Six Design Startup Dreams

“Jingyuan, what do you want to do when you grow up?” I, with my hair thinning more and more, ran my fingers over Jingyuan’s shiny black mushroom‑shaped head, feeling a deep sense of envy.

“I want to be Steve Jobs!” Jingyuan answered without hesitation. I also admired my friend Sam, who always treats his ten‑year‑old son as a friend, explaining everything to him with reason, never using his role as a father to pressure him, allowing the boy to have his own ideas.

Sam once said a line that I have never forgotten: “The greatest sin adults commit against children is forbidding them from dreaming!”

“Why do you want to be Steve Jobs?” I asked.

“Because he can do what he wants without going to college!” he replied.

“Don’t you want to go to university?” I was confused by his unusual answer, because many parents and teachers would see it as a rebellious act. Without university, where would the future come from? If more students thought like that, those top‑up courses would have to shut down.

“The courses taught at school are too boring; I can find many more interesting things online!” Jingyuan said a fact that many would agree with.

“Uncle Sun, why do we say ‘find something to do’ instead of ‘find nothing to do’?” another question left me stunned. But it was a very good question.

If there were more children like Jingyuan around us, and we gave them space to grow, then Hong Kong’s top students wouldn’t be like “molds,” always competing to get into university to study global business, engineering management, law, or medicine. Is working for someone the only career choice? Didn’t Steve Jobs choose entrepreneurship?

If you ever told your parents you want to be Steve Jobs like Jingyuan, I believe the next thing you would hear is: “Are you Steve Jobs? Stop dreaming!”

Is Hong Kong no longer a place where one can pursue dreams?

No.

In Hong Kong, in fact, more and more young people are unwilling to work for others, follow the routine, and live a smooth life; instead, they take risks and start their own businesses.

Why, in Hong Kong—a place of scarce land and high business costs—do some people choose to take the difficult path, opting for design industries that prioritize creativity and aesthetics as a platform for entrepreneurship?

Let’s look at how the following designers started their own entrepreneurial dreams.

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I Don’t Want to Take on “Difficult Customers” Anymore

Brand designer Tommy Li graduated from the Design Department of Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1983. After working for ten years, he decided to start his own business. He has said, “No one is born to be a boss!” Of course, he himself is not. He loves design and loves his work. He is always unwavering and all‑out in his design work. He works for others and even brings his own sleeping bag; to finish the job, he works even on holidays.

設計師簡介
Tommy Li (李永銓)，born in 1960 in Hong Kong, graduated from the Design Department of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is a designer and brand consultant of Hong Kong’s new generation, known for his distinctive style that blends black humor with bold visuals. His work spans Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Italy. In 2005 he was inaugurated as a member of the AGI International Graphic Design Alliance. In 2008 he received the World Outstanding Chinese Award from the World Chinese Association.

His reason for starting his own business was simply to keep doing good design. Past experience had taught him that, even though he was capable and poured his heart into his work, the ultimate success or failure of a design was decided by the client.

When you work for others, you have to take on any kind of client, and that is a power you don’t have when you’re just a partner. Taking on a very “bad” client makes it hard to expect to produce great work. Starting his own business gave him the autonomy to choose his clients. When he first launched, he told himself that the worst outcome would simply be to go back to working for others; the world wouldn’t collapse.

Tommy Li insists on not taking on “difficult” clients, even during the SARS period when everyone was in danger, he remained steadfast. He knows clearly that good clients appreciate quality work and are not quick to switch, and they are willing to maintain a long‑term, stable partnership. Conversely, petty, fickle clients only destroy the team and harm morale.

Now, as a master of brand design, clients keep coming to him. Rumor has it that when clients want to collaborate with him, it’s like seeking a renowned doctor—appointments are required! No wonder he is called the “Brand Doctor”.

Everything Starts with Taking on Freelance Work

For another brand designer, Viola Pak, starting a design business turned out to be a happy accident. When she was young, whenever people asked what she wanted to do when she grew up, she would always say she wanted to be a teacher.

“I originally wanted to teach. I never once thought about becoming a boss, let alone running a design company. When I was a child, I played role‑playing games and always insisted on being the teacher.” Isn’t her experience a portrait of what most people go through as children? Some want to be police officers, some want to be stars; she wanted to be a teacher.

Viola Pak (白智慧)，is the Creative Director and founder of Eggshell Creative Limited, a Hong Kong brand and design consultancy. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design and a Master in Design Strategy from the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is a full member of the Hong Kong Designers Association and has taught an advanced Marketing course at City University of Hong Kong.

