EXPLORING FACTORS FOR SMALL BUSINESS START-UP AND COMMERCIALISATION: QUALITATIVE EVIDENCE FROM HANDICRAFT ENTREPRENEURS IN SABAH, MALAYSIA

This paper aims to understand in-depth, from the handicraft entrepreneurs‘ perspective how they first get involved in handicraft production, and how they make decisions about to move (or not) to formal commercialisation. The Malaysian Handicraft Development Corporation (MHDC Census, 2014) revealed that vast majority of handicraft entrepreneurs are operating as modest production, i.e. home-based and mainly part-time, which has always been regarded as low performance. The in-depth interviews therefore were conducted with 16 handicraft entrepreneurs in Kota Belud, Sabah to explore why this modest... Mehr ...