Jessica Lam and Brian Chin are the co-founders of BUTLUR, a service for well-meaning but often clueless men that want to choose the perfect gift for the women in their lives.
Also the winners of the Microsoft Venture Competition, Brian was a former investment analyst at a $40 billion investment fund in New York while Jessica worked in fashion retail at Gucci and also founded an online lifestyle store called PandaSundae. Both with economics degrees under their belts, the nexus point for these two co-founders was at Columbia Business School.
What is your startup?
BUTLUR was co-founded by Jessica and I in November 2013 as an online members-only gifting service that curates personalized gift recommendations for discerning men to give to women “who have everything.” BUTLUR’s gift selections change monthly and are always screened for quality, thoughtfulness and uniqueness. In addition, gifts are always packaged beautifully and members have the ability to add personal touches such as box embossing and name embroidery.
How did you come up with this idea?
Most men, including myself, don’t mind spending money to make women happy, but it’s difficult and time- consuming to find the perfect gift. I was always looking for some assistance online but there is nothing currently in the market that catered to my needs. Jessica was coming at the problem from the opposite spectrum having been on the receiving end of bad gifting behaviors.
Jessica and I decided to team up to create a service that would focus on the specific gifting needs of men to help make the process more smooth so that the focus could be on celebrating special occasions instead of stressing over what gift to purchase.
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
BUTLUR’s initial target market is middle age male working professionals. Based on our research, we estimate that there are approximately 90,000 men in Hong Kong that fall into our sweet spot. This might not seem like a large number but we feel that Hong Kong is an ideal city to test our concept due to it’s high density of men that fall into our sweet spot as well as the fact that women here tend to have more sophisticated taste.
What are your futures plans for your startup?
So far we have been really encouraged by the reaction from vendor partners, men as well as women. We plan to seek some outside funding in the near future and continue to build our service and product offering. We eventually want to bring our service to larger metropolitan cities like New York, Shanghai, London, etc.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
As a leading financial center, a benefit of starting a company here in Hong Kong is the access to its robust financial network. One of the challenges we are facing here in Hong Kong is finding the employee talent, especially on the technical developer/ user experience level.
Jessica Lam on Startbase.HK: Jessica Lam
Brian Chin on Startbase.HK: Brian Chin
BUTLUR on Startbase.HK: BUTLUR
