Meet Our Founder

Shayne L. van Vlerken
Co-Founder. Bangkok Video Productions
(Co-Founder: Jenny Balee van Vlerken)

After serving in the Army, Shayne traveled throughout South East Asia and settled in Bangkok Thailand

Shayne's first assignment was with Admiral Watanapol Senawong Na Ayutthaya (A Member of the Thai Royal family).
Adm. Watanapol had retired from the Royal Thai Navy and with collogues created "Alphamax Corporation"

Alphamax Corporation had several divisions and was firmly established when Shayne van Vlerken was invited to join them as a Director, bringing his own Technology and business to Alphamax.

Alphamax over time created several divisions.

• Alphamax Development

• Rama Shipping

• Alpha Petroleum Transport 

• Alpha Marine

• Cellumax (Shayne's company)

Alphamax Development Co., Ltd
A land and property development company operating throughout Thailand.

Rama Shipping Co., Ltd.
With a contract  to bring Tuna fish to Thailand  from the USA to be canned and exported. Rama shipping owned and operated 3x  "Reefer Vessel's of about 7,000 DWT (about 350 feet long) that transported frozen Tuna from San Francisco to Thailand to be canned and exported.


Alpha Petroleum Transport Co., Ltd.
Operating two "spot-traders" These vessels were also about 7000 DEY and were the first Thai vessels to obtain " ISM Marine Certification". This company bought oil along the China - India costlines and sold the oil in ports at a profit.

Alpha Marine
MY Wyoming. 530 DWT. One of the largest ships in the world was leased by Eagle Ocean to the Thai Government, thru Alpha Marine to become the strategic oil reserve of Thailand. Whilst Thailand was building  on-shore oil tanks in Laem Chabang. For 5 years Alpha Marine supported this operation.

Satahip Dock Gates
Alpha Marine also worked with Rolls Royce Marine to design and build the Sattahip dock gates. The largest such operation at the time in South East Asia

HTMS Chakri Naruebet
Thailand first and only Aircraft Carrier. Alpha Marine was contracted to manage the build with ship builder "Bazan" of Spain. Europe's largest ship builder.

Cellumax
This is the reason why Alphamax bought into Cellumax and bought on Shayne van Vlerken . A new technology for Thailand to manage thermal insulation and acoustic insulation. Cellumax first installation was the Kings Grand Palace and went on to insulate major sporting venues and working with housing development companies nationwide. Cellumax opened a factory in Thailand and gained ISO 14001 Certification.

However over time Mr. van Vlerken became important for international communications and in some way was involved in the development and international communications of all the above companies.

Shayne resigned from Alphamax Corporation to start his own company. EthnicEarth.com in 1995. One of Thailand's first internet companies.

Before EthnicEarth.com

Ethnic Earth (One people, One Earth) was started in my apartment in 1995
My idea was that my friend ADM Watanapol was to soon pass away and I did not know his family and I thought it prudent to launch out on my own.

My idea at first was to consider food. A life necessity. And to explore new markets. I went to Burma (Myanmar)  I bought 4 fax machines with me that were well received. Bing the first fax machines in the country. I made a deal with the Agriculture Ministry for the year-supply of Cashew nuts  The Government gave me their entire produce. 18 containers. But now I had to sell this.

I contacted companies around the world. What I learned was that they needed to know what is the amount of whole cashew nuts to broken cashew nuts in every shipment. They wanted photos. These were sent at the beginning of the season by post. It took days and weeks to arrive.

Then I learned about Email. A recent public service from ARPA net. I could send phots instantly by email.

I sold all my stock immediately

Ethnic Earth - The Start

How we started.

In  my bedroom I decided that if I can "jump" the market. so could other companies  be the first to present their goods to their clients. I was also exploring web-pages. I made a website and I was the only "Internet company" in the food fair (tradeshow). I signed up about 60 companies in 4 days.

My company grew from me to more than 100 staff in three months, We were so busy making websites. We were the only company doing this at this time.

Then one of my old Partners from Alphamax joined me. Khun Runpa. A dynamic woman with a clear vision of the future. Our company grew exponentially.

Very soon I was getting visits from Senators. Senator Piraj, Senator Surat and others. They would come into my office and drop business plans on my desk and ask "Should we buy this company?" I had no idea. I was young and naïve.

One day they dropped a business plan on my desk for a company that created a "Website -platform" where online you could drag and drop and make a website without any coding. A revolution!

i said to my Partner. "We should buy this". ( These senators represented IEC/ & DTac Telecommucations - a Company majority owned by The King Of Thailand). IEC bought into Ethnic Earth as a major shareholder and they sent me to England First Class to explore this company. We (our company)  bought a 30 percent share in this company.

We renamed this software "Dynamic Gold" Make your own website without any coding (This was 1997) Wow!

But there was a problem. We were still using dial-up internet and the program would fail multiple times due to slow internet speeds........

On other fronts we were doing very well

Sun Microsystems

We were selected by Sun Microsystems to be their JAVA programmer for SE Asia (SUN Microsystems created JAVA). JAVA was required for all major and complex online transactions and our focus was the financial industry. We built the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) for Thailand Government Department of  Customs, Then the software that transferred all international funds for "Capital Numera  Securities", The International financial system for Thai Military bank and then Thai Farmers bank (Now Kasikorn Bank) and lots more.

Chatuchat Weekend Market Online shopping site
We put 1,500 individual stores onto a shopping website by making individual contracts with each store owner and offereing each store 100 product-slots. We sent our own photographers to takes the photos and this became on of Thailands very first shopping websites. This site was quickly sold to the BMA (Bangkok Metropolitian Authority)

MBK Shopping Center and SEACON Square shopping Centers
Likewise we created online shopping websites for MBK & SEACON which was eventually entirely purchased by these companies.

Villa Market Grocery Shopping Website
We made Thailand's first grocery shopping website for a grocery chain and this was sold to Villa Market Grocery chain.

Shopee.com
We then made a online store which we called "Shopee.com" (ee for Ethnic Earth) This was sold on against my wishes to finally become the shopee.com everyone in Thailand knows. It was the Amazon success story of Thailand.

AsianInsider.com

We created a complex financial website called Asian Insider. We had 40 Professors providing daily briefs, we presented daily briefs from many securities companies and so much more. We had a 40-person team working full time on AsianInsider.com.

Finally during 2000, when the Olympics were held in Australia, we made a deal with Reuters to have a live feed into AsianInsider.com which was translated by our own team in real-time reporting on all Olympics events. This was the first time Reuters let a third party translate their news and stories in real time without them fact-checking the translations before broadcast. 

By this time with our mainstay of creating websites for Thai businesses plus the above we had more than 100 staff working for us and our future growth was assured. 

This was all between 1995 and 2000 

I sold my stake in Ethnic Earth to my partners in 2003. My partners had a vision of mobile phone software development where they wanted to put more resources and I wanted to actually make and build and keep and grow our own software. I will always be grateful to my partners at Ethnic Earth.

Quoin Public Company

Mhelp

Bangkok Video Productions