Earning the title of “popiah king” for growing his flagship firm Tee Yih Jia into one of the world’s largest producers of popiah skins, Goi, 79, ranked 22nd on Forbes’ list of the richest Singaporeans last September. His net worth is estimated at US$2.7 billion.
Yet the food industry was not where he originally planned to build his career.
Born to a father who was a farmer in China’s Fujian province, Goi moved to Singapore with his family at the age of 6 and settled in Geylang, where his father ran a small grocery store.
Goi left high school to help at his father’s business but soon took on odd jobs at a mechanical repair shop, where he discovered a knack for fixing machines.
In 1969, a 21-year-old Goi convinced his father to lend him $8,000 to open his own repair shop.
“I started working when I was very young; leaving school to help my family business in a provision shop,” Goi told the Financial Times in 2015. “I always wanted to be my own boss, which probably stemmed from the fact that my father was a businessman.”
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Sam Goi, Executive Chairman, Tee Yih Jia, a frozen food manufacturing company. Photo by SPH Media via AFP |
The venture, however, failed and shut down within a year. Having learned a lesson, he returned to the trade, setting up a mechanical engineering workshop serving businesses in Jurong, which proved far more successful.
He later came across popiah skins at a nearby factory that produced them. He had earlier befriended its owners and, as it was struggling with feuding partners, he acquired a controlling stake in the business for $370,000, funded by his savings and a bank loan, as a favor to a friend.
But a partner quietly launched a similar operation under the same name in Malaysia. Upon learning this, Goi bought him out and assumed full control of Tee Yih Jia in 1980.
