Datuk Ken Phua
KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Ken Phua of Bentley Music Group has been elected as the 10th president of the Malaysia Retail Chain Association (MRCA) at the association's recent AGM. He succeeded Datuk Sharan Valiram, who would continue to contribute to the industry and association as immediate past president.
The 27th AGM was held on April 18 at The Ritz-Carlton Kuala Lumpur. During the voting session, ordinary members casted their votes digitally through a voting software. The meeting was attended by 118 members, MRCA said in a statement.
Phua said he would focus on six key areas during his term with the tagline “Reunite, Voice, and Triumph for Retailers”. These include by implementing networking effectiveness techniques, embracing globalisation, continuous learning culture, engagement with the authorities, first mover adoption advantage, tradition works in tandem with innovation.
Implementing networking effectiveness techniques involves engaging MRCA's four pillars of the retail industry to benefit from each other through sharing and learning key success factors on how retailers resolve and find solutions in the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment.
Embrace globalisation refers to providing a retailing platform for MRCA members to network with local and international players in the retail and franchise industries, enhancing their understanding of globalisation.
Continuous learning culture is vital as it will cultivate a learning culture among all retailers by assisting them in interfacing with our MRCA Academy Division Support, thus fostering continuous embrace of a learning culture.
Embracing knowledge through training programmes for retailers, utilising various authorities' grants/initiatives to keep MRCA members abreast of economic policies affecting our retail industry players.
First mover adoptions advantage involves being the catalyst with the authority to stay abreast of the new environment of the retailing business era, particularly concerning technology in the artificial intelligence (AI) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) era, thus averting business model disruptions caused by economic uncertainties.
Lastly, maintaining the tradition and culture of MRCA while simultaneously being flexible and open to change, embracing new challenges through innovation for modern era retailers.
