The Internship

Posted By : Josh Knutson/ 86 0

After an amazing beach and boat adventure in Phuket, it was time to start my internship in Chiang Mai. My internship was at the Northern Small & Medium Enterprise Center (NSME Center) as a finance/marketing intern. My main task was to assess the financials of the NSME Center to determine if they would be able to break away from the Industrial Promotion Center (IPC 1), a division of the Thai government.

The NSME Center focused on the small and medium businesses within Northern Thailand through their OTOP (One Tambon, One Product) initiative. Tambon means a village or township in English and is one of the lower forms within a regional government branch. The OTOP program was designed to help a company within the Tambon to market their products throughout Thailand and the World.

Throughout the internship, I got to visit various manufacturers in Northern Thailand including, a pillow manufacturer for Pier 1 Imports, a spice maker, a plate manufacturer, & frozen food company. The most impressive was the frozen food manufacturer, it created frozen vegetables for Walmart.

The NSME Center was an amazing opportunity to see the various businesses within Thailand and their strategy to market their products as well as the way the NSME helped to market these products through trade shows and an online presence. Sadly though, it appeared they would not be able to breakout on their own and learned a couple years ago the NSME Center had closed.

Chiang Mai