Ying’s Blog

The excitement was so contagious as I was listening to all the changes my dear friend Anki is making in her career path.

Anki has provided her leadership in many organizations including her very early HR director assignment with Apple Sweden, and her most recent one as HR director at one of the largest insurance companies in the Europe (Trygg-Hansa). It was a highly challenging leadership assignment of transforming an old and conservative establishment into a modern one. In my impression, Anki is always calm and elegantly presented. The glitters in her eyes give away her fondness for next level of challenges. She recently decided to leave her latest executive role and pursue her next adventure! Much to my delight, we’ll soon see another outstanding woman entrepreneur among us. I’ll keep it secret as for what her business will be about, but stay tuned!

For many of us, boredom is not an option. Anki and I very much share this philosophy.

The very reason that we have March 8th marked as International Women Day is that women have not been regarded as equal to the opposite gender!

Believe it or not, I grew up in red China being told ‘women hold half of the sky’ or 妇女半边天。It hadn’t occurred to me that it’s not actually how most of the world looks at us until one day I received an email written by a female secretary that addressed the entire leadership team as ‘Dear gentlemen’. A wake-up call. We’ve got much work to do before we truly hold half of the sky’.

It’s an international women’s day today, it should be a No Pink Phone day too!

I dropped by Anna’s (the CEO at Swedish Media Association www.tu.se) new office yesterday to catch up on the news and gossips in 2010. I met Anna a couple of years ago, and we have kept periodic yet spontaneous getting-togethers ever since. She is an energetic and brilliant person who is not afraid to voice her opinions and I admire very much these qualities of hers! I believe we need more women thinker leaders like her.

Interestingly, big part of our conversation was about iPad. We definitely share the fascination and passion for this mysterious gadget which has only been seen in the videos and pictures. Unlike any other gadgets, I feel significantly more vibes from female segment of the market towards the iPad. I bet most woman readers of this post will agree with me.

I was waiting for the latest Apple creation with full anticipation!! I felt like a kid waiting for Santa to arrive!

As always, Steve Jobs presentation was great and inspirational! I fully appreciate the notion of focusing on a few tasks and make them outstanding. Apart from the designs, there are two things  I love about Apple stuff. First, they perform the major tasks way superior than others on the block and second (more important for me) is that they create a seamless eco system surround modern beings who have modern needs such as multimedia consumption, mobile computing, and ubiquitous and all-the-time connection: my apple gadgets are synced seamlessly (I don’t need my engineering Ph.D degree to do this), I navigate through my computing tasks at a much more efficient pace (if compared to my many years experience with PCs), I got connected to my iPhone/Air, or multimedia contents, or people wherever or whenever I want (most of the time depending on network coverage).

Recall my passionate years at Motorola’s research labs, we were plotting the dream of a seamless and connected world. Now I see my dream unfold through Apple’s eco-system. iPad is what I have been wanting for our home, a great link between iPhone and MacBook. Now I’ve got a five year old girl, I can see it’s also a great thing for young kids who want to share photos, music, videos with friends and browse web to satisfy their curiosity. My daughter already asked one for her birthday! Certainly, I’m obliged to book one for her. I know I’ll borrow from her to show recipes on the kitchen bench when I cook up new dishes.

Now having said all the great things about Apple stuff, they are not completely perfect without any default. This morning, I couldn’t help noticing the article: iPad name draws feminine hygiene jokes. People reasoned that no women was involved in the marketing team. I don’t have any problems with iPad, however I was indeed made to wonder the same thing but for another feature in iPhone. The virtual keyboard on the iPhone is virtually impossible for women with long finger nails. Some of my friends who own iPhones had to give up for alternatives. If the developers were women, would they come up with the same virtual keyboard solution? Even with a great company like Apple, we still need No Pink Phone movement, don’t we!

Our favorite designer Charlotte Hansson tries out the YIN Chic leather computer bag.
The red gives a perfect accent to the typical Swedish setting - understated fashion.

It has been months since I was first told that the stylish hand bags for women should be functional for women who nowadays carry their personal computers or MacBooks around. I certainly shared same longing for a stylish functional handbag so I can put my MacBook Air and iPhone and so on so forth in the right places.

After much creative and tedious work by designers and leather crafts-women and so on so forth, I’m pleased to present to you - the first YIN CHIC genuine leather computer bag.

We especially designed this chic, stylish and functional computer bag for modern women with a free mind and a fine taste.

The bag is made of the finest cow leather (top grain leather that is corrected such that the imperfections of the raw skin were sanded out) and canvas fabrics. The inner compartments are designed to hold what a busy woman will bring for her daily work, business travels or meetings: a netbook or a notebook upto 15-inch, mobile phone with its accessories, keys, wallets, make up kit, documents and etc etc.

With both handles and a shoulder strap, the bag can be carried either on the shoulder or with hands.

The notebook compartment inside the bag has a layer of cushion so as to protect computers against shocks.

They are available for order now.

It has been a great pleasure working with various Telia stores, in particular the flagship store. I enjoy very much going there and getting first hand customers’ feedback. A couple of days ago, I dropped by the store again and took a photo of a wall full of colorful LA YIN computer bags, along with LA YIN USB flash drives. Those are beautiful and functional bags.

I’m pretty happy that we launched LA YIN in June 08 and now our products are on the wall of the Swedish largest telecom stores.

We’ll make sure to keep this wall alive and keep the No Pink Phone movement alive!!

I completely agree with the blog by Stacey Higginbotham .

The Telia’s new show case boutique had its grand opening yesterday the 25th. The store is very tastefully presented. Our colorful & stylish bags give a fine balance to the wood/nature theme of the deco. The store is located at Ringvägen, Södermalm, Stockholm

I can’t help of noticing that most are women who serve customers in this shop. This is great! It is very encouraging to see telecom stores are becoming more women friendly.

The collection will be available later in other Telia shop across Sweden.

Telia is the biggest mobile phone operator in Sweden. I have been following this company very closely since moving to this country. My impression in the first few years was a company with conservative and boring image. I thought 3 was a more upto date player.

Starting from late 2007 and early 2008, I saw a transformation was happening in Telia. Now, its transformation has made a positive impact in many women’s perception. Some of my girl friends and LA YIN panelists recently commented on how refreshing the Telia stores have become. I spoke to a number of people working in Telia stores as well as other parts of the organization, many expressed the excitement about the new Telia and their more interesting jobs. It is also acknowledged that much more has to be done and will be done to make the offerings more relevant and exciting for women customers. I think what’s happening is great.

I’m very pleased that our LA YIN products are now available at Telia’s two butiks in Stockholm: the flagship store at Kungsgatan and the relatively new store in a historical building on Norrlandsg. 2.