Welcome to Made in Asia, Lifestyle Asia’s podcast series that aims to connect the cultural dots and communities across Southeast Asia through storytelling. In collaboration with CelcomDigi | One™ Plan, we explore the overarching theme “Meaningful Connections” that extends from the theme “Community” in the pilot episodes. We discuss what it means to build strong, trusted emotional connections with the people around us, especially in today’s ever-changing and fast-paced lifestyle. In this episode, we are joined by Veen Dee Tan, the mind behind the beloved homegrown fashion brands, Hanya and Hari.
Veen Dee is bright and breezy as she walks in — exactly as you might expect a successful, self-reliant businesswoman would — and comes with papers in hand. She’s got her talking points prepared, not because she needs them per se, but because she’s got a lot to talk about, and she wants to get all her points across smoothly. If you’re familiar or acquainted with Veen Dee, you’d probably know that she is someone who doesn’t quite like to be told what to do — and is also someone who knows herself, and the community around her, quite deeply. Eventually, this became the driving force towards creating the homegrown brands that she is known for today: Hanya and Hari.
Today, Hanya and Hari are both household names when it comes to local fashion brands. They pride themselves on being made for the everyday woman — “elevated basics”, as Veen Dee puts it. She goes on to emphasise that the muse for Hanya, or the imagined ‘Hanya’ woman, is “this one girl who’s in a crowd, and she’s very nonchalant, but she’s very chic”. She’s not the centre of attention, but you still find yourself wanting to look at her.
In this episode, we speak about how Veen Dee first stepped into the local fashion scene, how she climbed her way up in the business, the challenges that came on during the early days of establishing her brands, how Veen Dee connects with the larger community through the brands’ messaging, and also how she, as a working mom, manages the brands along with the people around her.
On the topic of connection, CelcomDigi this year introduced its newest flagship plan: the CelcomDigi One™ Plan, meticulously built around the idea of having everything a modern household relies on consolidated into a single plan — connectivity, convenience, entertainment, and 3 unlimited 4G/5G mobile lines for everyone in the family, all under one roof.
Business-minded from the very beginning
What a lot of people may not know about Veen Dee is that long before she joined the Modest Fashion group and former e-commerce platform FashionValet, she actually longed to be a newscaster. But one interview quickly dashed her hopes and dreams and, inspired by the local fashion markets that she used to go to during college, she immediately locked into the idea of building her own brand.
“The reason why I joined FashionValet at the time was that I have this very strong interest in ‘homegrown’,” Veen Dee opens up about her experience. “I really wanted to support homegrown [brands], and I wanted to be able to create something homegrown, and put it on the map. No one was really buying homegrown fashion labels at that time, and FashionValet was a really good platform at the time. It was a struggle to find good homegrown labels at the time. So, later down the road, I was like, ‘Maybe I can create something that can fill that gap.”
She also admits that fashion was not something she really liked at the start: “Actually, I never really liked fashion as fashion. I like the commerce part of it. It gives me so much thrill. Every time my Shopify notification comes on, it’s like a validation. Like, ‘Oh my god, people buy my things?’ I like the business part of it more.”
But of course, as with anything, it comes with its ups and downs. “I feel like running a business and entrepreneurship is a constant cycle of, like, losing your spark and finding it again,” she explains. “But you still do it, and I think that’s a trait that an entrepreneur has. You’re so self-driven and self-motivated, so you just keep going and going.”
Amplifying the voices of women everywhere
When it comes to the community, Veen Dee talks about how she has definitely grown out of the harsh, one-way-goes ‘girlboss’ mindset. She has come to understand that everyone works in different ways, and there isn’t just one way to get things done. Through Hanya and Hari, Veen Dee has continuously championed the voices of women everywhere, being vocal about women’s mental health, and hoping to play a supportive role in the community.
“I feel like being pregnant, and motherhood, it’s a choice I have to make because it forces me to slow down a little bit,” Veen Dee shares. “Because I’m so goal-oriented, whenever I see something that threatens my pace, it’s like an obstacle. And motherhood, getting pregnant, slowed me down. So, I’m still trying to learn how to balance it. How do I have it all?”
And so these days, Veen Dee has also become more understanding of her own team of women. “I have more empathy now,” she says, joking lightheartedly, “I have more empathy for my team, especially those who are also mothers. I never say no to my employees who need to take time off for their kids’ issues. I’m like, ‘Please go. It’s not that deep, please go.’ Or I’ll ask them to work from home.”
Hosted by Martin Teo, Editor-in-Chief of Lifestyle Asia KL & SG, Made In Asia headlines ‘Community’ for its pilot season and ‘Live Your Peak’ for the second season, now followed by the theme ‘Meaningful Connections’ in its third season. Stay tuned as we bring you fresh conversations with some of the brightest trailblazers and voices in Malaysia and Singapore.
Special thanks: Four Siblings, Kimpton Naluria Kuala Lumpur by IHG
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Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
