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- ๐คฏ Hup Teck Buried After 111 Years โ No Heir, No Buyer
๐คฏ Hup Teck Buried After 111 Years โ No Heir, No Buyer
How Malaysia's last Gopeng soy sauce maker collapsed under a no-heir succession crisis, RM10 community pricing, and rising input costs
Admond Lee
August 16, 2026
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Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures โ a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
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Today's story is about a 111-year-old soy sauce factory that refused mechanisation, priced like community service, and closed when its 72-year-old owner had no heir. Let's get to it! ๐
Today at a Glance:
โ ๏ธ 1 Failed Startup โ Hup Teck Soy Sauce Factory
โ ๏ธ 2 Mistakes โ Built a heritage instead of a transferable business
๐ง 3 Lessons Learned โ Your business must be able to outlive you
๐ The Runway Insights โ What nobody tells you about writing agent skills
๐ฐ Southeast Asia Funding Radar โ Acrab raises $130M (Series B) to scale products, expand ecosystem, and advance development of next-generation computing platform infrastructure
โ ๏ธ 1 Failed Startup: Hup Teck Soy Sauce Factory
๐ The Rise of Hup Teck
๐ฒ๐พ Founded by Low Kong, Poon Yoke Kwan, and Liew Hin Tuck in 1914, Hup Teck was a traditional artisanal soy sauce and taucu maker in Gopeng, Perak โ and Malaysia's last surviving Gopeng soy sauce factory when it closed on Chinese New Year's Eve 2025.
๐บ๐ป๐บ๐ป๐บ๐ป Foundersโ Story
In 1914, 3 men โ Low Kong, Poon Yoke Kwan, and Liew Hin Tuck โ set up a soy sauce cooperative in Kampung Rawa, Gopeng, at Lot 999.
They called it Hup Teck. In Hakka, "hup teck" means "compatible" โ a nod to both the partnership between them and the harmony between soybean, salt, wheat, and sun.
When Low Kong died in 1983, his son Low Bak Tong โ known locally as "Tong Gor" โ took over the vats. He never bought a machine.
The Problem โ ๐ In early 1900s Gopeng, a booming tin-mining town needed reliable everyday soy sauce for its hawkers, noodle sellers, and home cooks.
Imported bottles were expensive and full of additives
Small home brewers were inconsistent batch to batch
No trusted local artisanal producer at scale
The Solution โ ๐ซ Hup Teck brewed traditional soy sauce and taucu using just 4 ingredients (Canadian soybeans, roasted wheat, water, and natural sea salt) fermented for 3โ4 months in earthen clay pots under Perak sunlight.
No preservatives, no artificial colouring, no chemical additives
Customers brought their own empty bottles and refilled straight from the vats
Product line grew to include thick and thin soy sauces, taucu, and traditional black vinegar
 | ๐ฒ๐พ๐ซ In short, Hup Teck was Gopeng's last artisanal soy sauce factory โ where sunlight, salt, and time did the work no machine could replace. |
๐๏ธ At its peak, Hup Teck:
For most of the 20th century, Hup Teck did what founders today would kill for. It built a defensible product no factory could copy. It kept fanatical repeat customers for generations. |  Hup Tech soy sauce ๐ฅน |
And it quietly outlived every competitor in its own town.
๐ฅฒ Then time did what time does.
๐ The Fall of Hup Teck
Hup Teck didn't fail because demand disappeared.
Demand was so strong that when closure was announced, the entire commercial stock sold out in days. People drove in from Ipoh and Kampar. Long-time customers pre-ordered the very last batch.
But behind the sold-out shelves was a quieter problem. And it was decades in the making.
๐ Hereโs what happened to Hup Teck:
Since we have to let it go eventually, it is better to end it earlier.
๐ซ๐ซ๐ซ 4 ingredients, 3 generations
1914 โ ๐ญ Low Kong, Poon Yoke Kwan, and Liew Hin Tuck set up Hup Teck at Lot 999, Kampung Rawa, Gopeng.
Mid-20th century โ ๐๏ธ Peak years. 100+ earthen jars fermenting under Perak sunlight.
