Category: The 10 Revolutionary Leaders Changing The Face of Business in 2021_profile

Meet William Shum, the persona spearheading the first tourbillon brand of Hong Kong – Memorigin

 

Meet William Shum, the persona spearheading the first tourbillon brand of Hong Kong – Memorigin

Revolutionary leaders get to lay the foundation of innovative business culture and initiate amazing strategies. Counted among these business tycoons is William Shum, CEO, Memorigin Watch Company.

 

In 2011, Memorigin embarked on its incorporation under William’s dynamic leadership and today, after nine years of its journey, it has become a prominent name with a market presence in more than 20 countries including Taiwan, Japan, the USA, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Australia, etc.

In his role as founder and CEO, William Shum brings his expertise to one of the renowned companies, driven by strong domain competence and extensive industry knowledge.  The visionary has led the venture to attain a number of awards and recognitions from the society such as the 2011 Hong Kong Emerging Brand by CMAHK & HKBDC and the champion of the 2012 HSBC Youth Business Award.  In particular, he was nominated and got the Young Industrialist Awards of Hong Kong in 2015 and Chinese Outstanding Youth in 2016. His brand Memorigin won the Hong Kong Top Brand 2019. In 2019, He was nominated by Inside Retail Magazine as one of the top 50 Retail Innovative Leaders in Hong Kong. Due to his contribution in promoting Eastern Cultural Art, he was awarded “Datuk, Dato“in 2020 by Maharaja, King of Kerajaan Kutai Mulawarman in Indonesia, and Justice of Peace (JP) by Malaysia Datuk.

In academics, Mr Shum graduated from Cornell University attaining his Master’s degree, majoring in applied economics and management. He completed the Financial Risk Management (FRM) exams after coming back to Hong Kong and worked in investment banking for a year. He then started his entrepreneurship by utilizing his in-house watch factory to create the first Hong Kong tourbillon brand – Memorigin.

Memorigin, the specialist of tourbillon watches

 

Being the first Hong Kong brand that specializes in tourbillon watches, Memorigin integrates marvellous oriental arts and top western watchmaking skills to produce tourbillon watches with prominent cultural features. Over the past few years, they have collaborated with various international brands. their watches are also well received and collaboratively marketed by top Asian celebrities.

“Memorigin”, a combination of “memorial” and “original”, represents the fountain of hope for humankind. When creating every exquisite tourbillon watch, Memorigin is devoted to creativity, determination, and hope. It is hoped that each watch can ignite inspiration and courage to seize opportunities, conquer challenges and realize dreams, creating infinite miracles ahead.

“We offer a unique movement engraving service as we believe that engraving a customized inscription on the movement instils soul into the watch. It will add value to the many meaningful moments in your life”, said William Shum.

Memorigin’s clientele includes traders and end-consumers. As the company often collaborates with different celebrities, IPs, and representatives from different industries, they are renowned for forward-thinking creative designs and artisanal craftsmanship. Much imagination has been turned into reality. They offer a wide variety of watch designs, from timeless and classic to artistic, glamorous, and more to take care of their customers’ needs at all times.

What influenced William’s decision to be an entrepreneur?

 

William was nurtured by his grandfather, who was well-versed in literary classics and history, with a profound wealth of knowledge of Chinese culture. He was also deeply influenced by his woodcraft-collector father, Shum Mak-ling, who had a breadth of knowledge in woodworking craftsmanship. The vast amount of literary talent and artistic craftsmanship has trickled down through generations in the family and bred William’s interest in the long-standing and rich history of Chinese culture.

William studied the relationship between the educational level of factory’s employees and their productivity when he was writing for his master’s thesis. He found that the watch factory which his father had invested in produced tourbillon movements for Swiss brands. Tourbillon is one of the world’s top three most sophisticated mechanical watches.

William completed his master’s degree in the U.S. in 2008, the year that Lehman Brothers collapsed. Many of his fellows couldn’t get a job in the finance field and chose to pursue further studies. Fortunately, he returned to Hong Kong and got to work at an investment bank. Yet, he often pondered upon ways to start his own business as he came up with an idea that he could utilize his father’s factory to create a Hong Kong watch brand with local design and in-house movements. He believed that merging the Chinese wood carving art with top Western watchmaking techniques could present the essence of “East meets West” and also preserve and pass on this unique cultural asset to future generations.

