Jeffrey Li

Strong demand for Japanese anime, comics, and games did not automatically make a local exhibition viable. Curation and production costs, venue availability, and rent made individual launches expensive. We developed touring exhibitions to share development costs across markets. The company’s One Piece exhibition was staged 10 times.

I built AI-assisted models to estimate patronage by country, using comic circulation, fanbase estimates, and social-media and fan-page audiences alongside our ticket sales, marketing response, and merchandise data. These estimates informed my recommendations on exhibition size and commercial strategy.

Our working formats ranged from larger ticket-led experiences above 10,000 sq ft to compact exhibitions below 3,000 sq ft. I advocated downsizing niche titles and putting more emphasis on exclusive merchandise and repeat visits, matching the investment to the audience in each market.

I negotiated the first independent INCUBASE Arena location in Hong Kong and its commercial model. A consistent venue gave us reusable exhibition infrastructure, a showroom, and a place to develop and test new experiences.

As a team, we iterated designs to reduce the exhibits that needed transporting, favoring easy-to-ship components and easier-to-fabricate setups—such as projection mapping in place of large shipped statues. Local partners brought venue access and market expertise, helping lower production, management, and operating costs while we concentrated on curation and development.

Reusing infrastructure could make a permanent Arena more efficient over time than repeated pop-ups. But rent and staffing continued between events: the model needed meaningful cost savings and sustained interest in successive IPs at the same location.

After modeling a longer-term profit and loss forecast, I advised against a full Arena rollout across Asia without demonstrated sustainability, a clear cost advantage, or guaranteed local-partner resources. Some markets underperformed. That reinforced the need to test each location’s economics and repeat demand before expanding.

Giveco began with a familiar difficulty: finding a warm, personal gift for someone you care about, from everyday occasions to festivals. Flowers can be fleeting, novelty gifts can go unused, and luxury goods can be too expensive. I saw room for thoughtful gifts that people would want to keep, packaged and delivered ready to give.

The need was to turn a feeling into something tangible without making the giver design a product from scratch. Predefined designs offered a starting point; a name or a few words made the gift personal. The buyer also needed to see what they were ordering and know that packaging and delivery were taken care of.

I developed Giveco as an online gifting service with a broad range of customizable products, including licensed-IP gifts. Customers chose a product and a predefined design, added their own text, and saw an instant online preview before ordering.

We handled personalization, gift packaging, and delivery. The preview made the chosen message and design visible before purchase; the packaging carried that care through to the recipient. I managed sourcing, merchandising, marketing, inventory, and fulfillment as the business grew across the online store and three Hong Kong shops.

The product decision was to make personalization simple while keeping the service practical to run. Predefined designs gave customers room to express themselves within a repeatable production process. Product variety, customization, stock, and fulfillment all had to work together.

I built Excel VBA tools for inventory and replenishment. Running the business taught me how closely the customer experience depended on operations: inventory tied up cash, small orders pressured margins, and more advertising did not guarantee proportionate growth.