Casting light on the success of family business

His father, Sumeth Pimtong, now 63, established the business on the bypass road in Chon Buri.

“I started helping my father run the business when I graduated from high school,” said Jatuphon, 35, who is now managing director of Pimtong Charoen Rungruang Co Ltd.

“At the time, there was nobody helping my father to run the business, which had been experiencing a higher volume of casting work. So I decided to discontinue my studies and help my father run the operation, a decision that would allow my younger sister and brother to continue their own studies,” he explained.

Jatuphon said that working at the foundry was not, however, at the outset an easy thing for him to do, as he had no knowledge of casting.

“I needed to work for six years in the operation and stay close to the workers, from whom I was able to learn thoroughly how to cast Buddha statues, and how to mould a figure,” he said.

“I was also able to see both good and bad things from them about the casting work, and these ideas could be used for further improvement of the operation,” he added.

Jatuphon said his father had left his hometown in Chon Buri’s Phanat Nikhom district in search of a living in Bangkok when he was 15.

Sumeth first worked in exchange for meals at Ban Chang Lor, a fine-crafts village renowned for all types of Buddha-image casting, which is a very complicated process.

This was where his father learned his eventual trade, although he took up a series of other occupations for a number of years before establishing his own business, his son said.

“About 30 years ago, my father went to Saudi Arabia to work in the oil-rigging business. He was there for about four years, and then came back to Thailand and worked on a pig farm in Chiang Rai for another two years. He then assisted his older brother, who had opened a foundry factory for Buddha statues in Bangkok.

“My father was then a broker for land plots in Phanat Nikhom, before setting up his own foundry for Buddha statues in Chon Buri with an initial investment of only Bt1 million,” Jatuphon said.

The business has since grown and, with Jatuphon at the helm, now generates annual revenue of Bt12 million and has a staff of 30.

However, he said his only concern about the Buddha-image casting business was that there would soon be a shortage of skilled founders, as people were much less interested these days in developing such skills.