Although Pak graduated with a bachelor’s degree in design and had been working as a designer, she decided to leave the company where she had been employed for eight years in order to pursue her dream of teaching. She moved to City University to serve as a part‑time tutor for the Yijin Program. However, because the income was modest, she had to keep doing part‑time design work to supplement her household expenses. She did not expect that freelance work would keep coming in one after another.

While working, Pak was also studying for a master’s degree in design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, convinced that this would add value to her educational career. But the number of freelance jobs kept increasing, and she found herself sleeping only two or three hours a day. Even though she hired an assistant to work at her home to help her, she still had to manage two or three projects at the same time, many of which were large, leaving her utterly overwhelmed.

Gradually, she took on more and more design work, drifting further and further from her original goal of entering education. Eventually she decided to say goodbye to her freelance career, moved into an office building in Tianhou, hired a few people, and launched her own business.

Realizing a Childhood Dream

Childhood is a cradle for dreams. Designer Prudence Mak, who owns her own brand, grew up in a wooden‑house district of Stanley. Her grandparents were street sweepers in that area, and her mother worked as a sewing factory worker. Her childhood toys were the broken wooden sticks her grandparents scavenged from Stanley’s streets, discarded old toys, and scraps of fabric her mother brought home from the factory.

Designer’s Profile
Prudence Mak (麥雅端) is the creator of Chocolate Rain. She graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta, Canada, in 1998. In 2000 she began working in fashion and jewelry design, and in 2001 founded Chocolate Rain Jewelry & Design. From 2003 to 2004 she opened the Artin Progress DIY workshop and DIY coffee shop. She has served as an executive committee member of the Hong Kong Designers Association and as a consultant for the activity planning of the Hong Kong Youth Association.

When the children of wealthy families in Stanley were busy piecing together Lego bricks, she was cutting up scraps of cloth to give new bodies to the broken toys she had rescued, turning them into little furniture. To this day, Prudence’s most skillful DIY figurines and her philosophy of reusing materials stem from memories of her childhood.

After graduating from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta in Canada and returning to Hong Kong, she finally got a chance to put her talents to use and became a designer. Yet she always felt a lingering doubt: was working as a designer really what she truly wanted?

An unexpected opportunity would later stir those childhood memories.

“I’ve been designing wedding gifts for clients, and I’ve noticed that many of the accessories are all copies of each other. If I made them myself, they would surely be superior,” she said.

To confirm her idea, she bought a ticket to New York, hoping to find a place where she could sit down and think about her future. In the freezing streets of New York, she saw a girl wearing a cold hat and gloves, sitting on a small wooden bench in the snow, fiddling with a string of ornaments.

Prudence approached her and asked, “It’s so cold out there—why are you working so hard?”

The girl replied, “This is my dream!”

In that instant, Prudence found the answer she had been looking for. After returning to Hong Kong, she founded Chocolate Rain.

From Toy Factory Manager to Toy Creator

Like Prudence Mak, toy entrepreneur Raymond Choy also endured a modest childhood.

As the eldest son in his family, Choy had to help his father run a roadside noodle stall by the time he was in sixth grade. After graduating from high school, he worked at a trading company and a shoe factory, while continually furthering his education with short courses in languages, business, and design. He was one of Hong Kong’s first factory managers to experience the rapid export boom that followed China’s opening of its markets. The job taught him the importance of production specifications and customer service. Although the factory‑manager role could have been a lifelong career, he never imagined that his love of toys would later become the seed for his entrepreneurial venture.

Designer’s Profile
Raymond Choy (蔡漢成)，born in 1965, is the founder and president of Toy2R Group Ltd, a toy‑creation virtuoso and the design director of the Qee brand. Toy2R is a globally renowned enterprise that integrates toy creation, design, production, manufacturing, and wholesale. It champions the philosophy that “everyone can design,” and its Qee doll series has become a darling of the design world. With unwavering commitment to the creative industry, his company has earned countless awards, and he has become a globally recognized international designer, driving the development of Hong Kong’s creative sector.

Raymond Choy’s love for creative toy figurines began in 1993.

“Back then I read an article in a magazine about Iceman, which said that if you put it in the fridge it would change colour. I was really surprised. That was my first purchase of Biz’s X‑Men. From that point on I became a devoted fan and collected the entire set of X‑Men figurines.”

Because of his hobby of collecting toys, Choy discovered that American toys had appreciation potential. In 1995 he opened a shop called Toymart in Mong Kok. Initially he mainly sold novelty and alternative toys from the United States, Europe, and Japan. Later he moved the shop to the more tourist‑filled and busier Tsim  Sha Tsui area, selling toys themed around homosexuality, horror, and violence. The shop received media coverage and attracted more customers.

