I am now convinced that the pants works and started to promote it as the core product for my home business.
In the first month, the commission that I got from promoting and selling the FIR pants was more than RM1000!
It was definitely a much better option than selling prepacked baby porridge.
I kept on building the business and it started to grow.
Third month into the business, my monthly commission has exceeded RM5000!
Honestly, I was really surprised by the results.
I was wondering why the FIR pants was selling so well?
After some research and deep thinking, I realised the far infrared ray (FIR) pants is a Blue Ocean product.
The concept of a blue ocean product is from the book Blue Ocean Strategy written by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.
A blue ocean product is in contrast to a red ocean product where the competition is very stiff and profit margin very low.
In a red ocean, everyone is fighting each other just to get their hands on a small profit.
The book Blue Ocean Strategy talks about creating a product or service in a totally new category where the competitor does not exist.
This makes competition in the market irrelevant therefore it has the potential to generate a higher profit.
By chance, I stumbled upon a blue ocean product in Malaysia which is the far infrared ray emitting pants.
Getting new customers
You may be wondering, if you were to start a home based business, how do you get customers?
Yes, starting a business is easy.
Getting customers is the challenging part.
As for my home business selling FIR emitting health and wellness pants, I used social media such as Facebook and Instagram to generate leads of potential customers.
Those that expressed interest on the FIR pants, I will invite them into a Zoom meeting where I will share with them the benefits of the FIR garment in detail.
Above is a picture of me doing a product sharing and presentation on Zoom.
After the Zoom meeting, I will then follow up with all of the Zoom attendees.
Those that are keen will place an order with me.
I will then repeat the entire process.
The above sale process has been proven to work for my business since I started promoting the FIR garment.
Thank you for reading this article and I hope it was helpful for you.
Before you leave, please take some time to read the disclaimer page on this blog.
The content above are for information and educational purposes only.
The income potential is not typical. What worked for me may or may not work for you.
If you are interested to start your own home based business with a small capital, click the link below to contact me on WhatsApp and we will assist you.
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