KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 23 — Handicraft entrepreneurs must be more  courageous to explore business opportunities including moving in tandem with the latest technology and doing business online.

The Prime Minister’s wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor said the new approaches such as online business or E-commerce were capable of opening borderless business opportunities with advantages of cheap handling costs and broader customer base.

"Such transactions can be carried out anywhere and can operate for 24 hours a day and seven days a week,” she said when opening a 2017 National Handicraft Day (2017 HKK) here today.

She said integrated collaboration between the Malaysian Handicraft Development Corporation and online marketing companies should be held more widely to enable local entrepreneurs to obtain more information relating to business opportunities.

"In this context, related courses and trainings should be held for entrepreneurs who are interested,” she said.

Rosmah also encouraged women entrepreneurs, who now dominated 70 per cent of the national craft industry, to boost their businesses and prove the industry could generate a lucrative income.

"Undoubtedly, creativity and artistic refinement usually correlated with the instinct of women but most women entrepreneurs are still doing business on a small scale.

"They think it’s just a part-time job to increase family income and not a profession that can be commercialised. The fact is, it has the potential to generate substantial income.

"Therefore, they have to get out of the cocoon of such thinking and see their career from a broad perspective and try to explore existing opportunities to improve their businesses,” she said.

2017 HKK, which is open to the public from Feb 22 to March 6, features interesting activities including an exhibition of 28 of Rosmah’s clothes collection comprising batik and songket, selling of crafts, traditional cakes demonstration and arts performances. — Bernama