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  • When Customers Come Looking: Apple, Omakase and the Pull of a Brand

    When Customers Come Looking: Apple, Omakase and the Pull of a Brand

    The Apple Store at the Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur. PHOTO: CHUAH BEE KIM

    During five hours at Apple The Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur, I watched people buy premium technology almost as casually as they might order a cup of coffee.

    It was a weekday, but the store hummed with a weekend crowd. Perhaps the mid-year school holidays explained part of it. Still, what struck me was not merely the number of people inside Malaysia’s first Apple Store.

    It was the way many of them appeared to shop.

    Customers approached staff with questions and requests. Some seemed ready to make their purchases without needing lengthy persuasion. The staff were not chasing reluctant shoppers or running through aggressive sales pitches. The buyers were already curious. Some looked as though they had arrived already convinced.

    The products seemed to sell themselves.

    I was there for a simple data transfer between my old phone and my new one. With five hours to kill, I became a quiet observer of this retail ecosystem.

    The staff were undeniably impressive. Despite the relentless foot traffic, those I encountered were composed, patient and pleasant.

    But the real force in the room was not the service. It was the invisible pull of the brand itself.

    That pull became clearer when I thought back to my Grab ride to the mall earlier that day.

    The driver had shared a painful chapter of his life. Driven by a passion for cooking, he had once invested RM500,000 in a restaurant business.

    It did not last. Eventually, he faced the hard truth that pouring more money into the venture was merely funding a sinking ship. He chose to cut his losses and walk away.

    Later in the ride, he spoke about a local omakase operator whose business, he said, was thriving.

    The contrast stayed with me. Here was one man with culinary skills, raw passion and substantial capital who failed, while another appeared to thrive in one of the most premium segments of the dining market.

    The driver believed branding had made a difference. His own bak kut teh business, he said, had started with only a small allocation for branding.

    Naturally, reality is more complicated. A single conversation during a Grab ride does not reveal the whole truth. Factors such as location, rent, pricing, margins, timing and operational execution could all have shaped the outcome. It would be unfair to draw a definitive conclusion from one person’s account.

    Yet, sitting in the Apple Store hours later, his words echoed.

    Why do some businesses have to work so hard for every single ringgit, while others appear to attract premium buyers with far less resistance?

    A bak kut teh dish competes on taste, portion size, price and familiarity. It satisfies a daily hunger.

    Omakase sells something different. Beyond the food, it offers curation, craftsmanship, exclusivity and experience.

    Similarly, Apple is not merely selling a phone, a tablet or a laptop. It is selling design, familiarity, an ecosystem and the confidence many customers attach to its name.

    Branding cannot rescue a bad product. Nor does a sleek logo guarantee commercial success.

    But a good product is merely the baseline.

    Before customers reach for their wallets, they must first be given a reason to desire what is being sold.

  • When Malls Have Defibrillators but Schools Don’t

    When Malls Have Defibrillators but Schools Don’t

    Khoo Jet Seng, Honorary Secretary of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society Johor Bahru Branch, during the CPR and AED training session at SJK(C) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri. The school’s headmaster, Ing Boon Keong, is seated on the far left. PHOTO: LEE WEE KIONG.

    There is a cabinet near the entrance of my regular mall. I walk past it sometimes. It says AED above it — Automated External Defibrillator — with a red heart and a lightning bolt symbol that signals something urgent. I assume the device is inside.

    I have never seen anyone open it.

    I have also never checked whether the battery inside still works, whether the pads have expired, or whether anyone in the vicinity is actually trained to use it. I suspect most people who walk past it haven’t either.

    This is not a criticism of the mall. Malaysia has been moving — rightly — toward wider AED placement in public spaces, with Selangor studying guidelines for new developments and public areas.

    But here is the question I keep turning over: what about schools?

    A child spends roughly six hours a day, five days a week, at school. Teachers are, by sheer daily proximity, the adults most likely to be present if a student collapses — whether from sudden cardiac arrest, a medical episode, or something nobody saw coming. And yet there is no equivalent mandate requiring AEDs in Malaysian schools. No policy. No allocation. The gap is not from a lack of caring. It is, honestly, a matter of money.

    A single AED unit can cost several thousand ringgit, with some Malaysian suppliers placing typical prices roughly between RM5,000 and RM15,000, depending on the model and features. Then there is the maintenance — battery replacements, pad expiry, servicing — which adds up quietly over time. For most government schools operating on tight budgets, this is not a realistic line item. So the machines don’t come.

    And here is where it gets uncomfortable: even where AEDs do exist — in malls, in lobbies, along highways — I wonder how many of us would actually reach for one. Panic is a strange thing. In a real emergency, the three seconds of knowing where the device is and the thirty seconds of remembering how to use it can feel very far away from any training session you may have attended two years ago. Muscle memory requires repetition. Most of us have had none.

    Koh Yee Mei, Rotary Club of Tebrau project organiser, Lee Wee Kiong, Training Officer-in-Charge of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society Johor Bahru Branch, taking part in the CPR and AED training programme at SJK(C) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri. PHOTO: LEE LIE FEEI.

    The gap is not entirely about equipment. It is also about whether people know what to do in the minutes before help arrives.

    This is why I found myself paying attention when I came across what the Rotary Club of Tebrau (RCT) has been doing quietly in Johor Bahru.

    Rather than waiting for the AED funding question to resolve itself — which could take years — they are building the human infrastructure first. Since 2023, in partnership with the Malaysian Red Crescent Society Johor Bahru branch, they have been training teachers and school staff in CPR and AED use. Not a one-off event. A rolling programme, school by school, batch by batch. The most recent sessions were held at Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (Cina) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri.

    The logic is straightforward and, I think, rather wise.

    An AED without a trained person nearby is just a box on the wall. But a trained person — someone who knows what to do, how to stay calm, and how to act in those first critical minutes — is already a first responder, with or without the machine.

    If the machine eventually arrives, they will know how to use it. If it does not arrive yet, they are still better equipped than they were yesterday.

    Dr A.R. Leenah Devi Rajah, who leads the RCT, put it plainly: “One minute of first aid can change a life, especially in a school setting where teachers spend the most time with students on a daily basis.” Teachers are the adults in the room. Training them is the most practical place to start.

    I will admit I came to this story as an outsider. I am not a medical professional. I cannot tell you whether the AED in your mall lobby is in working condition, or who is responsible for checking it, or whether your school’s canteen aunty has ever done a CPR course. These are questions I genuinely do not know the answer to — and I suspect they are questions most of us have never thought to ask.

    What I do know is this: cardiac arrest does not wait for the right location. It does not check whether you are in a mall, a classroom or a school field. And in Malaysia, where cardiovascular disease (CVD) is affecting people at younger ages — with the National Heart Institute (IJN) citing a 2019 study that found almost one in four CVD patients were below 50 — the odds that a teacher, a staff member, or a fellow student might one day need to act are not as remote as we would like to think.

    The RCT cannot solve the whole problem alone. But it is doing something concrete, in a place where children spend most of their waking hours, with the people most likely to be standing there when it matters.

    Participants, organisers and trainers gather for a group photo following the CPR and AED training session held at SJK(C) Cheah Fah. PHOTO: ROTARY CLUB OF TEBRAU

    All photos courtesy of Rotary Club of Tebrau and Koh Yee Mei, the event organising chairperson and project organiser.

    The news report on the CPR and AED training programme at SJK(C) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri is on Newswav.