Khairul Aming / Sambal Nyet

In 2017, a Malaysian oil & gas engineer made 200 jars of sambal.

He sold all 200.

Then he had to refund every single customer.

The plastic packaging made the sambal go rancid. Total disaster.

Most people? They'd take the L and go back to their comfortable engineering job.

Khairul Aming didn't.

He went back to the kitchen. Switched to glass jars. Renamed it Sambal Nyet.

Fast forward to 2024: RM42 million in sales. Two factories in Kelantan. 100 employees.

And here's the part nobody talks about:

He broke the Malaysia Book of Records by hitting RM1 million in sales in 3 minutes and 28 seconds. On a TikTok livestream.

Think about that. RM1 million. 3 minutes.

And I know what you're thinking — "Of course, he's a famous influencer with millions of followers."

Here's the thing.

When he started posting cooking videos in 2017, he had 800 Instagram followers.

Not 800,000. Eight hundred.

He spent YEARS building an audience before he sold a single jar that actually worked.

But the real counterintuitive move?

Supermarkets kept calling. Giant. Tesco. All of them wanted Sambal Nyet on their shelves.

He said no. Every. Single. Time.

Why? The math.

TikTok Shop margins: 60-70%. Supermarket margins: 40%.

By staying online-only, he kept control of distribution AND made more money per jar.

Everyone tells you to "scale" by getting into retail. Khairul built a RM42 million business by refusing to.

Three lessons from the Sambal King:

1. Fail cheap, learn fast — His first 200 jars cost him everything. But the lesson (packaging matters) cost him almost nothing compared to what it taught him.

2. Audience before product — He spent years making content. When the product was ready, the customers were already waiting.

3. Own your distribution — Saying no to supermarkets sounds crazy. But controlling where and how you sell is the real moat.

He's now opening a third factory. Still in Kelantan. Still hiring locally.

From 200 refunded jars to RM42 million.

What "failure" are you sitting on that might just need a glass jar and a second try?