Meet Tania Cheung, Founder of Miss Runner

Can you give a brief introduction about your company?

Miss Runner is an activewear label that focuses on finding the most elite print style to embrace dynamic aesthetics. We are born to provide energetic dream chasers with high quality sportswear – Runway Designs at an affordable price.

What was your biggest challenge or the worst decision you had made and had to flip away from afterwards?

The biggest challenge so far is raising capital. We had double amount of sales revenue received within first 4 weeks in our latest collection vs Q3. However, our sales is very limited by amount of inventory and working capital. We lost an estimate 30% amount of business due to limited size options.

What is your dream and vision for MissRunner?

Our sportswear merged the functionality of fashion and action in one. We are dedicated in motivating the society with wellness, as well as driving attention and delivery opportunities to fresh talent. We hope to change the very foundation of the creative industry in order to drive long-term benefits for future talents.

How do you get your brand out there? (Did you leverage any connections to other startups? Any other meaningful relationships or connections that helped you?)

Miss Runner uses a Comprehensive Branding Strategy to gain awareness in a varies of perspective. Our community includes influencers around the globe and we raise fitness/wellness campaign monthly to interact and motivate our audience. Cross-promotion with fitness ambassadors had helped us reach out further to connect with potential customers in Romania, Australis etc. We also have an educational blog that includes information such as healthy recipe, story behind collaborative artists, styling tips, work-out tips etc.

TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More.

What keeps your team going? What do they value the most?

It has never been an easy route for young artists. As a result of the lack of resources and opportunities, society has not valued the importance of nurturing the creative genes of our future generation. Miss Runner strives to change the way the creative industry creates from its conventional approach, in order to encourage interaction, collaboration and communication between creative individuals. Our team works very hard to connect with hidden talents around the world. Through intermediate communication we select the most inspirational and original art-work to carry forward. Each of our print is an outcome of a valuable, unique collaborative product.

You are growing your team really fast, how quick can or should a startup team grow? Any advice/ watch-outs?

Key hires are always important for start ups. Find those who owns whats lack of you. Focus on your domain knowledge and build an efficient, effective team.

What is the one reason to start a startup in HK? And what would be the reason not to do so?

Hong Kong is a great logistic hub. Since Miss Runner is an e-commerce base company, shipping out to international customers without the need to pay tax had been a huge cost saving advantage. Sourcing is also a benefit since majority of mills from China had their head office/showroom set up in Hong Kong. This alone helped avoiding back and forth delivery cost and middleman services. If your start-up requires a physical store, Hong Kong might be a tough place to kickstart due to the extremely high rentals.

What is your #Startup Passion?

As a Ballerina with a Fashion Design Degree, Tania puts her focus in active clothing as she noticed the lack of playfulness in sportswear designs. What's more is she wanted to connect with hidden talents around the world to create and inspire along her journey.

She didn’t begin her journey as an Entrepreneur until she found great passion in pattern designs. It is also because she loves to be inspired and interact with different field of artists. Throughout her previous work experiences, she observed that there are often invisible frames set to individuals. Tania believes that there should be no limitation in creativeness and digital prints are a way to show this.