Melissa Bui
Canadian Melissa Bui has lengthy had a inventive streak, being significantly drawn in the direction of crafts, portray and drawing whereas rising up. A self-described experimental artist, she studied textile design in London earlier than happening to work alongside main Hong Kong couturier Barney Cheng. It was there she fashioned her foundational expertise of designing and creating customized night put on.
In 2013, Bui launched her personal model, Melissa Bui Atelier, specializing in whimsical and female designs. Her creations shortly grew to become gala favourites with many native fashions and socialites selecting her delicate designs over these by international trend homes. “It was such a rewarding expertise, because it introduced me pleasure each time I noticed a shopper fortunately sporting considered one of my designs,” she says.
However operating a enterprise alone was not all glamorous and Bui, feeling overwhelmed with modifications each private and globally, determined to take a step again and rediscover her love of design at a extra elementary degree. She presently freelances as an illustrator and mural artist, creating illustrations for business merchandise and packaging, and brightening up clean partitions in non-public properties and business areas.
JJ Wu Chang
Earlier than relationship apps and swiping grew to become mainstream, matchmakers – and over-enthusiastic mother and father or kin pushing you to satisfy their “buddy’s son who’s so good-looking. And single!” – have been within the ascendant. From studying palms to configuring the chance of marital success by way of numerology to good old style profiling, the probabilities have been countless.
In 2016, JJ Wu Chang introduced a contemporary, brisker perspective to the business after he started working as a matchmaker and relationship coach, a task he describes as akin to headhunting.
In the course of the pandemic, enterprise took a dip. “Everybody was scared to exit however, extra considerably, folks have been shying away from the considered assembly strangers,” Wu Chang says. “You don’t know the place they’ve been or who they’ve been in shut contact with – and these should not issues I can assure, in fact.”
Confronted immediately with time on his fingers, Wu Chang determined to embark on a enterprise he’d been toying with for some time: native, handmade charcuterie. What began out as a pastime to get away from the stresses of working in a extremely social enterprise surroundings grew to become a therapeutic course of with scrumptious outcomes. He just lately opened a kitchen and tasting room in Wong Chuk Grasp the place he’s expanded his curing substances past pork to poultry, beef and even fish.
Tania Tse
The digital world has modified dramatically lately, however few have embraced this new age with as a lot fervour as Tania Tse. After beginning out in funding banking masking China’s expertise sector, Tse was lucky to be on the coronary heart of the cryptocurrency and NFT actions once they started gaining traction.
Whereas in her full-time job, she was barred from buying and selling equities, and so ended up buying and selling NFTs when the blockchain platform Solana started in 2021. Realising the potential for progress and improvement within the sector, Tse began serving to tasks launch their NFTs on the facet. “I needed to empower web3 communities to have interaction with their communities higher by way of immersive experiences,” she says.
Tse ultimately turned her ardour into a brand new profession path, co-founding the web3 metaverse platform ChapterX final November.
Winnie Cheung
Beneath her mild, soft-spoken exterior, Winnie Cheung is a girl of boundless inspiration and ambition. After learning for a level on the Gemological Institute of America in New York, she returned to Hong Kong to work as a diamond grader in a laboratory earlier than transferring on to a bespoke jewelry agency. She ultimately determined to begin her personal diamond enterprise, creating bespoke engagement rings and eternity bands.
Throughout final 12 months’s fitness center closures, Cheung and her sister Wendy have been launched to aqua-bag coaching and have been instantly roused by the flexibility, problem and enjoyable of the health product. Seeing the wellness business’s progress potential, particularly given the development for understanding at dwelling, the 2 girls made a profession change and started their new enterprise, Fluid X, to satisfy that demand.
Mark Brunjes
Coming from a finance background within the US, Mark Brunjes arrived in Hong Kong in 2011 to move up a financial institution’s Asia-Pacific buying and selling division. After staying within the business for nearly a decade, he had an itch to make use of his inventive facet to construct smaller companies. This led to him becoming a member of Market Pressure Asia, a distribution firm promoting liquor within the journey retail sector, the place he then based a number of smaller firms together with his enterprise companions to capitalise on alternatives in shopper items.
Following the droop in enterprise because of the pandemic, the staff reinvested in sanitisers, however the persisting dismal market situations ultimately led to the formation of e-commerce retail firm Inexperienced Ocean Labs, which focuses on sustainable merchandise. With the digital world rising exponentially, Brunjes and his staff at the moment are using the most recent web3 expertise to transition their enterprise into this new house.
Cheman Cheung
Ask any high-achieving pupil in Asia which profession path their mother and father would love them to pursue and so they’ll say one of many three: medication, regulation or finance. Following a comparatively protected path, Cheman Cheung spent his first 5 working years in banking – “to be sincere, it was a job I dreamed of at college, however I merely couldn’t discover the satisfaction I’d anticipated,” he says – earlier than embarking on a solo journey world wide.
It was then he found his love for nature, browsing and music. After the surprising demise of his father, Cheung was spurred into a greater, cleaner way of life. He ultimately propelled this epiphany into founding his meals and wellness ideas, nüte and benko.
