Entrepreneur Launches Website to Enrich Asian Women

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009 Posted: 1:30:19AM HKT

Entrepreneur Nanz Chong-Komo at a photo-shoot for an online resource cum talk-show platform she is co-running. (Photo: Nanz Inc.com)

She experienced tremendous success as a business entrepreneur. And then she lost everything. But her story did not end in failure. Picking herself up, Nanz Chong-Komo is the quintessential model of the recession warrior.

Now, Nanz, 38, is experiencing a different kind of success. While her One.99 chain was a major success, she has become an ambassador for the common person in the street wishing to start a business and businesses struggling to find the best practices.

A little more than a month ago, she added to the list the enriching of the lives of Asian women when she launched Nanz Inc.com, an online resource and talk-show platform.

Co-run with editor Theresa Tan, the website aims to restore a sense of intrinsic value particularly in Asian women and empower them to live better.

“Asian women are peculiar – they can be so accomplished and educated, yet have such low self-esteem that they do foolish things to themselves,” said the former Editor of Female magazine and Editor-In-Chief of ELLE Singapore.

“We want to see more Asian women do life better – live their dreams, start that business, practice integrity, love and value themselves. In every Asian women, there lies an ‘Inc’. And Nanz Inc exists to map the way.”

Nanz Inc.com seeks to ride on the popularity of the entrepreneurial celebrity, whom Theresa likened to super-model Cindy Crawford who ran an empire of businesses that took on a life of its own, and use that to benefit women.

“[Nanz’s] name has become a brand, even more so now than when she had ONE.99Shop. The association she has with personal branding, female entrepreneurship, a strong positive mindset – these are attributes she possesses which have become synonymous with her,” explained Theresa, who co-founded Women Make A Difference (WMD), a women’s group that champions women’s and children’s causes.

According to Nanz, the idea of creating an online resource for women came about in the course of her travels to different parts of Asia to share her experiences after the closure of the One.99 store.

People kept going up to her and asking her how to manage their business, take care of children, handle the relationship with their mother-in-law, juggle work and family commitments. Theresa suggested that this information could be put on a website to provide a free service for people and so they started Nanz Inc.com.

Articles giving practical advice – on topics ranging from business, managing finance and the importance of teaching children to do so and how a holiday could be helpful for business entrepreneurs, to how the Global Positioning System or GPS is a boon for women and the way they could strike a balance between work and life – greet the user.

Just next to that, a screen feature allows readers to view a number of snippets giving pieces of advice for living and talk-show portions with women featuring Nanz and interviews she conducted with other business entrepreneurs like Elim Chew of 77th Street. The website is updated from Monday to Saturday, and the highlights of its content and activities are brought to live seminars a few times a year, building up a community of women who network for ideas and support from one another.

In the coming days, the two women entrepreneurs are planning a couple of live talk-show sessions with women, says Nanz, who is a member of City Harvest Church.

Both Nanz and Theresa are Councillors with the CDCs, Nanz with Northeast CDC and Theresa with Southwest CDC.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com