For Wee Lee Hiong, founder of W Hydrocolloids, Inc., the breakthrough that led to his carrageenan business did not come from a laboratory or a formal research program. It came from curiosity—specifically from visiting buyers and observing how they used the seaweed he exported.
As he built relationships with overseas buyers, Wee became interested in what happened after the seaweed reached their facilities.
“I visited my buyers,” he recalls.
Rather than focusing only on the transaction, he asked a simple question about the production process.
“Sabi ko, ‘Anong ginagawa nyo sa seaweed?’”
What he saw changed the direction of his business. The extraction process used to produce carrageenan appeared far less complicated than he had imagined.
“Nakita ko, aba madali lang pala—tangke-tangke lang and cooking lang.”
For entrepreneurs, moments like this often mark the beginning of a new opportunity. By observing how value was created in the supply chain, Wee realized that the real profits were not in exporting raw seaweed but in processing it.
Once he understood the process, he decided to replicate it locally.
“When I went home, ginaya ko,” he says.
He immediately began building the basic equipment needed for experimentation.
“Sabi ko pagawa mo kong tangke.”
However, copying the equipment alone was not enough. Industrial processes usually require technical know-how that cannot be learned from observation alone. Recognizing this gap, Wee sought expert help.
“Luckily, there was this retiree engineer from Japan,” he recalls. “So I asked him to come to Zamboanga to teach us how to cook the seaweed.”
With guidance and experimentation, the team gradually developed their own production process.
“In six months we were able to make carrageenan,” he says.
The result revealed a striking economic advantage. At that time, large multinational companies dominated the global carrageenan market.
“Multinationals were selling it for $12,” Wee explains.
But his production costs were dramatically lower.
“My cost was only $2.”
This cost advantage gave him pricing flexibility that competitors could not easily match.
“I offered it at $4.”
Buyers initially doubted the economics.
“They were surprised—‘That’s impossible, Mr. Wee. You must be losing money.’”
Yet the numbers worked in his favor.
“Sabi ko, but I’m already making 100 percent.”
The episode illustrates a powerful entrepreneurial principle: innovation often comes from learning directly from customers and understanding how value is created in the production chain.
By studying the processes used by his buyers and adapting them locally, Wee transformed his role in the industry—from a supplier of raw materials to a producer of higher-value carrageenan. That shift would eventually become the foundation of the seaweed processing business he built in the years that followed.
