Veen Dee Tan, co-founder of homegrown fashion brands Hanya and Harirose, gestures to four members of her staff busily carrying out various tasks in Hanya’s new space, saying with a smile, “I tell you, I can’t do any of this without them, I would just give up.”
Sitting on a freshly refurbished antique chair in her store in Bangsar Village, Tan, heavily pregnant with her second child, has just given me the tour of the brand’s very first brick-and-mortar store and talks about the business operations.
After five years of only being online since the brand’s inception, they are taking a leap of faith to reach out to new customers and to elevate the brand.
“We think that a physical store will be able to help not just for branding. Hanya has been running for five years so it needs some fresh perspectives from other people. We need to introduce Hanya to people who don’t know about us yet.”
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“People who may not be necessarily internet-savvy are asking their daughters to buy items from us. We always get this sort of feedback and because we use linen, the older generations actually love our clothes.”
“Even though it’s a small group of people, we just thought it was time, and we wanted to close our fifth year with a big milestone,” says Tan.
I think we are a very cult brand. We appeal to fashion forward Gen Z who are a little bit more woke and understand what they are purchasing. Our clothes have longevity.
Linens are one of the most sustainable fabrics because of the longevity. We use a lot of that in our production.
We appeal to them with the conscious efforts that we do, and then there’s the community that we have.
Brands like Patagonia, Skims – those are cult. People buy them because of the brand.
I want to be able to create brands like that and I want people to know brands like these exist in Malaysia, that have an international appeal and quality clothes without having to import all the time.
Brands and designers are different, where you have the former like Petit Moi and Whimsigirl, and the latter like Alia Bastamam or Nurita Harith.
You just need to know your own lane. I don’t see myself competing with Alia B or anyone else because they are designers.
If you think about it, in terms of brands, which do we have here that are coming out with collections every season or every two months? Not many. People just come out during Raya.
I truly believe that Malaysia has so much talent, we’re not just a batik country. We need to be united, to create a bigger impact to make the government realise this is a good industry.
Is Hanya a sustainable or conscious business?
We are not a sustainable brand, because sustainability comes from multiple angles – wages, cleanliness, the longevity of your clothes, and not just recycled materials.
We are a conscious brand. Our dust bag is made of 70% recycled scrap fabric from the factory that we were using.
Our parcel bag is biodegradable and is made from 100% corn.
Do you practise upcycling?
We have an upcycled category. For some of the clothes that have been on the shelf for more than 12 months, we upcycle them into another category, give the clothes a second life, and the alteration costs are fully absorbed by us.
Upcycling is very expensive. Let’s say a top that costs RM169, you need to top up an average of about RM40 or RM50 to upcycle and reinvent the silhouette because they have to tear it out and redo it.
On average, the cost for labour is about RM30, plus raw materials RM10 to RM20, that’s RM50 already.
We don’t make money from it, we just feel like it’s something that we want to be conscious about, and our upcycled category is always sold out.
We believe the first key to being a conscious brand is zero waste.
We don’t have thank you cards, fancy packaging, boxes or hang tags. These often get thrown away and then you’re not being conscious.
How do you foster a positive and inclusive workplace culture within your business, and what steps have you taken to ensure that all team members feel valued and supported?
As a leader you must be able to take criticism. I have had staff come up to me and tell me that I need to treat the manager better. I was really offended because I thought I was treating the manager well. But it humbles you, and for someone to come up to say that, it takes a lot of guts as well.
You must have less ego and apologise if things go bad. If I ever hurt someone’s feelings, I must be able to apologise and take responsibility for my actions.
I feel like transparency, communication and being able to reflect on yourself, taking accountability on your actions are very important.
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Can you share any community projects or social causes that are particularly important to you and your business?
We have Friends of Hanya, a platform to support and champion emerging content creators.
What we do is elevate a lot of content creators by giving them clothes.
I’m a content creator, and I remember when I first started, I wanted to create content but I didn’t have the materials. Not everyone is as privileged as us to get press kits every day.
Some have so much passion and can take nice photos or videos but don’t have money to buy products.
So I want them to get products from us where they can create content. A lot of people say we’re just using these people, but you have to think of it in another way.
I’m giving products that I spent money, time and effort to develop. I trust them by giving them for free – a lot of people take things for granted.
At the moment, we have over 100 of them, and we are constantly discovering more.
Advertising companies actually come to the platform to scroll for talent to hire, and they get booked for jobs, and we don’t take any commission from that.
As an entrepreneur and mother, what are the values and principles you’ve learned from your experience in the industry that you would like to pass down to your children?
Stop whining about things and just do it. Honestly this is something that I want my daughter to know, whether you whine or complain, things still need to get done, so think of another way, and do it happily.
Only you can change the way you think.
The most important thing is also to show up. I’m three weeks to my due date, and I come midnight, stay with the team when they set up, because I just don’t want to set a bad example.
I think that’s the minimum respect I can have for the team. Always show up, try your best to show up. If you’re tired, take a break. I feel like everything can kind of wait as well, but don’t be lazy.
The energy that you portray to your team, for example if it looks like you hate your job, the team is going to feel like, “she hates her job, am I supposed to hate my job as well?”. If they see a boss that shows up so passionately, they’ll feel like “I want to be like her, I can do it too”.
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