Despite his parent’s worries, he decided to give it a try. He quit his job and resolutely created Hong Kong’s first tourbillon watch brand at the young age of 25.

Significant hurdles on the way

 

It has been hard to revitalize and modernize the aging local watch industry. Therefore, William and his team have to transform from a traditional watch brand and enhance their competitiveness by creating breakthroughs with innovations.

The disruption of the Covid-19 epidemic has brought them a lot of challenges. It kept the big-spending tourists away and local consumers tightened their purse strings. The market expansion could also be difficult because of the restricted border control and quarantine measures implemented by different authorities.

The driving force behind this innovative journey

 

It is the passion and perseverance that have helped William achieve what he has today. He hasn’t forgotten the intent of starting this business. Strong faith has led him to overcome a lot of obstacles along the way.

He expressed his heartfelt gratitude to his team and partners. They have made a great effort in growing and keeping the business healthy. He wouldn’t miss his family whenever he gets the chance to show his appreciation. They have been giving him encouragement, emotional assistance, and unwavering trust.

 A day in William’s life

 

William usually has a healthy breakfast with his wife and daughter. Then, he goes back to the office and talks to the team to see how they are doing. He often arranges one client meeting in the morning and another one at lunchtime. In the afternoon, he sometimes participates in various community services or charitable activities. Otherwise, it can be packed with meetings. When he finally has his own time at night, he will read, exercise, and spend some quality time with his family.

Favourite books

 

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman & Business Dynamics by John Sterman

Memorigin’s future roadmap

 

Memorigin will continue to pursue quality excellence and customer satisfaction with an insistence on cultural heritage and dedication to product and technology development. They hope to achieve more breakthroughs and create more milestones in the future. 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of Memorigin.

Another highlight will be the partnership with the NBA rising star LaMelo Ball. Through this opportunity, the team hopes to spread the unique blend of oriental and western cultures to the rest of the world.

A piece of advice for female entrepreneurs

 

Female characters usually incorporate toughness and gentleness. While males tend to be more dominant, stoic, and straightforward, they can be laughed at and seen as weakened if they show some traditional traits of femininity. Female entrepreneurs should utilize this strength in the business world.

Favourite quote 

 

As you sow, so shall you reap.

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Ritche Evidente, An Ardent Leader Steering the Philippines’ Leading Medical Laboratory, Singapore Diagnostics

Serving the laboratory requirements of up to 300 different institutions nationwide, from the hospitals to the largest clinic chains, to



Ritche Evidente, An Ardent Leader Steering the Philippines’ Leading Medical Laboratory, Singapore Diagnostics

Serving the laboratory requirements of up to 300 different institutions nationwide, from the hospitals to the largest clinic chains, to free-standing physician clinics is  Singapore Diagnostics, one of the largest laboratories in the Philippines and the current project of  Ritche Evidente, President and CEO of Singapore Diagnostics.

Under the able leadership of Ritche, Singapore Diagnostics has made rapid strides and is the only CAP Accredited tertiary laboratory in the Philippines. It all started in 2015 for the healthcare executive, seeking to bridge the ascending disparity of healthcare access in the Philippines, Singapore Diagnostics was founded.

Aside from owning a decade of experience in the healthcare industry, the  Healthcare Chief Executive has a background in Political Economy and spent most of his early professional life in financial services. He joined healthcare a little over a decade ago. While in the healthcare industry, he has worked in 4 start-ups: 2 became market leaders, 2 led to successful exits for early investors. He was previously connected with a Financial Services conglomerate, built a strong foundation in new business ventures and start-up environments. “It has been a continuing journey filled with challenges, the greatest of which is the ongoing pandemic”, said Ritche.

The Inspiration

Marrying a physician allowed Ritche to become familiar with the various struggles in Philippine healthcare. He saw that high quality often equated to high-priced healthcare. This made it difficult for most Filipinos to experience world-class diagnostics. he also saw an industry where the basic principles of economic theory were often misunderstood and misapplied. From there, one opportunity led to another until he found himself building what is arguably among the biggest laboratories in the Philippines.

