Creating Liveable Spaces at Oasis Furniture Industries

In the big business of furniture manufacturing, staying competitive in changing economies and lifestyles is not as simple as just trying to outdo your competitor. Building a brand name that speaks for itself, and understanding your market trends and needs play a big part in how manufacturers remain competitive and sustainable.

		The road to ensuring this takes a lot of planning and logistics, constantly having your finger on the industry’s pulse, creating functional and aesthetic products, perfecting process efficiency, striving for quality, while still being mindful of the human factor that can change everything you do in a split second.      Oasis Furniture Industries is a Malaysian office seating solution provider for dynamic spaces since 1998 to more than 65 countries, and have made it their passion to create liveable office furniture with design-driven, health and environmentally conscious products. With ISO 9001: 2008 and ISO 14001:2004 certifications, along with a host of industry and tradeshow awards locally and abroad under its belt, Oasis has a proven track record of accomplishments and success.

Two heads are better than one

Like all well-laid plans, it usually starts with an idea. In order for that to happen, we have to start from the top. Managing Director, Ralph Ong is the intrepid leader of Oasis and responsible for steering his team to where they need to go by devising overall concepts and company direction together with Operations Director, Nathan Lam.

    To better fulfil best office solutions for different target markets, Oasis formulated six pioneer brands: BUROSC, Perfect U, Arte Como, Oasis Platinum, Oasis Superb and Oasis Sofa.

    Already in the market for the last 19 years and a market leader in Malaysia, Oasis’ ambitions run high, to earn its stripes among the Top 10 Far East office furniture solution providers. From Mr Ong’s viewpoint, trying to compete with top brands from the US and Europe that continue to play a big role in the market despite high operational costs is pointless. They are at a level beyond reach, sharing 20% of the market with very high-quality products and even higher profile customers. Fortunately, the other 80% is up for grabs to anyone willing to go the extra mile. Oasis re-invented itself by offering multi-brands and business units for different demographics.

Knowledge is a Powerful Tool

With much-appreciated guidance from Mr Ong and Mr Lam, the marketing team spearheaded by Ms Joey Yap and Ms Suki Tan gets down to business formulating concepts that will make them unique or more attractive to customers compared to others by providing product input. These young, vibrant women will attest to the fact that it is a lot more complex a process that meets the eye. They first identify the market they want to focus on from available data they have collected: market trends, buyer psychology, and philosophy, customer profiling, researching cultures and even the economics and politics of different countries.

   Using the “Livable Office” concept as an example, Ms Yap and Ms Tan explain their methods and thought processes when first exploring its potential as a marketable product line. Ergonomics and the environment is a genuine concern for Oasis when creating any product. Everything they do falls back to their company motto.

The Art of Furniture Making

Design, material sourcing and product development conducted at Oasis’ R&D department is the realm of furniture designers – those special people whose creations require technical know-how, whose artistic skills that spark an emotional connection with their creations, and most importantly, who understand commercial saleability.

		Oasis’ in-house designers, Aneza and Shah with the help of outsourced designers, Sujak and Izzul, receive input from the marketing department on furniture concepts, features and benefits. From the input provided, they will do their own market research on existing similar furniture in the market and study their pros and cons.      With the data and analysis collected, they will then design the furniture that best benefits and brings value to their customers. Integrating a strong storyline and concept, the artist in them brings a piece of their soul into the design through inspiration from our daily lives and the beauty of nature, with the desire of creating familiarity with the furniture.

  While ensuring material availability, sustainability and costing controls, the designers are aware that when creating tangible representations of concepts, however much inspired, they must justify their creations with value for design. Mr Lam explains that designers need to be philosophically and psychologically aware of people’s inclinations and needs, market trends, technology and technical knowledge of furniture making. Through their comprehension of these elements, ideas and inspirations are translated into products that are aesthetic, functional, and marketable.

All Systems Go

The day starts like any other day for Assistant Production Manager, Kamarulzaman bin Rahman or Man, as his Oasis family fondly calls him. His 15-year experience on the job fits in perfectly when overseeing every aspect of the production line at Oasis’ manufacturing facilities.

   With a factory space of over 100,000 square metres and production capacity at 12,000 units per month, Mr Rahman certainly has his work cut out for him. Sectioning the production department into different production lines specialising in front and back processes of the production flow, the production controller double-checks that all materials go to their respective sections, while the production output in-charge personnel ensures that production targets are met.

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