Chris Wen

Submitted

CoCo, a Taiwanese treat with Global mind
Chris Wen
Last modified on December 14, 2015 at 5:57 pm
CoCo, a Taiwanese fresh-made tea brand, has been providing high quality take away beverage including boba tea since 1997 and has grown globally in recent years as well. CoCo’s mission is the relentless pursuit of soothing people with high quality [...]

Activity Feed

On December 14, 2015, Chris Wen commented on CoCo, a Taiwanese treat with Global mind :

Hi MS, thanks for your comment.
Bubble tea was actually invented by another Taiwanese company Chun-Hsui-Tang in 1983, and like you said it is an mature and stable business.
The growth is hence driven by product innovations, being it new flavors, new ingredients, or new mixture of other things, so that season by season customers never get bored.

Regarding the geography expansion concern, I foresee the fast pace would persist for the next few years at least, since currently the stores are highly concentrated in limited countries like Taiwan and China, leaving much potential to be exploited in other regions.

On December 14, 2015, Chris Wen commented on Nitori: 28 years consecutive profit increase :

Thanks for sharing Kohei. I saw some comparison and am wondering below:
1)comparing to IKEA’s DIY design, Nitori sells the final product. As the former model could sort of outsource the labor cost to end customers themselves, how could Nitori counter that negative impact on its cost?
2)comparing to UNIQLO, the inhouse design model Nitori adopts seems to facilitate good quality control. However, a core competence UNIQLO owns is product innovation, hence they can introduce low cost materials with consistent/stable enough quality to oursource the design / supply chain without compromise in quality (for example the classic winter coat). I’m thus curious about Nitori’s capability of product R&D.

On December 14, 2015, Chris Wen commented on Zenefits – A Unique Business Model + Innovative Operating Model :

First all, i think the inventor of your user name is a genius. This business model is very interesting to me, as it seems to create big value to SMB companies with zero cost. However I’m curious about
1)how could Zenefits differentiate themselves from other competitors with similar services, or potential entrant, as it seems to me the entry barrier is quite low given the core products are simple tasks such as ID card printing and payroll management?
2)is there local engagement required to scale up the business? i would assume SMB are scattered all over the states, and am curious how would the customer service and customer acquisition work geographically

On December 14, 2015, Chris Wen commented on TaskRabbit: Your Retinue of Errand Runners :

Nice posting Thomas! I’m wondering couple things however:
1)is the fixed rate only applied to common errands? for example if i want somebody to help me propose to my girlfriend, what would be the price for that? In other words, I’m curious about how do we define the market price for nearly countless tasks and how much customization vs. standardization of the pricing mechanism TaskRabbit should provide.
2)if fixed rate is applied to every errands, would that be a better/convenient approach, at the possible expense of failing to capture the additional value by price discrimination?
3)for the price competition part—am wondering is the price the only criteria users adopt to choose their taskers? is there review / reference mechanism so that quality could also play a role to differentiate the taskers?
4)the disintermediation prevention—i would assume the lower price would still be higher than direct contact as long as the commission fee isn’t zero. How to prevent disintermediation in that situation?