In August 2014, I co-founded Fongwell with another 3 great people, Melody, Jay and Eddie, with no clear product objectives back then, but with very clear target users and problems. We'll solve operational intelligence problems for China fashion retailers and brands.
My role started as the guy gluing together marketing & sales and product development, and along the way, we had a few debates on product direction, strategy and a few partnership issues as a result of unclear objectives, roles and thus motivations. They were all sorted out well. I grew to appreciate the culture of 'sales solve all problems' and the value of validating a product without VC money.
Now Fongwell is a strong team with great sales culture, and most importantly, her customers are growing because of good timing - Fongwell is ready to help entire China fashion retailers running physical shops without a clue on how to pivot their business to a new world fashion discovery and consumption permanently changed by mobile Internet and e-commerce practices.
Fongwell's latest products are all on Fongwell.com. I believe Fongwell team will continue to evolve them into something great.
Now, the time is right for me to start something I've been pondering for a while, a supply chain service network for fashion manufacturing. This, as we predicted and planned, requires my full-time effort. Fongwell team recognized early on that fashion is big in China. There will be many products servicing different segments along the value chain, all the way from retail to entire back-end supply chain. It only makes sense to set up separate team for different product if we found a new market opportunity at China scale.
This kind of freedom is unthinkable back in the old days when I was working in SCUT as an employee. And I am most grateful about all Fongwell founders and team members, who's been my source of inspiration in product design. They will continue to support my new initiative in whatever ways they can, either as friends or as possible business partners, in servicing same industry.
I am also deeply grateful for my family, whose love has been keeping me alive and kicking, and make sure my little dreams do not crash on me.
I've been trying to design and build new things, and it's a good time to do it.
