Merian Axelgaard was only 29 years old, when her husband and the father of her one-month-old daughter died. She thought she had lost her chance at happiness and an accomplished life. Today, Merian is 32 years old and she has started a successful coconut company on her own and built a new life for herself and her daughter.
“My husband died”, Merian said to her uncle, the buddhist monk.
“Can you accept reality?” he asked
“Yes”, Merian said.
“It’s natural”, another monk said and repeated “natural.”
Merian Axelgaard had just given birth to her daughter one month and five days ago, when she got the news of her late husband’s sudden death.
For Merian the words of her uncle were a clarifying moment. People get born, people get sick, people die. Then you get separated and it’s sad but it’s still a natural part of life. The wise words and the everlasting support of her family and friends helped Merian stay in the presence.
“It was definitely a new challenge in life. Life changes all the time and then the most important thing is to adapt,” Merian said.
Merian believes, the most important thing for her is to stay in the presence, because everything else is just a memory. She loves took look at life from the perspective of solutions, to become good at observing what makes her unhappy in the moment and then change that thing.
“Children have a great way of expressing if they dislike something. I think my daughter has taught me to be more aware of my emotions and listen to them. She has made me a more aware adult,” Merian said.
An adventure in Denmark
Danish-Thai Merian Axelgaard moved to Denmark when she was 17 and she stayed there for six years. Her father lived in Horsens, but then she moved to Kolding. Her Danish father was a pilot and he met her Thai-mother on one of his flying trips.
She got pregnant and they stayed together until Merian was two. Then her father returned back to Denmark, and she only saw him again once when she was seven.
Merian moved to Denmark as a teenager to reconnect with her father and that side of her, that she didn’t yet know much about.
“My father is a great guy and I really wanted to get to know him again. I also wanted to know what the world has to offer,” Merian said.
Merian has always been independent. As a teenager in Denmark, she started her very own Thai restaurant in Kolding called Hahaha Thai Takeaway. She has never worked under anyone and only been self-employed from a very young age. According to Merian, the restaurant is still going well but now with a different owner and with the new name Sawadee Thai Takeaway.
Even though she left Denmark many years ago, she has left a lasting mark on the country with her very first business. But her grandparents were old and when her grandfather said that he wanted to see her again, she couldn’t say no.
“It was not an option for me to stay, because I was raised by my grandparents. For me family is the most important thing, and nothing in life actually matters in comparison,” Merian said.
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I want to be a businesswoman
Merian sat at a long wooden table in her new boyfriend’s house Piyawat Kempetech, who is a Thai Emcee and public figure. Recently the media has had a tight grip on the couple, as there has been a lot of public interest in Piyawat’s separation from his ex-wife. Surrounded by the sounds of her daughter’s playing in the background Merian sips on a cup of coffee.
“I have never had a specific idol, but I think I always thought being a businesswoman is very fierce and cool. You get to decide everything. I think for me it was never about the money, but more the strategy of getting to manage the company. Getting to decide what you want to do, you get to travel. It’s a lot of freedom”, Merian said.
But Merian realized while finally achieving her dream of starting a business, that there is a lot of responsibility, which goes hand in hand with the freedom.
Business with her husband
Merian was a marketing consultant when she met her late husband. He wanted her to rebrand his product and she was hired for only a short time. Three months later he said that he wanted to be more than business partners, but that he respected her choice, if she didn’t want him.
They started a relationship and she helped more and more with the company, which is how Merian got into the coconut bulk industry. When Merian first met him, his company was worth 15 million Baht, but three years and much teamwork later, they had built a company worth 120 million together.
Merian’s husband handled the contact with the client. In the beginning there was not that many customers, but they upgraded the company and covid made customers stock a lot of their product.
The business was really taking of. The days got busier and busier, and Merian’s husband didn’t sleep well. He would wake up at 8 and go to bed at 11 and only sleep for two hours. Then he would stay awake until 6 in the morning and sleep two hours until the next shift started at 8. Sometimes, his friends would stop by, they would drink a little and then go back to sleep.
“I think it was a mix of his lack of sleeping and drinking that led to his very sudden death,” Merian said.
They lived in Bangkok at the time, but Merian wanted to give birth in Chiang Mai to get the support from her mother and family to take care of the daughter. One week before giving birth, she left for Chiang Mai. Her husband would come every Friday and stay until Tuesday. He did that the first and the second week. The third week, he was too busy. The fourth week, he was supposed to come pick Merian and their daughter up to go live in their new home. It was a house and a coconut factory in one building.
On the Friday he was supposed to pick them up, he died suddenly, and Merian never returned to the house with the coconut factory again.
