I have received an offer to open a representative office for a European company in Thailand. I could act as general representative. My business would be 100% service oriented, since only the service is sold. There's no import or export involved. The following questions have arisen.

1. Is it the same procedure to set up such a business than setting up any other businesses?

2. Since this business aims at the service market of cleaning, are foreigners permitted to have such business in Thailand?

3. Are the requirements the same as for setting up a Thai Company Ltd?

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks

The practical procedures for setting up a reginal office, differs on details, but overall not much is different.

However businesswise there are at least two major disadvantages as follows:

1) A reginal office is not allowed to gain profits in Thailand

2) The list a reginal office can do is as follows:

"A regional office has the ability to coordinate and supervise the company's branches and its affiliated companies in the region on behalf of the head office. The regional office may provide these branches and affiliated companies with:

Advisory and management services

Financial management services

Training and personnel development services

Marketing control and sales promotion plans

Product development

Research and development services."

I see no mentioning of the right to run a cleaning service here:

The quote is from this page:

http://www.boi.go.th/english/how/company_establishing.asp

Sunbelt Asia our forum sponsors could help you with this kind of situation...

http://www.sunbeltasia.com

personally I would think more than twice about opening a company like that here. unless they where providing the capital to set it up and initial advertising.

I have received an offer to open a representative office for a European company in Thailand. I could act as general representative. My business would be 100% service oriented, since only the service is sold. There's no import or export involved. The following questions have arisen.

1. Is it the same procedure to set up such a business than setting up any other businesses?

2. Since this business aims at the service market of cleaning, are foreigners permitted to have such business in Thailand?

3. Are the requirements the same as for setting up a Thai Company Ltd?

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks

Representative office?

Do you mean Franchise? or Master Franchise?

I have received an offer to open a representative office for a European company in Thailand. I could act as general representative. My business would be 100% service oriented, since only the service is sold. There's no import or export involved. The following questions have arisen.

1. Is it the same procedure to set up such a business than setting up any other businesses?

2. Since this business aims at the service market of cleaning, are foreigners permitted to have such business in Thailand?

3. Are the requirements the same as for setting up a Thai Company Ltd?

Any comments appreciated.

Thanks

I would think twice about it, there are hundreds of cleaning companies, the biggest being PCS, part of the OCS group in the UK then you have ISS (dutch) and a few other large ones. They all face pricing and competition issues along with labour issues. The cleaning business is very reliant on labour - labour in thailand, even for cleaners and low level staff is very difficult to find. You would also need to find a good Thai partner / employee to help you manage the business, again difficult to find unless you want to be paying big money.

I would look at other countries if i was going into the cleaning business.

My opinion of course!

Well, the offer I have includes the promotion which is done by the company. The only service I will be offering is to hygenically clean mattresses with an innovative machine that the company produces. It removes dust mites out of mattresses without using any chemicals. Or do cleaning companies use such machines in Thailand already? The machine uses high frequency vibrations and kills mites using UVC-radiation.

Anything like that on the market here?