LKK: Building A Designer Platform

Founded in 2004, China's leading design house, LKK, started from scratch and soon established itself by winning countless international design awards and pursuing Fortune Global 500 clients. From its beginning, founder Jia Wei hoped that LKK could represent the highest level of China's design circle and rectify the stereotypic image that Chinese designers were only imitators and did not have original ideas. His personal mission was manifested in his saying that they should "straighten the backbone of the China's design industry". In 2014, as the firm celebrated its ten-year anniversary, Jia started to take an interest in the sharing economy that was sweeping China. He was intrigued by the sharing concept and wondered whether designers' work time and professional abilities could be shared. He twice attempted to establish sharing models and was not frustrated by the setbacks. He kept searching for a good business model that could make his idea work. In 2016, for the first time, LKK's 100 per cent annual growth rate started to show sluggishness. This time, he decided to fully devote himself to the new economy as he knew this would become a new growth driver for the company and for the design circle. He was so determined that he appointed someone to take care of the traditional design company, LKK, declaring that he would focus 100 per cent on the new model and would lead the new team to "disrupt LKK". In July 218, a fire burnt LKK's Beijing office. Jia was surprised by what the office symbolized to his team when he saw an old partner break into tears. It suddenly hit him that his full devotion to the sharing platform model might have hurt the feelings of his old partners and have shaken LKK's basic values, professional idealism, pride and ambition of LKK designers. This was probably the deep-rooted reason why they felt so frustrated by the fire. Most senior designers were against the new model. Jia needed to conduct this venture by himself. Consequently in 2016, he founded a separate firm, LKKer, a platform company, later referred to as LKP, without taking any one from the LKK team. Inside LKK, a friendly joke, "the chairman went out to start his own business", went viral, and Jia perceived LKK staff hostility towards LKP. Jia desperately needed talent support from LKK and also LKK's existing brand influence, but he found himself unable to utilize these resources at LKP. LKP's first two years were very difficult. In 2018, Jia decided that LKP should not be a demand-supply matching platform, but should continue to take advantage of his core competence, design. He knew what he needed most from LKK was his partners' support, but when he faced his emotional partner, he realized that it was not an appropriate time for him to bring this up, and that he might have been too fixated on his own ideal while overlooking the feelings and mindset of old pals.