Learning curve that multinationals always go through. So, when a multinational starts out, they go to a place like Thailand or they go to a place like Indonesia. And they say, okay, we're a Dutch company, this used to be one of our protectorates. So we'll just go in there and then what we'll do is we'll try to sell some of our product. Cuz we're in Dutch company and that's an old Dutch colony. And they do okay, right? They get the low hanging fruit. There's a lot of expats still living out there. And those people have a bit of influence. They're seen as high performers in society. So they do fairly well. But it begins to plateau, right, and then what happens is the company has to take a real re-look at themselves and ask themselves whether they're really committed to these markets or not. So let me give you an example of this. Okay, and I think one of the most dramatic examples, we wrote about this in our journal, Asian Management Insights, that we published. What happened was, is Kraft did this. And so Kraft went into the Philippines. Now, the Philippines has always had a very strong relationship with America. America's had military bases out there. And so when they walked into that market, they picked up some low hanging fruit, and they just sold what they sold back in the United States, right? They didn't modify anything. Nothing was changed. But they did pretty well. Then all of the sudden here recently, the Philippines economy has started to grow again. Here's the economy ticking off and it's growing, but they're looking and they're saying, well, why aren't our sales growing? We're growing 2, 3%, but the economy's growing 6 or 7. Given that we're an upmarket brand we should be doing better than that, right? Well, what they did at a Kraft, which was really interesting, is they took everybody in the Philippines office and said, you're now in market research. So whether you work in manufacturing, whether you work in marketing, they said, we don't want desk market research people. And they pushed them all out in the field. And then they came back. Now, all of a sudden, what happened? All of the people from the plant, all of the people from manufacturing, all of the people, they started to design things and they started to realize that hey look, the average Korean, or excuse me, the average Philippines who's living on $400 year or $500 a year, they can't buy this product, and they can't buy it in the size, and they don't have the refrigeration or the storage or the air conditioning. And and it sits in a sorry, sorry shop, which are the little mom and pop shops that are, and what they realized is they had to reconfigure their products. They had to resize their products. They had to make different textures, different tastes, and then all of a sudden, what happened? Well, they began to grow, because they made the modifications. They adapted to the marketplace. And I think this is the thing, Dorian, that I think that, I watch with the successful multi-nationals, okay. Is that you're gonna have success early on. There's enough people that are world traveled, they'll buy your products, and if you just wanna sell some product in the short run you'll do okay. But to really succeed in these markets, and to thrive in, not just survive, but thrive 10 years in, 20 years in, 25 years in, you're really gonna have to make some commitments to the market. And now what I'm seeing is more and more multi-nationals are bringing innovation teams and development teams out here. So here I am in Singapore, and this is where Unilever's built their new corporate training offices. This is where they put their new innovation center. Because they recognize, if we're going to succeed in Asia, which is where 60% of the world's population is, we have to Asianize, we have to be in touch with Asia. So, what am I seeing with the multinationals, is the ones who get it, go through this learning curve and they make this journey into really adapting to the local marketplace and learninghow to harvest that local marketplace.
