Our impact, their voices

Resilience and growth aided by digital tools and inspiring female friendships

Sirintra Jittrawong is a Thai entrepreneur juggling not one, but two separate businesses. Always looking to expand her skillset and help those around her, Sirintra demonstrates the powerful role women play in their business communities.

Article | 19 October 2022
Sirintra Jittrawong joined the WE-Can be Resilient Programme in 2022.
Growing up surrounded by small family businesses, Sirinitra Jittrawong saw first-hand the challenges of developing and implementing an effective marketing strategy with a limited budget. She believes this is what ultimately inspired her own consulting business, Kidnokkrob 360, which supports SMEs in brand management and commercial strategies. Through her business, she seeks to help other SMEs maximize their limited budgets for optimal results.

Additionally, Sirintra works full time as the CEO and Managing Director for Microfiber Industries Limited, a glass wool insulation manufacturer based south of Bangkok, Thailand.

Embracing change despite COVID and other challenges

Sirintra’s microfiber business has faced numerous challenges over the last few years. Prior to COVID-19, a nearby fire caused extensive damage to their manufacturing facility, which limited production for several months. Then COVID-19 and extensive lockdowns forced Sirintra and her team to slow-down production capacity even further. Microfiber Industries experienced a drop in sales and several employees left the company. At the time, Sirintra tried to remain flexible and to look for adaptive solutions. For example, the traditional model of selling directly to contractors was stunted throughout COVID, so she pivoted the business and began to expand their exports.

Sirintra is continually looking for ways to expand her skillset, build her network, and share knowledge with those around her. After learning about the WE-Can Be Resilient Programme, a six-month technical and peer support programme organized by the social enterprise Space Bangkok under the ILO’s Rebuilding Better Project, Sirintra decided to apply. She wanted something geared to her own experience as a woman entrepreneur in Thailand and appreciated the variety of peer and technical sessions offered by the programme over the course of 2021 and 2022.

For me, the WE-Can experience sparked a lot of ideas, but then I had to execute and implement them. I always try to take at least one small step of improvement after training."

Building skills & broadening perspectives

When asked about the programme, Sirintra shared that she found the focus on digital marketing to be particularly helpful and relevant as it enabled her to stay on top of latest trends and better understand and apply concepts to her two businesses. This year, she has invested heavily in both her personal LinkedIn page and her company’s Facebook page to boost sales and connect with others. Key takeaways that she took from the course included:
  • Content is key! Post regular, diverse content to keep your followers engaged.
  • Engagement takes time. Be patient and keep posting.
  • LinkedIn is a great resource for both personal and B2B networking.
By implementing these tips, she has grown her personal LinkedIn page to over 6,500 followers. She also developed her business’s content strategy to focus not just on microfiber, but also on leadership and lifestyle topics more broadly.

Additionally, Sirintra appreciated WE-Can’s focus on accessing finance, which gave her a broader perspective on the need for external investment.

The power of friendship

In general, Sirintra really appreciated the wide scope of topics covered in the WE-Can programme and the opportunities for networking and building relationships. She specifically enjoyed getting to connect with other like-minded women.

Through WE-Can I made real, new close friends. I found that it’s not just about expanding your business network, but connecting with women and making friends with people with similar profiles to you. We still chat regularly and have spent time together offline as well."

Thanks to her participation in the WE-Can Be Resilient programme, Siritntra feels more confident to drive real change in both her own business and in the businesses of her consulting clients. Looking forward, Sirintra is excited and hopeful about the potential benefit gained from her new strategies and skills. As CEO of Microfiber Industries, she is setting up ambitious sustainability goals for the company, such as utilizing 100% recycled raw materials. She sees this as an opportunity to supply “green” construction initiatives in Thailand and the South-East Asia region.
As CEO of Microfiber Industries, Sirintra is utilising lessons learned to implement ambitious sustainability goal, such as transition to 100% recycled raw materials.