Ernie Loh

*KE Partners Urban Village is a massive 30,000 Sqft project in Yangon. We took over this project from a previous operator to assist in helping them reach their sales targets. Duties included venue management, in operations, sales of spaces, management of fnb spaces and bar. Full back-end cleanup of finances and HR management was included. I had the opportunity to take on this project during my first week in Yangon. It was a rush job, a real mess, and I was tasked to step in and stable the boat. With a massive language barrier and a lack of connections, I did the best I could and within the next 2 months, my partner and I managed to clean up the project to the best of our ability. We did a massive rehiring and restructured the business for potential success. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to manage staff of over 30 people in numerous roles. From the sales team that manages the lease spaces to the marketing team in charge of events and operations spaces. From the cleaners, electrical engineers and numerous external contractors to the everyday operators within our space. It was truly a challenge and a insane experience to learn this much in such a short amount of time. We proposed numerous different methods of potentially bringing success to the project. A huge aspect of which was through small and large scale events. I managed small daily events of up to 150 people to large monthly events of up to 1500 people daily. Through this process, we further boosted our connections through sponsorship agreements with numerous large local and global brands. Myanmar is slightly different from what one might expect and dealing with the locals, police, landlord, town government officials and neighbors was the biggest challenge faced.