HKUST Alumni You need to be all-rounded, be savvy, have wisdom and develop a sense of worldliness. If you treat everyone with respect and care, things will look up. FEATURE An e-commerce icon In a city where people still spend a lot of their money offline, YOHO ( 友和) stands out as a star in the e-commerce pack. Its CEO, Chairman, and Co-Founder is Franz Wu (2008 BBA Economics), who now runs the largest e-commerce platform with a primary direction towards consumer electronics and home appliances in Hong Kong while also having the honor of being listed on the HKEX in June 2022. You wouldn’t have realized it from chatting with him in person – Franz is down-to-earth and easy-going, and loves playing football.“My favorite memories at HKUST were on the pitch, and of course the beautiful halls. Too bad we don’t have enough staff for a YOHO team!”Franz says. Although having outstanding academic results, he graduated during the turmoil of 2008, and with limited jobs available due to the financial "tsunami", started trading consumer electronics and home appliances, including items big at the time like portable media players. It was this experience, combined with a strong interest and education in Economics (with minors in Humanities and China Studies), that drove him forward. This diverse education, along with a firm network of friends, offered him the right mix of innovation, creativity, and nous to go on to bigger and bolder things. In 2013, Franz noticed the lack of channels to buy new electronics and founded YOHO with his now wife Kathy Tsui. “At the time she was my girlfriend,”he says with a laugh.“But we saw an opportunity, with high rents, and that Hong Kong consumers would love a business like ours. In 2013, it was a different world,”Franz says. From an initial capital investment of HK$500,000 each, they have blossomed into a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, with their market operating in a new environment, innovation is at the core of the company. The duo learned everything there was to know about e-commerce, delivery, payment systems, operations, and marketing. The YOHO team pioneered the concept of online-merge-offline (OMO) business, with showrooms supporting the online experience, and a dual experience for consumers. YOHO says ‘yoohoo’ to AI The Group now has more than 1,000,000 registered users with a diverse product portfolio. Gross profit was HK$130 million for 2022-23, and online sales have surpassed direct competitors. YOHO also has 4% of its sales coming from Mainland China. Merchants can also open shops on YOHO, including the likes of LEGO, meaning the range of products will expand. With such a large customer base, AI is essential to keeping customers happy. YOHO has been using AI assistants that can be customized to help people make choices and offer a convenient shopping environment. YOHO is working with HKUST Business School to create a suite of AI offerings. The projects include a product recommendation system.“As we have a history of consumer behavior from previous purchases, such as brands, categories and what not, we are using AI to help customers make the best choices for their future purchases,”Franz says. YOHO has 20 business use cases they are working on that can help customers, including the AI assistant. “Customers can choose their own attitudes for assistants, so if they want someone sassier and fun, that can make it. No one is doing this globally, even in Mainland China and the US. Meanwhile at the backend, we use AI to help better organize our data and systems. Product descriptions are a nightmare with the requirement of having three languages so this can really help us speed up,”Franz adds. AI will thus lessen mistakes in product descriptions in the backend, improve efficiency and time spent. YOHO is also using AI for product comparison. But what if the AI assistant recommends consumers to buy less or a cheaper item?“Well, at the end of the day, it is a LLM (Large language model) so that could happen,”he laughs. Franz aims to increase users in Hong Kong, along with Mainland China and the GBA. It's very ambitious, but Franz has done it before and can achieve the same again. How should others follow his path?“You need to be all-rounded, be savvy, have wisdom and develop a sense of worldliness. If you treat everyone with respect and care, things will look up,” Franz says. 6 7
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