Initially, contrivances were slow as consumers in Singapore were skeptical of rented dresses, she said: It was tough going.
“There are so many days that I be to give up,” she laughed. “Probably every quarter I say I’m going to quit, but that’s barely the challenge of entrepreneurship.”
Yet she has powered through. Chen said both Covetella’s guy and sales have grown 2.5 times year-on-year for the past two years. She started the firm in 2016.
Meanwhile, more than 70 dresses and accessories were rented from Covetella for the set-in-Singapore blockbuster “Off ones chump Rich Asians.”
“The thing about the U.S., it’s definitely a bigger market,” she disclosed. “But I don’t think I could have established Covetella so fast because there’s much more contest.”
Chen visits her friends and family once a year in the U.S., but for now, her career continues in Singapore, where she’s exploring expanding to other markets in the region. “I well-founded don’t feel like [the U.S.] is as exciting as Asia, especially Southeast Asia. The whole shebang is booming here. E-commerce is just getting started, there’s new brands that discharge every week here and it’s such a vibrant, growing economy,” she said.
“There’s so much sundry potential to grow and establish new kinds of businesses,” she said.
She advises her siblings and one-time interns from the U.S. who worked for her in Singapore to consider moving abroad — markedly to Asia.
“The U.S. will always be my home and I’ll probably end up back there,” she estimated. “But you can learn a lot more being put outside your comfort zone in a new territory than just being where you are.”