Diversity Brings Growth (Part 4)

Nam came to the U.S. as a refugee from Cambodia. While in Cambodia, he had to leave school to become a farm help, and no education to fall back on. His father had a rice mill and his mother had a tailoring business. He had some background in sewing, just by watching and helping his mother.

He learned to design and hand-craft prototypes at this first job in the U.S. He was our designer. Backed by our self-taught designer and can-do attitude, we accepted all challenges and talked to customers about their wish-list of products. Nam always delivered the customer’s vision. He also made sure to add a couple of extra features that enhanced the product.

Our customers loved it. Being in the learning phase, we made two identical prototypes – one sent to our customer and the other was kept for our reference.

This twin-prototype method served a couple of purposes:

  1. If the customer approved the design, our reference prototype became our production sample.
  2. If there were additional design changes, we would then discuss those changes with our customer, while both parties had the exact prototype in hand. This made sure that we were always on the same page.

These ideologies have since become the hallmark of our design process. We adhere to these design principles to this day. This is the AGORA way of designing products, “with and for our customers”.

Diversity Brings Growth (Part 3)

In the beginning, we had many people on our team from Southeast Asia. Most of them were refugees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

These refugees came from a culture where they usually had limited resources, and therefore they had learned to make the best use of what they had. Their creativity brought many great benefits to AGORA in the early days.

With their knowledge and frugal nature, we began to save remnants of leather and other small pieces of leftover materials. We recycled these materials to manufacture other parts in the early years. This helped reduce our material costs and helped our cash flow.

As you all know, cash flow is always critical, even more so in the first two to three years of business.

Diversity Brings Growth (Part 2)

We started our business in an 8,500 SF building. We needed to have an adhesive spray booth to manufacture some of our new custom products. We had no room left in the building.

One of our team members had a background in construction in his country. With his help and knowledge, we built a weather-tight spray booth with a canopy and curtains outside our factory. This capability helped us expand our portfolio of custom products.

This kickstarted our goal of wanting to become a one-stop shop for our customers.

Diversity Brings Growth (Part 1)

A message from our founder, Subash Dave’.

Team AGORA is made up of people from many parts of the world. They have brought with them a variety of knowledge and skills, which has allowed us to create unique solutions.

We were once challenged with making a canvas bucket carried by linemen and electricians. It is important for a canvas bucket to be very secure to hold needed tools for the user, so usually there is a strong handle which, back then, was made out of thick rope and had to be installed by hand onto the bucket.

One of our team members from Cambodia used to weave rope he made from coconut fiber into several applications back in his home country. Bingo! With his expertise and everyone’s help, we ended up producing and shipping a several thousand buckets for our customers in a record number of time.

At AGORA we have learned to build on people’s skills, and let our employee’s individual skills and specific knowledge shine.