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Tujuan Gemilang Turns 10
Part 1: The Wonder Years
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. We started off with a very small team of 5 in a temporary office back in July 2005. Starting off as a new small developer, we can easily recount the many challenges in our decade-long journey.
Unlike mainstream names in the property industry, the name ‘Tujuan Gemilang’ may have sounded rather peculiar to many. While some may still find it odd, we knew from the start that our work had to stand out from the crowd for our name to manifest its true meaning; Great Intentions.
The pioneer team of 2005/06
Discovering Who We Were
Starting from scratch, we had a great opportunity to create a new culture and vision beginning with our new team. After months of careful deliberation, we understood what we wanted to achieve and translated this into a simple yet meaningful reason for existence:
OUR PURPOSE
Our purpose is ‘to craft significant projects with bold ideas’.
TG is about ideas + craft. We take bold ideas and use them to craft unique and successful projects. We can do this well because of our people, our passion and our simple structure. We think deeply, we craft with our hearts.
Our projects are significant. We challenge convention, we reinvent existing prototypes, we push the industry forward. We create projects that are beneficial for the occupants, the community and the earth.
Our Purpose & Core Values were seamlessly incorporated into our culture. This in turn was crucial to the success of our very first project, PJ Trade Centre.
PJ Trade Centre was a monumental challenge in its own right. It was to be a Grade-A office that would bear no such resemblance to popular glass-and-steel office complexes. Sporting exposed concrete, over-burnt bricks and many more industrial cues, it was a concept that needed to be experienced to be understood.
PJ Trade Centre (2006) 3D Animation#TBT #ThrowBackThursday | Presenting the very first glimpse of PJ Trade Centre from January 2006! Three 1-minute clips portray a different perspective of the PJTC design & concept. This 3D animation took 4 months of painstaking detailing between Tujuan Gemilang, its consultants and an international video production studio. The result is a breakthrough property marketing video (which looks very similar to the completed building of today) that helped convey the vision of PJTC to the world.
Posted by Tujuan Gemilang on Wednesday, 12 August 2015
PJ Trade Centre was a leap in modern office concepts back in 2006
Our Fascination with Concrete, Bricks and Steel
That naturally meant that our first true office had to look and feel like our debut product. In November 2005, Tujuan Gemilang officially moved in to its first purpose-built office at Emerald Plaza. This strange office served as a testing ground as well as a proof-of-concept for the ideas envisioned for PJ Trade Centre.
Tujuan Gemilang’s first Sales Gallery in Emerald Plaza, Damansara Perdana
Not long after, we opened our doors to the public with numerous preview events and private tours. Safe to say, 9 out of 10 people had the impression that our office was not complete! Imagine their surprise when they got to experience our ‘open air’ toilets which quickly became an easy ice-breaker topic among us.
The ‘First Pile’ ceremony on the construction site of PJ Trade Centre on 17 January 2006
Think Different!
Marketing and selling PJ Trade Centre was made tougher by the fact that several new Grade-A offices in PJ were launched around the same time too. As our PJ Trade Centre can now be seen as a textbook ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ move in office property development, it was anything but back in 2006.
That is where our newly brewed company culture made a huge difference. In the face of countless scepticism and criticism from the general public, our team had to possess a strong sense of conviction and confidence that we were doing something truly great.
As our team quickly grew to almost 20 strong, it was imperative for us to work closely as a unit; a family. Being small and new, it was all-hands-on-deck for every event. Each of us was imparted with a deep sense of understanding of who we were and what we were selling. Call it crude, but we did it effectively with the help of the elevator speech; a 1-minute script about us and PJ Trade Centre that we had to memorize by heart.
Of course, there were many occasions that proved to be lessons for the future. With each interface with the public, we kept on discovering new questions that needed a good explanation. The learning curve was extremely steep. In time, each little hurdle presented us a new opportunity to prepare for this and future projects.
Overcoming the Odds
“First and foremost, our projects have to be significant; they have to challenge convention, they have to reinvent the existing prototype. It somehow has to push the industry forward.” – Peter Chan, Executive Director
Some call us lucky. We and our many business partners who worked with us from the beginning know better. PJ Trade Centre not only sold out a year before its completion, but has also become a sort of industrial benchmark for new property developments. We attribute this not only to meticulous concept, product, branding and market planning, but also to the sheer will and determination of our fellow TG family.
At the FIABCI Prix d’Excellence Awards 2013 in Taiwan. PJ Trade Centre was the Gold Winner (Office Category)
With two very successful and iconic projects completed (PJ Trade Centre & Point 92 in Damansara Perdana), a couple more in construction and numerous prestigious awards to our name, the name Tujuan Gemilang has truly personified our ambitions and achievements.
