AN AUGUST WOMAN

TO CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY, WE SPOKE TO WOMAN OF ACHIEVEMENT RACHEL LIM, FOUNDER AND CEO OF LOVE BONITO, ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN IN TODAY’S CONTEXT

- JONATHAN HO

SHE WAS HONOURED in the inaugural Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in 2016. Love Bonito’s Rachel Lim was, however, not so much building a fashion empire out of Singapore, as being in the business of building women up. Having spoken and headlined at TEDx, the “Great Women of Our Time” forum and “The Future is Female” conference, she has been passionate about female empowerment and building communities. Keen to learn more about her strategies for building stronger societies, we invited her to share her views, as well as tell us what she thinks men should aspire to.

What were some of your struggles during the early days of Love Bonito?

Back then everything was traditional, we were setting the stage for eCommerce. Singpost was the monopoly when it came to logistics, we had to determine what was the best way to work with Singpost: would they be willing to experiment because we still had to weigh each package, and manually write each name, address and then affix a physical stamp and then make multiple trips a day to the post office. With the rise of online shopping, we had to figure out how to do things differently.

On a personal note, there was also the burden of knowing that I had loaned my mother’s entire life savings to break my bond and it came at a time when my father was going through bankruptcy as well with my mother working three jobs to support the family. These were some of the reasons that pushed me not to fail.

Doing this in my early 20s, I also had to discover and find my footing and identity as a person. I still wasn’t sure who I was, I was swayed by peer and societal pressures. I didn’t even know who I was yet, but I had to figure out who I was as a leader.