HOW FASHION HOUSES AND ZOOM ARE HELPING IN THE COVID FIGHT
C
risis should bring out kindness, heroism, civic spirit, unity, resourcefulness and moral courage in us human beings, instead of fear, despair or enmity.
One concrete example of immediate help was myPhone maker David Lim of Solid Group, Inc., and son of retired business leader Atty. Elena S. Lim.
When he saw the news about the country’s biggest city, Quezon City, led by the sincere and hardworking Mayor Joy Belmonte, being swamped with the highest number of Covid-19 cases, Lim messaged me at midnight of March 23 about their MyRainbow Place Dormitory in the Tandang Sora area, Quezon City: “We volunteer to allow nurses, volunteers and frontliners to stay in our newly built 105-room dormitoryinTandangSoraforfreeduringthiscrisis.Weshall ask QC government to help coordinate with all hospitals in QCfortheirstay.Thisistheleastourfamilycandoforallthese frontliners risking their lives for us. Stay safe.”
Withfashionboutiquesclosed,runwayshowsshutdown andsupplychainsdisrupted,fashionindustryentrepreneurs are also adjusting to help overcome the global shortages of masks and personal protective equipment (PPEs).
French luxury conglomerate Kering announced that two of its brands, Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent, are preparing to manufacture COVID masks. The group has also committed to acquiring three million Chinese masks for French health service, while its largest brand, Gucci, is looking to make and donate 1.1 million masks and 55,000 medical overalls to authorities in hard-hit Italy.
Rival LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior,amongothers,isalsoleveragingitsglobalsupplychain tosource40millionfacemasksfromChinaoverthenextfour weeks.LuxurybrandPradahaskeptafactoryopeninPerugiaandconvertedittomaskandmedicaloverallproduction: they will start daily deliveries to hospitals in Tuscany, Italy, of 80,000 overalls and 110,000 masks, starting April 6.
Inditex,theownerofgarmentsbrandZara,planstosoon be stitching hospital scrubs, helping its embattled home country Spain fight the coronavirus. Inditex said last week it was studying converting part of its textile manufacturing capacityinSpaintomass-producehospitalgowns.Itaddedit would make available to Spain its vast logistics and supplier network, especially in China, to “meet Spain’s emergency needs of both medical and textile materials” such as protective masks, gloves, goggles and caps.
Zara/Inditex is led by school dropout, self-made Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega. For a short period in 2015, Ortega became the world’s wealthiest billionaire, surpassing Bill Gates when his net worth peaked to $80 billion, as
Zara’s parent company Inditex’s stock soared. ZOOM FOUNDER IS SELFMADE BILLIONAIRE
I came across award-winning singer/actress Lea Salonga asking on social media who the smart guy was that invented the Zoom app for long-distance video meetings of many people simultaneously worldwide.
A few days ago, when stock market analyst and book author Marvin Germo messaged asking if he could interview me about the economy, tips for small businesses andrealestate/stockinvestinginthis lockdownera,whenIsaidIwasnot going out during this lockdown, he taught me to use Zoom.
This Zoom tech app is indeed so much fun and important now in these tumultuous times, when an estimated three billion people are in some form of community quarantine or lockdown.
Lots of people worldwide, like Lea Salonga, are so grateful to 49-year-old Zoom inventor and CEO Eric Yuan. Due to his technological breakthrough and his publicly listing his enterprise on Nasdaq last year, he is now a billionaire. Right now, Yuan is becoming even richer due to global social distancing.
Unknown to many, the enterprising Yuan is an indefatigable first-generationChineseimmigrantfromTaianintheShandong province of eastern China. Eric Yuan’s Chinese name in Mandarin is Yuan Zheng. He has an inspiring backstory, which should give pause to anti-immigrant politicians like President Donald Trump, who do not realize the importance of persevering immigrants in creating inventions and entrepreneurial start-ups all over the world.
Yuan was a talented math and computer science master’s degree graduate who dreamt of working in Silicon Valley in California,whenChinaandothercountrieswerenotyetadvanced in technology like right now. He had applied for a US visa repeatedly for two years, was denied eight times but never gave up and eventually was granted a visa on his ninth try. Silicon Valley and the world have since benefited from his tech inventions.
In California in 1997, Yuan worked for the tech firm WebEx, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007, and he became vice president of engineering.
Today, Yuan’s shareholding in Zoom is worth US$5.6 billion. He is also named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending USA patents in real-time collaboration.
Yuan told Authority magazine editor Yitzi Weiner: “I first envisioned Zoom when I was a freshman in college in China and regularly took a 10-hour train ride to visit my girlfriend (who is now my wife). I detested those rides and used to imagine other ways I could visit my girlfriend without traveling — those daydreams eventually became the basis for Zoom.”
* * * Thanks for your feedback at willsoonflourish@gmail.com! Follow @wilsonleeflores on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Read also https://investment.fwd.com.ph/experts/asia-s-businessleaders-and-whatwe-can-learn-from-them.