Asia File – handling digital disruption

We have read stories about how some of the Malaysian media groups “suddenly” have to close down their newspaper operations due digital disruption. Digital disruption does not happen overnight and you would have thought that companies would have years to prepare for this.

One good example of a company that took step to anticipate digital disruption is Asia File. This is a global filing company. We all know that digital technology is changing the way we store documents and the demand for files will continue to decline.

Asia File recognized this and for the past decade, it had stopped expanding its filing business. Instead it diversified into food and consumer wares about 7 years ago. This have given it a possible non-stationery growth path. But it is not clear whether this can be as big as the stationery business. So the company is still looking for other ventures.

This good story is that its stationery business is a cash cow and it is still not clear how long it will take for the demand for files to become negligible. In the meantime, the company is using the cash and time to build up replacement businesses.