1983 โ Founder Low Kong died. His son Low Bak Tong took over in his 30s. He kept every part of the process manual.
Late 20th century โ One by one, Gopeng's 3 other soy sauce factories closed. Hup Teck was the last standing.
Late 2016 โ ๐ A student field visit found ~5 workers, ~100 fermentation pots, and factory prices of RM3.50โRM10.40. Low was absorbing GST cost increases rather than raising prices.
Industrial sites, too expensive. Modern machinery, unaffordable.
9 Jun 2018 โ ๐ At a UTAR student visit, Low said mass production would compromise quality. Larger manufacturers had offered to commercialise the brand years earlier โ he declined.
๐ฅฒ Every last drop
2020s โ ๐ด๐ป The workforce had collapsed to 3: Low Bak Tong, his sister, and his nephew. He was a bachelor. His younger brother had emigrated to Australia.
Late 2024 โ early 2025 โ ๐ธ Sector-wide input costs on soybeans, packaging plastic, and diesel climbed by up to 30%.
2024 โ Low started planning to close after Chinese New Year 2025.
Jan 2025 โ He brought the closure forward to Chinese New Year's Eve.
21 Jan 2025 โ ๐ฃ Hup Teck announced closure on Facebook. "Humble gratitude and a heavy heart." Final day set for 28 January.
22 Jan 2025 โ ๐ฐ China Press, Sin Chew, and eNanyang carried the story. It went national.
23 Jan 2025 โ The Star and Oriental Daily followed. A "gastronomic panic" set in as customers from Gopeng, Ipoh, and Kampar rushed the factory to hoard remaining stock.
24 Jan 2025 โ Low told The Star: "every last drop of soy sauce has been sold." Commercial life effectively ended 4 days ahead of schedule.
28 Jan 2025 โ ๐ Chinese New Year's Eve, noon. Hup Teck fulfilled a final 150-bottle batch for pre-orders and closed.
Low said he'd consider selling the factory (100+ jars included) if an industry buyer offered a fair price.
25 Aug 2025 โ ๐ 7 months later, no buyer. No revival. Hup Teck remained a closed producer.
๐ญ 111 years. One recipe. And it ended because a 72-year-old man had no one left to hand it to.
Hup Teck had a moat most founders would kill for โ a century-loyal customer base, a recipe no factory could copy, and a fermentation process that ran for free on Perak sunlight.
But a moat needs somebody to hold it. When the last person holding it turned 72 with no successor, Gopeng's last soy sauce factory became a business that couldn't outlive its operator.
๐ P.S. My hometown is in Kampar, Perak โ which is 15 mins drive to Gopeng where Hup Teck was located. It was quite sad researching and writing this story. Unfortunately, SME succession still remains as one of the growing problems in Malaysia.
Want to learn more about Hup Teckโs downfall?
โ ๏ธ 2 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Priced as community service instead of artisanal premium
A bottle of Hup Teck soy sauce sold for under RM10 โ for a product fermented 3 months in clay pots under open sun, made from 4 ingredients with no preservatives.
Then closure was announced on January 21, 2025. Within 3 days the stock was gone. People drove in from Ipoh and Kampar to buy in bulk. That queue shows how much people valued the product.
But in 111 years, Hup Teck never tested it. They held the price under RM10 for decades and absorbed GST rather than pass it on.
๐ธ They built an artisanal moat, then priced like a corner shop. Maybe, just maybe, if Hup Teck made more money, it could have hired the right people to transform the business and make it more scalable with machine automation while keeping the quality.
Mistake 2: Built a heritage instead of a transferable business
Here's the deeper problem hiding under the succession story.
For 111 years, Hup Teck ran as a family trade, stewarded generation to generation. No trademark registration for the brand could be found.
๐๐ป At closure, Low Bak Tong openly signalled he'd sell "the entire factory" if an industry buyer offered a fair price. But what was there to actually sell?
The wooden structure at Lot 999
100+ ceramic jars
A brand name with no registration on record
No valuation was ever disclosed because none could be computed. No buyer ever came.