Singapore Diagnostics, The highest standards of quality, competence, and safety

A noteworthy name in the healthcare segment is that Singapore Diagnostics is operating out of the Philippine capital and has grown to be one of the largest and most respected laboratories in the Philippines. It started out as a laboratory for other laboratories, a laboratory outsources provider if you will, serving the requirements of over 300 hospitals and healthcare institutions in the Philippines. Now they are pivoting to a more direct-to-patient approach, reaching as many Filipinos directly and providing them with the high-quality laboratory testing that they deserve. “This pandemic has taught us that every Filipino deserves high-quality, world-class diagnostics at affordable rates. No longer should high quality be equated and be exclusive to expensive healthcare institutions. It should be available to as many as possible.”

Clients & Unbreakable Faith of Clients

Today, Singapore Diagnostics serves 50,000-70,000 patients monthly. Half of these patients are served directly, while the other half are through the many hospitals and clinics with whom the firm is partnered. In both cases, Singapore Diagnostics’ commitment is to deliver world-class services at affordable rates.

Unlike other players in the industry, Singapore Diagnostics’ laboratory services are CAP Accredited. This means that their team’s competence, processes, and testing results are measured and are at par with some of the world’s best hospitals and reference laboratories.

Passing through the Pandemic

As the company was pivoting to a direct-to-patient model, the world was hit by the Covid-19 Pandemic. Asia was hit harder than most. While people will generally think that healthcare would be the first to benefit from such a pandemic, the truth is that more than half of Ritche’s customers shut down their businesses – the out-patient clinics, the industrial medicine providers, even a few of the health insurance companies – they all closed down. The industry and the entire economy were in total disarray.

They saw the real healthcare heroes shine amidst the disarray. They had team members who walked 3 hours just to come to work. They had team members sharing every last piece of surgical masks with each other, ordering and preparing food for each other, delivering groceries to colleagues who were in quarantine. In a town hall meeting, they all accepted that this will be the biggest challenge the Philippines will face since the war, and probably the most difficult time the generation will ever experience.

“One long forgotten virtue of the Filipino is the spirit of volunteerism. It is called “bayanihan.” Regardless of the challenges ahead, with the right ingredients, that spirit of volunteerism shines bright,” according to Ritche Evidente. While competitors and customers shut down, Singapore Diagnostics brought out the virtue of “bayanihan” in the team.

As their way of expressing their gratitude, they have given away thousands of Covid-19 tests to healthcare workers. They have provided health and life insurance coverage for all their employees. Ritche Evidente Evidente has doubled, and in some cases, tripled the income of healthcare workers who go the extra mile to serve their fellow Filipinos.

The Driving Force behind the Successful Journey

Two things stand out. First, we all contributed to the organizational culture. Second, I have been blessed with coaches and mentors in my professional life”, stated Ritche.

Most new employees hear this on their first day here- Second place is the first loser. It is something Ritche Evidente and his team in the organization embrace and apply. It is their culture. They do not aim to be mere survivors, but rather, they want to be winners. This mindset, along with teamwork and competence, has led the whole team to where they are now – the laboratory market leader in the Philippines.

Besides, Ritche Evidente has also been blessed with brilliant mentors. It is something that he hopes he can emulate as they build a new generation of leaders for Singapore Diagnostics.

A Day in Ritche’s Life

Sharing his daily routine, the leader said, “I am normally up at 6 am and I review various metrics while having my morning coffee. From feedback reports, census and sales metrics, KPIs of each of our facilities, I have the opportunity to review these before I get to the office. At work, we rarely have meetings. We have huddles and stand-up discussions, but rarely do we have long meetings involving multiple participants. As we all collaborate and communicate with each other regularly, we all know what is happening and there is hardly a need for meetings.”

He continued, “Because of the pandemic, we rarely sit down as a team to share a meal. In the past, lunchtime would be spent with a few teammates to discuss concerns in a more informal setting. As we operate in 23 sites, I would often spend part of the afternoon visiting these sites, speaking with members of the team. If not, I would spend this time face-to-face with key customers. Then, I would spend the early evening running around the city or working out in the gym.”

Awards & Milestones

Singapore Diagnostics was cited as among the Philippines’ Growth Drivers in 2020 by market research firm, Statista, and news publication, Philippine Daily Inquirer. It is a testament to the company’s growth and achievements in its short history. It was also the first tertiary laboratory in the Philippines to receive accreditation from the College of American Pathologists in 2019.

Favourite Quote 

Second place is the first loser.

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