David Chu at his DCDI office in Manhattan. Provided to China Daily

Nautica founder David Chu still has designs on China

When Nautica founder David Chu sold the clothing company for $1 billion in 2003, he directed his attention toward the proverbial life of leisure. But as it turned out, playing golf five days a week felt a lot like work.

"Ultimately the process of intellectually challenging myself, looking at ideas and being able to find new ways to grow an idea - that was much more interesting to me," Chu says.

He soon got involved in other ventures, including a partnership with Jack Nicklaus to develop the golf legend's design brand. Today, Chu runs DC Design International (DCDI), a design development firm that among other brands has managed Tumi, Kate Spade and his own sportswear line LINCS, which was launched in China in 2011.

Blending creative vision and business mastery has been Chu's forte during a career that spans three decades and as many continents.

"With fashion, there isn't a formula that will automatically be successful," Chu says in an interview at his DCDI office, located in a townhouse in Manhattan.

"It's a kind of art form. It's art and science, a combination of the two. Like with movies: What makes a certain director successful? He's probably figured out the art and science of that business better than the next guy," he says.

Chu didn't originally intend to be a businessman. At college, he first studied architecture, the result of a childhood passion for drawing.

"Growing up in Taiwan, my mother encouraged me to draw," he says. "I drew what I saw, all kinds of stuff. Knowing how to illustrate was a skill, but I didn't know how to apply my artistic sensibility.

"I thought architecture was interesting because it was dealing with three dimensions, and with proportions and space. I thought I would enjoy that. But it turns out, that fashion is very similar, on a smaller scale. You do draping, almost like soft sculpture. It's just a different way of thinking."

A professor encouraged him to pursue fashion design, and after taking a course at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, he was hooked.

"I started out in design and production, trying to understand how to create the product and make it happen," he says. "Business came later, after I started my own firm, and realized that the business side is part of the process. Because unless you have a good plan and can implement that plan, it's hard to materialize. That brought me down to reality.

"You have to look at it as an overall process. Our business is a bit like the movie business or any other creative business - you're going to hit some good ones and some bad ones. You can't win them all, but enjoying the process is the most important thing."

When Chu started out in 1983, Asian male fashion designers were hardly the trendy norm they are now, but his ethnicity was never an issue, he says.

"I never thought of myself as an Asian designer," he says. "I liked to design, and my background happened to be Chinese. I do think that Asians as a culture have always liked art, and beautiful things. The culture teaches you about appreciation of art and for sophisticated, finer things. You see a lot of Korean women and other Asians who are extremely interested in this business.

"Ultimately it's about making things better. To me, design is about being given a task, and solving problems. It's about figuring out how to create better, more beautiful things. It's simple, but that motivation is what led me to begin doing what I do."

In recent years, there has been much discussion of the "bamboo ceiling", a supposed barrier separating most Asians from the apex of corporate America. Chu, named one of Forbes Asia's most notable Chinese-Americans in 2008, clearly has bypassed such boundaries. However, he points out that the most successful Asian businesspeople in the United States have tended to be entrepreneurs.

"They broke through, not necessarily within corporations, but because they created their own business and rose to the top themselves. But to me, America has a more level playing field than anywhere else in the world.

"The bamboo ceiling perception really depends on the individual, I think. If you think you'll face the bamboo ceiling, you're going to have that ceiling. But if you think you can break through and make that happen, I just think it depends on how much you want to do it. But, of course, living in New York, you probably see less of that ceiling than you do in other areas of the US."

Although he lived in Taiwan until he was 14, Chu has spent the majority of his adult life in the US. But since the launch of Nautica in the Chinese market in 1992, his roots in Asia have only grown stronger. Today he spends about half his time in Shanghai and Beijing, and the rest in Europe and the US. He identifies himself as both Chinese and American.

"It's funny, because sometimes I'll go to Hong Kong, and people think I'm American. I come back here and I'm thinking I feel more Asian, but that's what global culture is like today. It's a combination of a few things.

"As a person, I'm probably a fusion of the two, and I'm spending more and more time in Asia. The culture is close to me, but it's also foreign. Growing up in Taiwan, I learned about China in history books, but to understand it you have to be there. So I've committed myself to spending more time there."

Chu finds the amount of change occurring in China exciting.

"Each province in China is a country in itself. When I look at that, I have a lot of thoughts. I got excited about the idea that there might be amazing opportunities for Chinese products for Chinese consumers in the next 20 years. I love that idea. I'm not doing anything yet, but I love the idea. So it might be something to think about.

"There's a huge opportunity there, and with the right level of sophistication, the Chinese market would be a great opportunity to create products on a local level."

His LINCS brand currently has seven stores in China, with plans to expand to 15 this year. The country will remain his primary focus and a source of great inspiration, Chu says.

The designer recalled a trip down a Yangtze River tributary in which he saw scenery unlike anything he had ever encountered. Gorges rose 170 meters above him on either side of the narrow waterway.

"You don't really understand Chinese culture until you see the land, because it makes the culture," he says. "Then I understood Chinese paintings."

Other inspirations include traveling, art and, of course, golf.

"My other passions are one, golf; two, golf; and three, golf," he says with a laugh. "I like it because I love the philosophy of the game. Golf is like life. I always use that description, because to me, every day you play the game and you don't know what score you're going to get. And even if you think you're ready that day, the outcome might not be the one you want.

"Playing 18 holes of golf is like a mini life story. Some of the holes are great, while some are bad. And you can never achieve perfection. Golf is about continued improvement. It's a very similar philosophy for me, for life and for what I do. With a collection, you never think it's perfect, so hopefully next year you do an even better collection."

In the next few weeks, Chu will be announcing a new venture, he says, as he intends to stay busy.

"Fashion reflects the time, and always pushes the next idea," he says. "You look at what you wore three years ago, and now you look at it and say, 'How did I wear that?' You're always evolving and pushing.

"This is a very, very tough business, but it's also very entrepreneurial and it has a tremendous amount of room for new ideas."

kdawson@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 05/25/2012 page15)