{"id":60890,"date":"2020-10-12T16:24:24","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T08:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fbe.hku.hk\/alumni-overview\/startup-star\/terence-hon-waste-not-want-not\/"},"modified":"2020-11-13T11:08:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T03:08:44","slug":"terence-hon-waste-not-want-not","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/alumni-overview\/startup-star\/terence-hon-waste-not-want-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Terence Hon – Waste not want not"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Terence\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Waste not want not<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Terence\u00a0Hon (BBA 2019), Co-Founder of\u00a0GreenPrice, is on a mission to reduce the amount of food going to landfill, all while offering value to Hong Kong shoppers.<\/i><\/p>

When many business school graduates dream of going into the likes of banking or management trainee jobs, Terence\u00a0had ambitions to run his own business and do some good too. We are in the Wellington Street branch of his chain store that sells groceries at affordable prices which also helps the environment. They do it by taking the items that other people don\u2019t want \u2013 surplus and short-dated stock \u2013 and making them into a value proposition in the heart of Hong Kong\u2019s financial centre of Central, in addition to their other branches in Wan Chai, Kwai Fong and Kwun Tong.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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One man\u2019s trash is another\u2019s treasure<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Sitting in the loft of the Central store, we discuss with Terence his motivations and how he made throw away items cool and safe \u2013 by carrying out extensive testing and research with scientists and NGOs. \u201cWe are targeting goods that are near their \u2018best before\u2019 dates, but this is more than commercial proposition, this is a social movement for both people and the environment,\u201d he says.<\/p>

The cause he is fighting for is a good one \u2013 more than 3,600 tonnes of food waste each day are filling up Hong Kong\u2019s landfills already brimming with trash. In Hong Kong, approximately 150 million expired food items are thrown out each year (*2014 estimate). There is a crisis on our hands and Terence and his partners are acting to both save the environment and offer affordable food to Hong Kong people.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A green movement with HKU origins<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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GreenPrice began as a team project for a social enterprise competition during Terence\u2019s studies at HKU Business School. After much brainstorming with team members and visits to the likes of local charity Food Angel, it blossomed into a pop-up booth and then a store in an industrial unit in Kwun Tong. \u201cWe had to put much effort into convincing consumers to try the products, and we had to be cautious about store location where sales could support the rental cost,\u201d says Terence.<\/span><\/p>

Running a retail business in Hong Kong is difficult, but Terence and his team have turned this negative philosophy on its head. \u201cNot many supermarkets have western high-end luxury items with an environmental angle. And our products are half the price of other shops. We also change our selection regularly,\u201d says Terence.<\/p><\/div><\/div>

Essential to the business was forming a network of suppliers, who can make money from goods they would have to throw away. A challenge of GreenPrice\u2019s business is not being able to reorder items and constantly searching for other products. \u201cWe need to be resourceful and this involves a lot of effort in ensuring a mix of goods, whether from making cold calls or doing market research,\u201d says Terence.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Stopping waste at the best price\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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To be successful and create growth, value is at the heart of the business. \u201cOur motto is \u2018Stop Waste. Best Price.\u2019, and I would say that the latter is one of our core elements, we keep items that are 30 to 50 percent off the market price,\u201d says Terence.<\/p>

Double majoring in information systems and business design and innovation helped Terence hone skills in designing and marketing products, which has been directly relevant for this leading role in GreenPrice, especially when it comes to starting projects from scratch. But establishing a retail business in Hong Kong takes some real guts \u2013 was he ever scared by the proposition? \u201cThe key for us was starting small, we faced challenges, but had a low opportunity cost because we were just students, if we messed it all up we could go and find a job. I thought we should be bold and that attitude has paid off,\u201d says Terence.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Terence\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Adding strength to HK\u2019s startup and sustainability scene\n<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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To get started, the team did everything from moving boxes to being the face of the business on the media. \u201cAlthough I did a lot of goods-lifting I am still unfortunately not that muscular,\u201d Terence laughs. At the end of the day, adding some strength to both Hong Kong\u2019s startup and sustainability scene is more important.<\/p>

What advice would he give to students who want to begin their own start-ups? \u201cBe persistence, and tackle issues bit by bit, no matter it is a trivial matter of fixing a shelf or something much larger such as market strategy,\u201d says Terence.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waste not want not Terence\u00a0Hon (BBA 2019), Co-Founder of\u00a0GreenPrice, is on a mission to reduce the amount of food going to landfill, all while offering value to Hong Kong shoppers. When many business school graduates dream of going into the likes of banking or management trainee jobs, Terence\u00a0had ambitions to run his own business and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":60796,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-60890","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60892,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60890\/revisions\/60892"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}