unbowed under pressure / uhn-boud/ / uhn-der/ / presh-er/

She stuck to her guns – even when she lost everything she had.

YVON BOCK FOUNDER AND CEO, HEGEN

Yvon Bock always had a flair for design. Daughter to an industrious father who started Fitson, a manufacturing facility specialising in high-quality mother and baby care products in the 1980s, Bock spent many hours playing at the factory. She even took a fashion design course at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. It was part of her father’s plan to lure the former corporate-banking executive back into the workforce.

In 2004, Bock joined Fitson as a management trainee. There, she learnt the core principles on which her father built the company: an unwavering insistence on excellence and a strong sense of responsibility not just to their clients, but also the end users. “My father always says that success is not about how big the business is, but how it helps people.”

This resonated with the straighttalking Bock who has always had a righteous streak. As a school prefect, she used to stand up for the “naughty ones”, defending them to teachers when she felt their actions were justified.

She went on to challenge her clients in the same way. Those who listened – such as a large European company which flew its head of purchasing to Singapore to confront Bock when she refused to produce what she felt was a flawed design – eventually came to appreciate her dedication to excellence.

“I created such an uproar that their representative flew in, wanting to fire us. I told her she would be foolish to do so as I was helping to save her company’s reputation.

She was cynical at first, but finally apologised and told her company that we’d brought compassion back to the product design – something they had forgotten while focusing on project timelines. That was a proud moment because I knew we were doing things right,” shares Bock.

But not everyone appreciated her efforts. In 2008, work pressures from a new project and an intense confrontation with a client who criticised Bock’s work harshly – claiming she knew nothing about quality and design, the precise areas of work that she’s always been so proud of – hit Bock hard that she suffered a miscarriage.

“I was humiliated. And I was angry. I love kids. I wanted to have six children but with the failed pregnancy, I was told that I would only be able to have just one more child,” recalls a teary Bock. “The pain of the loss spurred me on. I had to forgive and move on. I had to take strength from the situation and make something out of it – or it would have been all for nothing.”

Out of that vigour, Hegen, a line of baby care products, was born.

Then, just as Bock was about to take her initial design to the prototyping stage, she discovered that the mass production of an identical product was about to commence – her design had been leaked. Without patents, she had to go back to the drawing board.

Yet again, she turned adversity into opportunity. This time, making things radically different. Today, Hegen has sold five million patented PCTO (Press-to-Close, Twist-toOpen) feeding bottles across 15 markets worldwide. Of these, two million were sold in 2019 alone.

“I welcome healthy competition, but those who copy and forgo consumer safety for the sake of profits anger me,” says Bock. So, she’s made it her mission to educate consumers at road shows. “My aim isn’t to convert them, but to help them make an informed decision.”