Music
How are you going everybody? My name is Kevin Poon, born in Hong Kong, educated partially in Hong Kong,
lived in Chicago, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and now back here.
I am an entrepreneur with a lifestyle focus, so I've started with a sneaker store called Juice,
which is a select store. Our own clothing brand called Klot, which is a streetwear brand,
sold in lots of different countries around the world.
A lifestyle design store called Wow, a chain of coffee shops called Elephant Grounds,
a deli called Morties, and a Spanish restaurant and IFC called La Rambla.
Also a gym in central called Topfit, and actually a distribution company called District,
which we distribute some lifestyle products. So that would be kind of what I do in a nutshell.
Early on I knew that I wanted to create something, especially talking to my friends.
Just having the idea of having a desk job of 9 to 5 was really kind of scaring us in the negative way,
just because we feel like there's two types of people in the world, right?
One type of people that you work every day executing other people's dreams,
or you take matters in your own hands and you kind of come up with your own dreams
and get people to buy into that dream and then people have that common goal with you.
Growing up we were really passionate about basketball, and basketball was really in our kind of core DNA
because it teaches you a lot about teamwork, it teaches you a lot about winning,
it teaches you a lot about handling how you lose. Also, you know, big part of basketball is looking good on and off the court.
So I think we were really big into sneakers, we were really big into Michael Jordan at the time,
and that was kind of our whole world, you know, basketball, music, looking good, fashion, sneakers,
and that was all really kind of in our DNA and these are our passion and this is what we were interested in.
And then there was an opportunity because as I was doing this internship, that turned into a real job
and then I got fired from my job because I was too focused on doing, you know, I was daydreaming or whatever it was
and I had an opportunity to, well I had no choice because my visa got expired
and I had to move back to Hong Kong because my parents like stopped mucking around,
you need to come back and really kind of be serious about your life and this was like when I was like in my early 20s.
And then we started looking around and seeing, hey, how come, you know, in Japan there's all these cool street wear stores
or cool stores at the time, we were looking at brands like Bathing Ape or Neighborhood or even Bizvam,
and how come there wasn't any comparables in Hong Kong?
And so we found kind of an opening and we thought, hey, this could be interesting to put in a store
all the things that we liked that was hard for us to get, be it may sneakers or collectible figures
or t-shirts or hats or any of these type of things.
And that was kind of the beginning focus on juice as a retail outlet experiment.
When we first started, you know, the idea is quick and, you know, my dad always used to say, hey, starting a business is easy
but sustaining it is where it becomes challenging.
And we had no idea what he was talking about because, you know, as a young person, you don't really think about the consequences.
You don't think things out that thoroughly.
And that's also part of why it's cool to be young because you don't think about it that much.
And so without thinking about it too much, we went to incorporate a company and we rented a place,
but no one had accounting backgrounds and we were unpacking our own boxes, doing invoicing,
you know, it was a lot of work but it was fun at the same time.
And, you know, some of the roadblocks I remember was we didn't really know how to kind of do the year-end audit, let's say.
And we were like, oh, what is all this, you know?
And so finally, you know, we knew how to hire an audit firm or an accounting firm to help us with a lot of stuff.
But every day up until now, there's challenges even every day.
And, you know, I was just leaving the office and there was challenges from then, you know?
So every day is a challenge and every day is something new.