The array of cheeky condoms on Goh Miah Kiat’s desk -- multi-coloured, textured and flavoured -- would make most business executives blush.
They come with grape and strawberry flavours, pleasure-boosting textures, barber pole-like striping, a “Baggy” model and its opposite, the missile-shaped “Powershot.”
They hardly seem the stock and trade of a rural-based family business in Muslim-majority Malaysia, but Goh’s Karex Industries has big plans.
Karex already claims to be the world’s biggest condom maker by volume, producing three billion annually, more than any other single manufacturer.
But it plans an IPO this year to fund a doubling of output, part of a push to further its growing presence in a market that is expanding due to the world AIDS battle and increasing condom use in huge Asian economies like China.
“We are enjoying an acceleration in demand for condoms,” said Goh, 35, Karex’s executive director, in an interview at the company’s factory in the drowsy southern Malaysian town of Pontian.