Fenner Precision Polymers Employee Spotlight - Su Chin Tan
Title: Sales & Purchasing Customer Service Specialist
Degree: Property Management (University of Malaya)
Teamwork is everything. It’s a credo that guides Su Chin at work as well as in her personal life. She firmly believes that the best results are born of collaboration and people focused on working together. For her, this applies equally in the workplace and in her personal life.
Now in her 17th year with MAV, Su Chin enjoys the flexibility and collegial work environment the company offers. “One of the things I like best about working here is the cooperation among our teams. We rely on the expertise of each other to accomplish our tasks and to exceed the justifiably high expectations of our customers. It’s nice because you come to depend on one another a great deal; developing a level of trust that is more like family than team members.”
That level of dependability is critical, when clients are geographically dispersed, from varying cultures, speak different languages, and serve multiple industries—a perfect description for Su Chin’s areas of responsibility. Her position requires constant interaction with customers in Asia, Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and South America, handling everything from procurement estimates and order confirmations. It also involves a great deal of interaction with suppliers in China. Working with her colleagues domestically and abroad, Su Chin sources raw materials from China. She organizes sea freight or air shipments from China to Italy, conducts daily business communication with Chinese suppliers, negotiates pricing, drafts estimates for urgently needed raw material, and arranges rush shipments from China to meet her customers’ tight delivery deadlines.
It’s a fast-paced and demanding routine, but one that Su Chin finds energizing. Adding to it, she especially enjoys organizing business trips to Asia—primarily China—where the team visits with suppliers, attends trade shows and meets distributors. The goal of such travel is often to better understand Chinese culture and to promote relationship-building with Chinese business partners. In this capacity, Su Chin, typically serves as the company translator. She speaks Chinese, Malay, English, and Italian—making it easy for her to connect with customers from around the world.
Su Chin is no less a people person outside of work. She loves socializing with friends at dinner outings, or finding opportunities to make brand new friends. Other favorite pastimes include mountain climbing, trekking, and volleyball. In summing her passion for cooperation, Su Chin calls out a similarity between work and volleyball.
“I think work is just like playing volleyball or any other team sport. In order to be successful, teamwork is far more important that individual performance.”