In 1991, Lim Wee Chai stood in a shuttered glove factory, surrounded by broken machines and unpaid bills. The previous owner had left, leaving behind nothing but debt.

But where others saw failure, he and his wife saw something else: opportunity.

Today, one out of every five gloves sold comes from the empire they built from that failed factory.

This is how they turned a RM180,000 ($37,800) gamble into one of Malaysia's biggest export success stories.

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💙 The couple who bet everything

Lim Wee Chai was selling air conditioners while his wife Siew Bee worked in banking.

But in 1991, the world was gripped by the AIDS epidemic. Hospitals were desperate for rubber gloves, yet manufacturers were quitting because of thin margins and competition.

Where others saw a dying industry, the couple saw a simple equation: exploding demand, shrinking supply.

They pooled their entire savings to buy the failed factory.

Friends called them reckless. But the couple had complementary strengths, like Wee Chai’s sales skills and family background in rubber trading, Siew Bee’s financial expertise.

"We worked side by side, fixing machines by day and learning the business by night," Lim recalls.

With just five production lines, they hustled for every order, often facing skepticism from buyers who wondered if this small operation could deliver.

Wee Chai would arrive before dawn, checking every batch, every machine.

The early days were brutal. Razor-thin profits. Constant equipment breakdowns. Competitors who laughed at them trying to enter a "dead" industry.

But the couple refused to quit.

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🧤 Transforming an industry

By 2004, they faced a new challenge. Medical professionals desperately needed gloves that were protective yet comfortable.

But latex gloves, the industry standard, caused allergic reactions. The alternative, nitrile gloves, were thick, stiff, and uncomfortable.

Most manufacturers accepted this flaw. Not Wee Chai

He turned a room into a secret prototype lab, working with engineers to experiment day and night. Testing temperatures, mixing compounds, tweaking formulas that others said couldn't be improved.

After countless failures, they achieved a breakthrough. They developed and mass-produced lightweight, comfortable nitrile gloves less than 5 grams.

Suddenly, protection didn’t mean sacrificing comfort. This made them more accessible and widely adopted in the medical and industrial sectors

The industry noticed. And they saw order after order. Nitrile gloves’ market share soared from tiny to 20% in a decade.

Top Glove wasn't just riding a wave. They created it.

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📈 Building an empire

Success bred ambition. New factories opened almost every year. Lightning-fast production lines. Cutting-edge automation. By 2010, they were crowned the world's top nitrile glove maker.

By 2020, they produced over 70B gloves annually. When COVID-19 hit and the world desperately needed protection, Top Glove was ready. Stock prices tripled. Profits soared.

Lim had built the perfect business for an imperfect world.

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🙅🏻‍♀️ When success turned toxic

They were getting noticed. But in more ways than one. 2020 brought more than profits—it brought scrutiny.

U.S. authorities banned Top Glove imports over reports of forced labor.

The accusations were heavy: migrant workers trapped in debt, living 48 people in a room, sharing bathrooms between 25 workers.

Reports had surfaced as early as 2018, but the pandemic spotlight made them impossible to ignore.

The backlash came quick. Even their Hong Kong IPO stalled. The company that had risen from nothing suddenly faced losing everything. But not to competition, but to their own choices.

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⛓️‍💥 The reckoning

Other companies might have hired expensive lawyers and PR firms. Lim chose a different path: accountability.

They hired UK-based consultancy Impactt to conduct independent audits. The numbers were staggering: They repaid $36.3M to over 12,600 workers, overhauled housing, and established new grievance systems. Systematic reform of practices that had festered for years.

"We made mistakes," Lim admitted publicly, "but we learned and changed. Accountability is the only way forward."

By September 2021, the U.S. lifted its ban.

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💪🏼 Resilience after the fall

The glove market cooled after the pandemic. Prices collapsed. Costs skyrocketed. In 2022, Top Glove posted its first-ever loss.

Lim made the hard choices—shutting old factories, slowing expansion. The company that had grown for three decades suddenly had to shrink. For the first time, Wee Chai looked vulnerable.

But at 66, when most CEOs think about retirement, Lim is dreaming bigger than ever.

His goals sound impossible: $30B in sales, 140 factories, 100,000 workers worldwide, and a spot on the Fortune Global 500.

"Think Big and Dream Big," he says. "That's what keeps me going. Self-motivation is the best kind. Waiting for others to motivate us is a losing game."

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🌏 The next chapter

Top Glove’s journey from that single struggling factory to 49 worldwide producing 95B gloves a year shows that you don’t need to ride every trend to win big.

Sometimes, all it takes is relentless persistence, the courage to keep going when everyone else walks away, and curiosity to create the breakthrough that changes everything.