“I didn’t feel like I had time to be sad and depressed. We had around hundred employees and they all counted on me. I didn’t feel like there was time to cry and if I was too stressed my body would stop producing the milk for the baby,” Merian said.
Lost the business
After he passed, Merian lost everything. They weren’t married on paper, which meant she didn’t have any rights over the company. Instead, his family got it all. Merian helped in the company for a year, but after a while she realized their view on the business didn’t add up.
Her time in Denmark had made her view hygiene and standards in a different light. Her late husband had been on board with her vision, but the new owners had a different way of running it.
“My husband was a guy from the future regarding the coconut industry. Now the industry has changed to exactly what he thought it would with more focus on health and organic products. I would say I carried his vision with me when I founded my own company,” Merian said.
Merian left the company to build something new and to become a businessowner. But she needed to start completely from scratch with no money and no inheritance.
Merian had had a vision since she was young about being successful at thirty. She had a goal of doing anything and everything that came her way until she was thirty and then success would come her way.
“But funny enough I was 29 and business was going well and then my husband passed away and my life turned completely upside down,” Merian said.
“And then when it happened and I was like, okay how am I going to be a rising star by thirty? How is my business going to kick off? I lost him and I was like how will I turn this around?” said Merian.
A new way of life
Merian believes many experiences in life can be changed when looking at things from a different perspective. She points at a candle on the long table and puts her hands around it.
“I think it is all about how you view something. Maybe someone hates candles, because when they were five years old, they burned their fingers. But to me candles are very relaxing. We all see then same thing, but we translate it differently based on our experiences and perspectives,” Merian said.
It helped Merian in her grief to try to look at things in a more positive perspective.
“But positivity is not a thing that just happens, you need to train yourself to shift your perspective away from the negative,” Merian said.
Merian figured she could be sad later but not now. She used the wisdom of her uncle and meditation to guide and calm her mind.
“For me meditation also helped her see things from a different angle. And that is also what I do in my work as a consultant. I look at a business and think, what needs to be changed, and then I fix that specific thing,” said Merian.
From meditation she has learned to shift her mind.
“When you sit somewhere you don’t like, you can move your body, but if your body can’t move away from the negative you have to shift your mind,” Merian said.
A New business
Since then, she has started a new company called Prime Organic Coconut. Along with her new partners, Merian has started a company, that sells the extracted parts of the coconut in bulk. The clients then take the meat and the water of the coconut and and make it into yoghurt and other products. Prime Organic Coconut makes both private labels and does organic equipment manufacturing (OEM) for clients to use in their own coconut brands.
Merian has implemented many zero-waste measurements by the support of her new partners, who share the same vision as her for the company.
“Many manufacturers will throw out 10-20 thousand coconut shells a day in the process of producing food. What we can do is produce charcoal and we also make a biproduct called wood vinegar,” she said with pride in her voice.
Merian and her team are currently in the process of expanding to a new factory, which is worth 300 million baht. The ultimate goal is to become a world-class manufactorer.
“We are aiming to be the best coconut extraction in Thailand or even the world, if possible,” Merian said and chuckled.
Merian fondly looks back at a moment in her Thai restaurant in Denmark, where the inspection came. He had loads of paperwork and he checked every counter.
“I would love to implement all the health standards of Denmark into my own coconut factory in order to make the best possible product,” Merian said.
A new love
The thing about her late husband, that Merian misses the most, is his laugh and his jokes.
“I miss the way he treated me, and how he sings so badly,” Merian said and smiled.
But she also missed the physical touch of a loved one. In the beginning, Merian felt she could never have a love like him again. She thought she could not have a partner anymore, because she was so attached to him. But when time went by, she came to the conclusion, that he is just a memory now, and that love has to go on for her.
“I love having a relationship, I love to hold hands, so that is something I really wanted to experience again,” Merian said.
But her late husband always stays as a reminder for what standard she wanted in a man. The spotlight on her newfound love with Piyawat Kempetech has not been easy for the couple, but Merian refuses to let the media destroy them.
“When I told the media, that I loved him and that we are together now, they were shocked at my honesty. I don’t understand how it can be so easy for people to tell the media if they hate someone, yet so hard if you want to say you love someone,” Merian said.
69,69 percent completed
Merian believes she has reached 69,69 percent of her current life goals. The 6 and the 9 because they represent the twists and turns of life. She doesn’t believe the number will ever reach the 100 percent mark.
“I think I am at a point in my life, where everything falls into place, and everything is just so nice. But still, I don’t think it can ever be 100 percent, because the last percent are about the journey. There are always new things to overcome and experience in life. It’s not like anything is missing but there is always room to grow,” said Merian.
Great Artical ! thanks for sharing