By KEITH CHEE

GROWING up, Dennis Ng did not have much to look forward to. He lived with his family of six in a one-room flat, too poor to even think about a dream job for the future.

Today, he is the founder of Einsoon Pets Supply, a distributor of pet food, grooming products and cat litter in Singapore, with profits increasing by the year.

Though he was faced with a life of hardship, Mr Ng remained optimistic and studied hard, obtaining a diploma from Ngee Ann Polytechnic while working as a part-time cashier at Cold Storage.

After his studies, he joined a shipping company for a brief period of time but resigned after his mentor left and office politics came into the equation.

It was then that he decided to be his own boss, 'to do something out of nothing'.

After a brief experience selling Bluetooth products, where he learnt the difficulty of breaking into an established market, Mr Ng decided to move into the pet supplies industry.

He gave his company, Einsoon, a name that looks like an old company as he felt that retailers may not have the confidence to accept the products of a company run by a 23-year-old.

The move paid off, with the company currently supplying about a hundred pet retailers in Singapore with products such as Primal Pet Foods, the first and only Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority-approved frozen dog food to be imported from the US, and Esde, a brand of grooming products for pets.

Initially, the business remained very small, with Einsoon selling only two accessories, an optical fibre leash that could glow and goggles for pets.

Mr Ng was then offered the opportunity to represent Esde in Asia.

The market at that point of time was already very saturated with pet grooming products. But Mr Ng was undeterred.

Sticking to his motto of 'if you don't try, you won't know', he decided to continue with his plans.

According to Mr Ng, 'when we first told our customers that we were coming in with a shampoo, about 80 to 90 per cent of them told me not to do so as there were more than enough brands out there'. 'But I felt I should go ahead with it, and within a month I managed to sell off my entire first shipment.'

'There are a lot of products in the market, but it was how I managed to position my product and the marketing strategy for it', that he managed to sell the supplies.

Having subsequently brought in a number of brands, Einsoon now plans to expand overseas.

The company has lined up several distributors in various countries in Asia with more established and matured pet markets to sell its Esde grooming products.

It has distributors in Malaysia and Indonesia stocking them, with takings from its foreign operations accounting for more than half of its yearly earnings.

The company is targeting the Japanese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong markets next, with the Hong Kong deal 'more or less certain, but with plans put on hold till the economy gets better', said Mr Ng.

In terms of marketing Esde overseas, the company is taking the Internet option, having started advertising through Google and Facebook.

There are plans as well to have a presence at trade fairs overseas, but those are reserved for sometime in the near future.

From working as a cashier to being the owner of a company with a bright future, Mr Ng certainly has come a long way.

'If you have a vision, don't just keep it as a vision,' Mr Ng advises budding entrepreneurs. 'The only way to know whether you are capable of pulling it off is to give it a try and not just think and talk about it.'

This article was first published in The Business Times on January 20, 2009.