From Backpacker to Internet Entrepreneur

ByABC News
August 12, 2002, 2:17 PM

N E W  Y O R K, Aug. 13 -- Rootless and jobless, Don Kogen headed off for a backpacking adventure in Asia a decade ago and ended up becoming, at age 26, Thailand's leading Internet impresario.

His unlikely journey began in the city of Chanthaburi. A three-hour drive from the Thai capital, Bangkok, past banana palms, dragon-topped temples and the occasional water buffalo, this southeastern city is one of the world's leading centers for processing gems.

But Kogen, then a 15-year-old high school dropout, arrived with no lapidary skills. To meet his $60-a-month rent he had to work two jobs, including a night stint in a hip-hop club, where he'd move onto the empty dance floor by himself to inspire shy young Thais to get up and boogie. "I had to meet the ladies," Kogen recalls.

In fact, that's where he met his wife, Nuntiya Sukumpeeranont, who urged him to aim higher. After weeks of cajoling, he talked a local gem trader into paying him a quarter of the dirt-cheap local wage to work hunched over a metal spinning wheel, turning rough-cut Sri Lankan sapphires into finished specimens.

Kogen moved into gem sorting after chipping off too much from a couple of stones. During weekends he hung out at the city's market, watching traders haggling over stones and learning to speak Thai.

A Booming Business

After three years of observing, Kogen decided to try the business himself, starting small. He purchased low-grade gems from merchants arriving in town on the 8 a.m. bus from northern Thailand, and resold them for pennies more to later-arriving dealers from India and Pakistan.

That grew into a small mail-order operation, thanks to a $24-a-month ad he took out in an American trade magazine, with some 800 customers in the U.S. When fax machines began to arrive in Chanthaburi, Kogen was quick to seize on them: They allowed him to increase orders, lower delivery times and sock away $25,000.

With those funds he bought plane tickets for himself and his wife, and visited the gem districts of New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. Within four years his retained earnings grew to $250,000.