PETALING JAYA, March 4 — There's more to putting idea to paper that finally culminates in a beautiful pair of shoes.
Especially if one is an entrepreneur looking to create shoes that cater to the masses.
For shoe designer Christy Ng, taking big risks is part of doing business.
When she decided to open her eponymous shoe brand right next to footwear giant Vincci in One Utama, many thought she was on the brink of committing career suicide.
“Vincci were selling at half our prices so everyone said to me, ‘Are you nuts? You’re going to kill yourself. You’re opening next to someone who’s half your price. Either you’re very confident with your product or you’re very stupid’,” Ng told Malay Mail.
Where the naysayers only saw a challenge, the young entrepreneur saw an opportunity for success as she saw it as giving customers a choice.
“I felt that Vincci was a destination as they were an established brand and being next to them reaffirmed my position as a local brand.”
The gamble ultimately paid off as the One Utama store began to provide the cash flow needed for Ng to venture further into the world of retail with confidence.
Unlike other designers who choose to confine themselves to one aspect of the business, Ng isn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty when it comes to managing the many pillars of her brand.
A typical working day for her consists of spearheading all elements of the Christy Ng label at their headquarters in Petaling Jaya.
“Being a business owner, you have to do everything. I’m always overseeing things across the board. You have to be an all-rounder in order to be a good business person,” said the designer.
“You need to be able to do your financials well, have very good HR, and very good cash flow. Financial management is really pivotal for success.”
It’s this involvement in all areas of the business along with Ng’s solid technical skills in fashion design that gives her an edge over her competitors in the local fashion landscape.
“To me, I think a designer has to have very strong technical knowledge. A lot of graduates from fashion design schools don’t have many technical skills,” she said.
“They study fashion design because they think being a designer is glamorous or cool but a lot of them are incapable of doing proper businesses. As a result, their career becomes very short-lived.”
The young designer also constantly has her finger on the pulse to find out exactly what her customers look for in a product.
Her label is known for its line of sleek shoes and bags that place equal importance on style and functionality while keeping the modern Asian woman in mind with its designs.
For example, the Yuna x Christy Ng collection consisted of shoes with a wider fit to accommodate Asian women’s feet as well as a design with a two-inch heel that would give height without compromising its wearer’s comfort.
Right now, Ng’s days are focused on overcoming the challenges of producing her shoes and bags locally.
While the brand is proudly made in Malaysia, manpower is becoming increasingly hard to come by as factories close down and shoemakers retire with no one to pass down their knowledge to.
“Right now, a lot of people don’t want to work in factories. It doesn’t sound sexy to tell your friends that you work in a shoe factory and a lot of people consider it menial labour,” said Ng.
“In the past, Malaysia had many capable shoemakers but now these people are retiring and the number of shoemakers here is diminishing.”
Amidst the hardships, sharing her experiences with other entrepreneurs provides a critical source of support for the 30-year-old designer in her adventures as a business owner.
“When I first started, I had a lot of very good mentors and some of them are also in retail or are also very successful entrepreneurs.
“Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey and you can’t go home and tell your parents that your cash flow is bad or you can’t pay your staff’s salaries.”
“This is not something you want to tell your parents because you don’t want to burden them or make them worry. What helped me to survive the storm is having good peers and friends.”
For now, Ng plans on manufacturing her products locally for as long as she can and fortifying the brand’s name as a Malaysian label.
Her recent collaboration with singer Yuna was a meeting of two creative Malaysian minds that spawned a popular collection of shoes and handbags tailored for the fashionista on-the-go.
“The response to the collection has been really overwhelming and really, really good. I think it’s been very positive considering that retail sales in Malaysia only peak during Hari Raya.
“We launched the collection on January 5 and the sales have been really robust and consistent throughout the selling period.”
At the moment, Ng and her team are working on a new store in Johor Baru slated to open in April this year.