๐ The succession problem was really an asset-formation problem in disguise.
๐ง 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: Price for the moat you built
Hup Teck spent 111 years earning the right to charge more, and never took it. Pricing below what your moat is worth doesn't just leave money on the table โ it forecloses the reinvestment that heritage businesses need to survive.
๐ฎ Key Takeaways:
If resellers can mark up your product substantially and clear inventory, you've priced against the wrong benchmark.
Community pricing feels virtuous, but it starves the business of the margin needed to fund succession, upgrades, and survival.
๐ ๏ธ Operator Playbook:
๐งช Run a "reseller premium" test every 6 months
Search your product on Shopee, Lazada, or Carousell to see what third-party sellers charge
If resellers regularly clear inventory at 20โ40% above your factory price, you're leaving margin on the table
Raise prices in 5โ10% increments and track repeat purchase rate at 60 days to confirm demand elasticity
Lesson 2: Your business must be able to outlive you
A century-old family business can leave much of its transferable value โ process, know-how, brand โ sitting largely in the founder's head. At closure, what a buyer sees is often just the physical assets, not a sellable enterprise.
๐ฎ Key Takeaways:
If your business can't operate for 30 days without you, you own a job disguised as a company.
A recipe, customer list, or supplier relationship is worth nothing to a buyer if it lives only in your head.
Registered trademarks, incorporation papers, and documented processes turn a family trade into a sellable asset.
๐ ๏ธ Operator Playbook:
๐ Formalise the corporate stack while you're still operating
Register your trademark early โ in Malaysia, MyIPO is where trademark filings are made
Incorporate as a Sdn Bhd or LLP even if you're solo โ this separates personal from business assets and makes the enterprise legally sellable
Document your process, recipes, supplier list, and customer database in a shared system like Notion or Google Drive
๐ Run a "bus factor" audit every quarter
Track founder-dependency by role โ sales, ops, quality control, customer service โ and set a 12-month target to cut dependency by 30% in each
If your answer is "no one else knows how this works", you've built a single point of failure disguised as tradition
Read The E-Myth book to build systems so youโre not stuck in daily ops. Zames (co-founder of Repair.sg), scaled his business to $3M / year because he built a system.
Lesson 3: Buyers show up when you don't need them
Larger manufacturers approached Hup Teck years earlier, wanting to commercialise the products. The family declined.
By January 2025 Low was 72 and said he'd sell the whole factory, 100+ jars included, to an industry buyer at a fair price. 7 months later, nobody had come.
The interest arrived when they were strong enough to refuse it. By the time they were willing, it was gone.
๐ฎ Key Takeaways:
Acquisition interest tends to arrive when you're strongest โ exactly when you're least inclined to take the meeting.
Declining an offer is fine. Declining to have the conversation means you never learn what you're worth.
๐ ๏ธ Operator Playbook:
๐ Keep a warm buyer list (even when you're not selling)
Every 12โ18 months, take a coffee with 2โ3 potential strategic acquirers โ competitors, larger players in your category, PE firms in your industry
You're not pitching. You're benchmarking valuations and staying visible for when the moment matters
๐ The Runway Insights
What nobody tells you about writing agent skills (Read)
Max Hodak: how to build a startup that moves fast (Read)
We spend $45,000 on doing more weird every month (Read)
Meet your biggest competitor (Claude) (Read)
He built a $2.5M/year marketplace before writing code (Read)
How to optimise your homepage for AI traffic (Read)
๐ฐ Southeast Asia Funding Radar
Acrab raises $130M (Series B) to scale products, expand ecosystem, and advance development of next-generation computing platform infrastructure (More)
K2 Therapeutics secures $50M (Seed) to build global oncology drug pipeline with 8 programmes backed by MPM BioImpact (More)
Graas bags $17M (Series B) to build agentic commerce data layer for retail through acquisition of Trustana (More)
McEasy closes $9M (Series B) to expand fleet management and transportation intelligence platform across Southeast Asia markets (More)
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Thatโs all for today
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope youโve learned some actionable tips to build and grow your business.
You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.
See you again next week.
- Admond
Disclaimer: The Runway Ventures content is for informational purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed above belong solely to the author.
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