Due to the lack of creativity in the imported toys he represented, Choy’s business stalled, which inspired him to create his own toys. In 2000 he first designed the limited‑edition skull toy “Toyer,” the first toy with a printed code, which later became the trademark of Toy2R. Subsequent releases such as the QEE DIY and designer series further became flagship masterpieces of his brand.

Path to Become a Design Firm Partner or Self‑founded Independent Studio

In 2007, Hong Kong’s young designer Javin Mo (毛灼然) and Hong Ko (高少康), along with other young designers born in the 1970s and 1980s, participated in a touring exhibition called the “7080 New‑Generation Designers Exhibition,” which spanned mainland China and Hong Kong and was led by the renowned Hong Kong designer Tommy Li. The event was originally initiated by a mainland curator.

During the 1980s, the exchange of design information between Hong Kong and mainland China was not yet well developed. Consequently, the curator assembled a group of designers to hold a touring exhibition in mainland China to deepen the exchange between the two regions. The designers who accompanied the tour included Kan Tai-Keung, Freeman Lau, Alan Chain, and Tommy Li, among others.

Designer’s Profile
Kan Tai-Keung (靳埭強)，born in 1942 in Panyu, Guangdong, is an internationally renowned Hong Kong designer. Originally a tailor, he settled in Hong Kong in 1957 and later studied design courses at the Continuing Education Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 1967 he entered the field of graphic design. In 1976 he co‑founded the New City Design and Production Company. In 1988 the company was reorganised as Kan Tai-Keung Design Company, where he served as Creative Director. In 1996 it was renamed Kan & Lau Design Consultants. Kan has received numerous awards, and he is also passionate about art education and professional development. His works are widely collected by museums.

Freeman Lau (劉小康) is Chairman of the Board of the Hong Kong Design Centre, Secretary‑General of the Hong Kong Design Association, and an advisor to the International Design Management Society. He graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic Institute and, in 1982, joined New Civic Design & Production as a designer. In 1985 he was promoted to senior designer. In 1988, at the invitation of Kan Tai-Keung, he joined  Kan Tai-Keung Design Company Ltd, which was later renamed as Kan  &  Lau Design Consultants in 1996. Lau has received more than 200 awards both in Hong Kong and overseas, and in 1997 was honored as one of Hong Kong’s Top 10 Outstanding Young People.

Alan Chan (陳幼堅), born in 1950, is a Hong Kong graphic designer who primarily works in advertising and brand design. In 1970 he studied night‑time design courses at the Design Institute. In 1980 he and his wife co‑founded Darlion Advertising Design Company. In 1986 he established the Alan Chan Design Company. Beginning in 1990 he launched his own line of design products. In 1991 he became the first Hong Kong designer invited to hold a solo exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. In 1996 his design company was selected by the New York‑based magazine Graphis as one of the world’s top ten design firms.

Several new‑generation designers from mainland China and Hong Kong participated in the “7080 Hong Kong New‑Generation Designers Exhibition,” which held exhibitions and talks in Chengdu, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Changsha, and other cities. The exhibition gave a group of young people the opportunity to exhibit, travel, and exchange together. For them, it was an exciting event; for Javin Mo and Hong Ko, it was even more of a shocking experience.

設計師簡介
Javin Mo (毛灼然)，graduated from the Hong Kong Baptist University’s School of Communication and works in graphic design. In 2004, he was invited to Benetton’s FABRICA communication research center in Italy, where he served as the art director for the in-house magazine “FAB”. After returning to Hong Kong in 2006, he founded the Milkxhake studio, specializing in graphic and interactive design. His work has been recognized in numerous local and international design competitions, including: ADC Young Guns Award (from the New York Art Directors Club) in 2006. Distinguished Communication Graduate Award from Hong Kong Baptist University in 2008. Since 2009, he has served as the creative and design director of “Design 360”, the only bilingual concept and design magazine in Mainland China.

Hong Ko (高少康)，excels in typeface design, brand building, identity design, and graphic design. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2000, joining Kan & Lau Design the same year, where he later rose to the position of art director. In 2002, he was awarded a scholarship to pursue an MA in Art at the University of London. In 2007, he was appointed general manager of Kan & Lau Design (Shenzhen), where he focused on expanding the company’s mainland China operations.

In fact, before this touring exhibition both Mo and Ko had already tasted the flavor of entrepreneurship, and they had similar experiences. Both of them were early disciples of renowned design masters. Hong Ko was a protégé of Kan Tai-keung and Freeman Lau, while Javin Mo was mentored under Tommy Li. Moreover, neither of them studied design in university. Ko graduated from the Art Department of CUHK, while Mo studied Communication and Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University; both entered design firms and learned on the job.

