Another Kind Of Feng Shui Audit

You may be surprised that some Feng Shui audit ended up at the desk of an industrial and layout planner. For many problems a business or factory facing are purely management and planning issues. It is perhaps appropriate to list down a real life example instead of going into theories and lectures.

 

Finn is a German who has chosen to settle in KL as he has married a local wife. About two years ago Finn was working as a manager in a new breed of furniture store house as other than selling all types of imported furniture; the store also sells exquisite electrical appliances.

 

Finn was kind of ambitious as he wanted to capture Malaysian furniture and electrical appliance market. KL is just his first try. So, he persuaded his German investors to pump in money to fund his advertising and grand opening campaign. The store was planned to open on Christmas Eve as the demand was expected to be peak during year end and the coming Chinese New Year.

 

Everything happened as planned, the opening was fantastic and that has indeed attracted many visitors to Finn’s new store. However, Finn’s enthusiasm quickly faded over time as though the number of visitors were great, people only flocked to his store for window shopping and enjoy the ‘free’ air-cond.

 

Since the profit margin cannot cover store operating costs, Finn started to have sleepless nights as he need to answer to his investors. Well, people don’t just throw money to you for one thing. A problem is a problem and it need to be solved by hook, by crook or by spook. Fortunately, Finn’s father- in-law knew some Feng Shui and Taoist masters. So, the in-law suggested perhaps Finn was a victim of black magic of his envied competitors.

 

Finn has no choice as he couldn’t understand why his business didn’t perform as he has expected with quality merchandizes and fair prices. He started to be taken in by the mumbo jumbo of his in-laws.

 

Now, the first person to come to Finn’s aid was a Taoist master. On entering to Finn’s store, the Taoist master was possessed by the ‘monkey god’. He flipped, turned and rolled in Finn’s store as if searching for something. The drama went on for about 30 minutes and finally the ‘monkey god’ said to Finn:

 

“I saw many good brothers in your store. They are sent by your business competitors to destroy your business. I would like to help but I cannot sit here forever. So you need to ask two golden Buddha to watch over them. That will be $20,000 for two. Thank you.”

 

Finn had to comply with the request.

 

But Finn’s business still didn’t improve after 6 months. His investors started to make noise. Now as his father-in-law has suggested, he hired a renowned Feng Shui master to come to his rescue.

 

The Feng Shui master came and after walking around the store; he gave the below comments:

 

“Your store has very bad aura or ‘sha’. This aura has prevented people from buying your merchandize. What you need to do it to purchase 4 golden elephants specially empowered to ‘suck’ in all the wealth. My service is ‘free’ but the golden elephants will cost $40,000 per set. Oh, you must take down the two golden Buddha statues as they conflict with the golden elephants.”

 

Again, Finn complied with request and crossed his fingers.

 

Yet 3 months passed and the business seemed going down the hill still.

 

Now the store investors have set up a board of enquiry where Finn, I and my associates were called in to assess the damage and troubleshooting. So, we were charged to form a committee to look into Finn’s operational issues.

 

After spending around two weeks or so, we came out with the below conclusions:

 

·         There were too many similar products with different brands causing internal competition: customers don’t know which to choose from.

·         There were no proper product display and categorizations. Items were intermixed: bedroom fittings found in kitchen section etc.

·         There was no proper item logistics: things jumbled up blocking customer’s passage ways causing dead corners.

·         Poor store management: rejected items, incoming and outgoing items mixed together causing items difficult to be traced or missing.

·         The store manning ratio was too high causing redundancy and waste money.

·         And many more…

 

We presented our finding to the board of investors and proposed plans to restructure the furniture store were accepted. As far as I know that the store is now breaking even and there is a plan to build another furniture store elsewhere.

 

Who am I? I am just your humble industrial and infrastructure engineer.

 

Do I use Feng Shui? Yes, I still do J!