AS a little girl, Niki Cheng often abandoned her schoolbooks, preferring to draw instead. That invited the rotan from her mother. “I wasn’t that thrilled even though she won many prizes in drawing competitions,” said Lee Sau Then, 56.
Like any pragmatic Asian parent, she told her daughter that lukisan wasn’t going to put food on the table.
But mothers, uhm, are not always right.
Today, Lee glowed with a quiet pride as her creative daughter, armed with a degree in interior designing, owns seven furniture stores in New York and New Jersey.
Cheng, together with her Taiwanese husband, are franchise holders of BoConcept, a furniture chain from Denmark that began in 1952.
The home furnishing brand, which takes pride for its urban and modular design, is sold in 350 stores and studios in 47 countries.
Cheng’s distinction? Her seven stores, which recorded US$20mil in turnover, are constantly ranked among the top five performing BoConcept stores in the world.
Even celebrities are known to shop at her place.
“About three months ago, Susan Sarandon came to buy a bedroom set which costs about US$3,000,” said Cheng, 34. Others who have made their purchases included R&B singer Patti LaBelle, and rappers Sean “Diddy” Combs and Lil’ Kim.
Even Crown Princess Mary of Denmark made an appearance on Sept 19 to launch the 2008 collection at her store in SoHo, New York City.
Still, Cheng remained a modest Ipoh girl who attributed her achievements to good old-fashioned luck.
She came to New York in 1998 to study interior designing. But she could not find work upon graduation and for two years, she took up various odd jobs.
“Then I got lucky. I found work at a furniture shop in 2001 where I was the salesperson, besides helping the owner to run the place. I spent two years there,” she said. Meanwhile, Mr Right came along and they tied the knot in 2002.
Eventually, the couple got tired of their respective jobs (her husband was an IT manager) and they began dreaming about setting up their own business.
Opportunity struck when they spotted an advertisement looking for BoConcept franchise holders. By 2003, they opened their first BoConcept store in New York.
Long story short: four years later, their initial US$300,000 investment had paid off, logistics nightmare was over and they were no longer the green horn in business as they used to be.
As she reminisced about her schooldays, Cheng paid tribute to her parents for never stopping her early habit of always rearranging the decor at their home. “I would also suggest to my mother about changing the curtains and cushion covers.”
However, Cheng noticed a change in herself as she grew older. “After I finished my studies, I realised that I had become more sales-driven, more competitive. I am very much into numbers.”
The young girl had grown into a businesswoman.
She drives a hard bargain, too. The rent for all her seven stores are way below market rate, thanks to her haggling skills. “It’s probably something that I picked up from all the bargaining that I did back at our market in Malaysia,” she chuckled.
Private companies often approached Cheng to design their venues. At the New York Fashion Week in 2005, she designed the Olympus studio where celebrities such as Mary J. Blige took a break between shows.
Her furniture business has become a domestic affair for the Cheng family consisting of five siblings. Except for Cheng’s oldest sister who is a nurse in Malaysia, all the three younger ones are working at the various BoConcept stores.
Their parents are in the Big Apple as well.
Cheng, who has a one-year-old daughter, believed that BoConcept had been a success story here because New Yorkers put a high prize on individuality.
“The furniture can be customised to your preference. The dresser, for instance, can be purchased with or without the handle,” she explained.
BoConcept, she said, looked very high-end but with medium range prices.
Cheng attributed her triumph to her 52 staff, saying that she had many good employees working for her. But at the end of the day, she uttered that word again: Luck.
Good fortunes aside, Cheng, whose last trip home was in April, also declared: “I am 100% Malaysian.”