“I was feeling like Jekyll and Hyde,” Choo says. “And I was feeling depressed.” She decided to start exercising and opted for running, thinking it was easy. “I wanted to do a Forrest Gump and escape from what was stressing me,” she explains. However, she could barely complete 2km in the beginning. “Running humbled me. Being an overachiever, I thought I could be good at anything,” she says. Still, she pressed on, setting small goals for herself. Soon, she was doing 10km runs and even half-marathons. Ten months after she first started pounding the pavement, she completed a full marathon in Tokyo. She challenged herself by saying “Go big or go home” and she chose Tokyo as it was a city she loved. It was tougher than anything she had done. “I used to be a nocturnal creature, doing my best work at two or three in the morning. So, having to wake up at 5am for a race was torture,” she says. At the 30km mark, she hit the wall. Crying and in pain, she almost gave up, but endured until she finished all 42km. She received her first medal and was utterly hooked. Choo enjoys taking on challenges, even if it means swimming upstream, and plugging away at them in both her professional and personal life. Growing up, she was drawn to the fields of art, fashion and design. She enjoyed handicraft and made cards as well as paper dresses for dolls, which she sold to friends at school. “I knew I wanted to do something related to design,” she says. However, her mum persuaded her to pursue a diploma in banking and finance. “She said that’s where the money is. So, I did it for my mum.” Just before graduating from Singapore Polytechnic, she spotted an advertisement by luxury retailer Club 21 for an advertising and PR assistant. She applied, but the company took a while to make a decision. So, she doggedly called them. She got the job and stayed for a year and a half. Choo then went on to do a degree in fashion product management at Middlesex University in London, where she graduated with first class honours. On returning to Singapore, she joined home-grown women’s casual fashion brand M)phosis, working in retail operations and marketing. “It was a small outfit, so I was forced to learn how to run shops, manage and train staff and hit sales targets,” she says. She also had to liaise with magazine editors to secure media coverage and organise fashion shows and promotional events. After a year and two months, she moved to bods.bodynits, a local fashion label that specialises in active wear. She was based in Shanghai and had to take charge of visual merchandising, day-to-day retail operations, establishing new outlets and creating brand awareness. For a young woman building her career in the fashion world, it was an unparalleled experience. However, it was also overwhelming. “I didn’t like the working culture and the mentality of the locals. It was not similar to Singapore and was a big culture shock after my four years in London,” she says. She lasted a year before moving back home. A few months later, she clinched a job at FJ Benjamin, the fashion retailer owned by the Singapore-based Benjamin family. It turned out to be her most rewarding career move. She handled marketing communications for the group’s brands, which included Gap, Banana Republic, RAOUL and Guess. While the company did not have as much financial muscle to splash out on events and advertising as global fashion names, she was given plenty of leeway by Douglas Benjamin, the group’s chief operating officer. “I had big dreams and Douglas allowed me to do things. We had a good collaborative relationship,” she says. To secure extra funds for product launches, she struck deals with credit card companies and banks in return for exclusive deals for their clients. She organised a fashion launch in a Mercedes-Benz showroom, hired trapeze artists from Club Med for entertainment and brought supermodel Naomi Campbell to Singapore for a Valentino show. Importance of connections
The work was intoxicating, but also relentless, and after close to four years, Choo felt burnt out. She decided to leave FJ Benjamin and take a break. She began thinking about striking out on her own. “I just wanted a simpler job where I could work from home,” she says. Alchemy Consulting was the result of that and the business took off early on. “What I learnt was that connections are very important in this line,” says Choo. She had built a relationship with Moët Hennessy Diageo, which supplied alcoholic beverages for the parties she used to organise at FJ Benjamin. They gave her new firm a retainer. Meanwhile, an ex-colleague had moved to shirtmaker Thomas Pink, owned by LVMH. Choo soon secured their business too.
Sunita Sue Leng, formerly an associate editor with The Edge Singapore, loves dogs and running (short distances) This article appeared in Issue 811 (Dec 25) of The Edge Singapore. Subscribe to The Edge at https://www.theedgesingapore.com/subscribe