Later, each of them received scholarships and went abroad for further study. Ko went to the UK, while Mo went to Italy. The overseas experience broadened their horizons, and they independently founded their own ventures after returning.

After returning, Ko first went back to work at Kan & Lau, but shortly thereafter left to partner with others in running a design firm; Mo opened his own design studio as a freelancer. Since participating in the “7080 Hong Kong New Generation Designers Exhibition,” both of them changed their long‑held views of the mainland design market. They saw the opportunities unleashed by China’s reform and opening‑up and the progress of their mainland peers.

Javin Mo and Hong Ko were both born in the mid‑1970s, and both are considered the fourth generation of Hong Kong by Professor Lui Tai Lok, a renowned Hong Kong sociologist. The thirty years they have lived through coincide with the thirty years of China’s reform and opening‑up. During that period, manufacturing in the two regions shifted their roles, with China became the world’s factory, while Hong Kong fully transitioned to a service‑oriented economy and became one of the world’s most prominent financial centers.

Ironically, the design industry, as one of the service sectors, has lost its former glory. Hong Kong’s design industry’s golden age has gradually declined since the 1998 Asian financial crisis, because most of Hong Kong’s SMEs can no longer afford to spend on design and branding amid high operating costs and tight credit conditions. Although local big brands are becoming more mature, the space for innovation has become more conservative.

In this context, Hong Ko chose to return to Kan & Lau and became the general manager of its Shenzhen branch. He felt strongly that his future stage would be in China. Not only for himself, he believes this will be a stage that will attract designers worldwide, because the rising private and state enterprises constantly need a large amount of professional services, including design and brand consulting, to improve business performance, image, and quality, enabling companies to connect with other global brands. However, meeting the needs of these mainland large enterprises is beyond the capacity of ordinary small and medium design firms, because it is a matter of scale. Returning to Kan & Lau gave him the opportunity to start up again. In just a few years, the Shenzhen studio grew from the ten people he had when he returned in 2007 to more than thirty today, and he has become a partner in the company.

On the other hand, during this period Javin Mo devoted himself entirely to Hong Kong’s cultural industry, hoping to gradually open up this niche market and find his own positioning. He believes that the phenomenon he observed in Europe—combining culture with branding to promote business—still has potential in Hong Kong. He agrees that the larger market is in the mainland, but given his current resources and strength, he cannot easily split his focus, so he prefers to stay in the Hong Kong market and carve out a new path. He strongly agrees with his former boss Tommy Li’s view—to keep the company small, carefully select clients, and avoid over expansion. However, he also participates in editing the mainland design magazine “360°,” so that he does not become completely detached from developments in the mainland.

.Like these folks who have built their careers through design and creativity, each has their own entrepreneurial story. Some started a business to fight for customers’ autonomy, some did it by accident, some wanted to recreate childhood memories, some found business opportunities in their hobbies, and others suddenly realized a new entrepreneurial stage after a Hong Kong–China exchange event. In any case, once they step onto the entrepreneurial path, a variety of problems inevitably follow.

Product designer Lee Chi Wing said in the Research on Chinese Creative Industry Workers – Basic Research Report:

.“The biggest challenge in business is that, even though a designer may excel at creation, they are not good at managing a business. Even if they can fully manage a small company, as the company grows, designers begin to find it difficult to keep the company moving forward. The current challenge is how to make a small enterprise, whose leadership is dominated by design philosophy, adopt a market‑driven mindset, implement corporate management practices, and transform into a company that has scale, corporate mentality, and can adapt to the needs of the market.”

Designer’s Profile
Lee Chi Wing (利志榮)，was born in Hong Kong in 1967. He earned a bachelor’s degree in product design from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1989, then studied at the National Institute of Industrial Design in Paris, France (Les Ateliers), where he received a master’s degree in 1992. In 1994 he returned to Hong Kong and was hired by Philips Design, focusing on telecommunications product design. In 1998 he founded Milk Design, offering product‑design services. In 1999 Milk Design began creating home and lifestyle products under its own concepts. In 2002 he launched the brand Feel Good Home, designing and producing high‑quality home and lifestyle goods that are now marketed in more than thirty countries across Europe, Japan, and other Asian regions.

Once entrepreneurs muster the courage to take the first step into starting a business, they must then confront growth—solving problems related to company scale, management, and finance. The knowledge required for this is often something designers cannot learn in school or from books.

Originally published in “Entrepreneurship is My Destiny: 8 Essential Lessons for Designers” (志在創業 : 設計師創業8堂必修課)
Published and distributed by ET Press
Publication date: December 2013