Mission Impossible

The EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 and Ceo of Futuristic Store Fixtures Tells Us How He Defied the Odds of a Rough Childhood to Turn Danger and Failure Into His Life’s Biggest Opportunities – Including Heading an Unstoppable Empire Serving Some of the World’s Retail Giants.

- Adeline Loh

“I don’t tell this story to many people,” says David Low, as he rolls up his right sleeve to show us a scar running down his arm. The year then was 1978: Aged 16, Low’s childhood had been “nothing but work”, slogging long hours to support his family, and working odd jobs for his father who ran a carpentry business on Duxton Hill. On that fateful day, he was asked to transport a large piece of glass to a factory. “The professional way to carry a piece of glass is with a suction cap. Those years, we didn’t have any,” he recalls.

As Low was lifting the bottom edge of the glass piece, his co-worker, who was handling the top edge, hit the side of the truck. The piece slid and sliced Low’s arm. He ended up with 42 stitches and the arm in a cast for six months. The accident shook the youth to the core and made him question his future. He recounts: “I thought, ‘I am a one-armed man. What can I do with one hand?’”

In retrospect, the accident gave Low guts. “Because I survived and was given this second chance at life, I would be blessed and I had nothing to fear,” says the 55-year-old CEO of Futuristic Store Fixtures.

Recently awarded the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2016 – Supply Manufacturing Chain, Low has had an unlikely and colourful resume lined with dangerous jobs: from descending four storeys deep and braving suffocating environments to clean an off-shore ship ( just to make $40 a day), to balancing on planks several storeys high as part of an electrical team. Through it all, he never forgot his accident. “I was determined to do something extraordinary.”