Jie Gao: From luxury retail to opening the UK's first Huawei retail store

Many students come to an MBA from banking, consulting, or MNC backgrounds, but what about those that don’t? The Modern MBA podcast with Marie Kirwan and Kristen Rossi shares the stories of those transitioning from or using their MBAs in unorthodox MBA sectors including the arts, healthcare, not-for-profit, academia, and more.

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Transcript

The Modern MBA  1:16  
Today on the Modern MBA podcast we're speaking with Jie Gao who after career in luxury retail used her MBA to help the Chinese tech giant Huawei launched its first retail store in the UK. So would you kindly share your name, where you're from and where you did your MBA?

JIE
My name is Jie. You can also call me Jenny. I graduated from Warwick  in 2019.

The Modern MBA  1:52  
You're originally from China and you came to the UK about 10 years ago to do a Master's. And then you worked in luxury retail. Before doing your MBA, post MBA, you worked with a luxury couture fashion house. And most recently, you've opened the first Huawei store in the UK. Can you walk us through your career path to date?

JIE  2:13  
I came to the UK 10 years ago, deep my first Master, which was engineering, he was constantly you know, different than what I worked after the master degree. After the master I worked in do really like a retail focused part and worked there for seven years, build up the knowledge of the luxury business, understand a bit more from a consumer perspective, then I just realised, I do really need to recharge myself and really understand the business from a different level. Because when you start to deal with the end customer, you realise there are lots of things you you don't really understand properly, you can't really understand the decision making, why we do it this direction and everything. So that was the reason I went back to work and did my MBA started in 2018. After the MBA study, I had more understanding about the business, how it works from strategic level until really down to the operation level, which really make me made me had a different vision about what I did and what I wanted to do. So after I graduated, I joined reference, Su which is a couture house is relatively new in the control word. We asked the business as a client relations manager. With that job I got into more ecommerce site to understand how can we promote the brand How can we interact with the customer in a different way to really let them understand what is couture. Then I luckily one of my MBA connections connection introduced me to this to my current opportunity. It was actually the idea of opening the first Huawei which is a Chinese brand. The first retail store in the UK. Like I mentioned before the only had ecommerce in the UK for last 20 years. Now, I mean they the company was in the UK 20 years ago, but they only had ecommerce a few years back.  So now is really to have a real store give offer the customer real experience about what is Huawei? What are we doing? What's the products. So I just, you know, join took the opportunity started a new journey.

The Modern MBA 5:25  
And that's brilliant. And it's I think it's so interesting because years ago, we were in I think we were in Malaysia. I saw a big, big booth for Huawei. And it was only until you actually said, You're opening the first UK store that I realised that there wasn't an actual physical store in the UK, I just couldn't, there was you've kind of touched upon it already. But if you want to elaborate more, really on what, what made you decide to do an MBA? And also I think it's quite interesting to talk about how is it different than doing a traditional Master.

JIE  6:00  
If you compare with the normal Master, with MBA you more or less worked already, and you somehow knows your strengths and weakness. So when you come back to study, he will give you more focus, like you will know what are the part you need to work harder, what are the parts that you know, you are quite good at. And this part you can share with your syndicate group, etc. And the second part would be, I mean, probably because of the subject I started, because I studied engineering. When I first came to the UK, there were loads of individual works instead of you know, when we do the MBA, we had lots of syndicate group, we get to talk to different people have different experience, and this really opened my world. So I think this is the second difference. The third that say he will, I think more like really provide provided us a really good opportunity to explore more and no more lie. And you know, people doing this similar course, or you know, even we have lots of different projects across mixed group. Like it's not just the MBA, we had some event and some study together like case study to do with some undergrads or post grads. So I do think this is a great chance for me to see something that I have never seen before, to learn from people to learn from the event itself. So I think those are the three main differences. When we talk about why I came back to do a MBA, I think, for me, there were we talked about, I want to understand the business in a different level. And also, it was more about my, like, individual experience, because I had an engineering degree already, I just want to make sure that you know, I can see business in the business perspective, instead of you know, Formula One plus one equals two. Because this is completely different way of thinking, engineering used more detailed, very, you know, yes or no correct or wrong, that's from business perspective, you will train me in different thinking process. It can really give me a better understand in the working environment. Plus, all of my ex colleagues, I think they were all from Business School, very good, you know, French Business School, etc. So I think it was good for me to have a break and to recharge more.

The Modern MBA  9:27  
All right, so the last question for me, and then I'm going to hand it over to Marie. So we've kind of already touched upon this a little bit, but the MBA is really a transformative year. Can you walk us through the skills that it gave you that helped you stay resilient in 2020?

JIE  9:43  
I think first of all, I really find a way how to how to do self study. I think this is something I learned the most and I think this helped Last year to really be able to focus on myself doing all of my elearning. And everything I had to calculate like I had a rough, rough calculate calculation, I think I finished around 20 elearning. Last year. So it honestly really gave you the strength and you somehow you have, you need to, you know, talk to yourself and convince yourself, this is the good thing to do. And the ones, you know, yeah, you have the goal, and you set up a goal for yourself, and you just follow. To bonus in a way, I'm not saying I enjoyed the 2020. But I have achieved a lot in 2020. So I think throughout the whole MBA, that's the first thing. Second, he would be he taught me how to how to learn from different people, in the sense that we might come from completely different backgrounds and had completely opposite experience. But there are always something you could gain you could learn during a conversation or anything like that. I remember, while we were doing this study, there were some case study, and some of the vocabulary, I had no idea about what is it and I just, I just don't know, and I always have my dictionary open. And just to Google words, or, you know, translate, is really a way to notify me, you know, you need to be active listen. And you can always pick up on things that, you know, you didn't know, throughout the conversation and you know, get it later on, either, you know, Google the same time or, you know, write it down, noted, it really helped me a lot for my current role as well.

The Modern MBA  12:12  
It's really true about the about just sort of the the discipline and the the drive to learn that the MBA instils in you, I think I think after a year of just intensive learning every single day, it's almost almost after the MBA. I didn't I didn't do as many as many 14 courses as you did. But I did a few afterwards, just because I wanted to keep learning. And I thought, Well, you know what? I know, I couldn't do accounting and finance when I started the MBA, but I understood it at the end. So I can anything that comes my way if I really try. I probably didn't not be perfect at it, but I can I can understand it.

The Modern MBA  12:54  
Brilliant. Okay, cool. All right. So you actually kind of just touched on this a little bit talking about the desire to keep learning and how valuable that was in your new role. But what other skills do you think were really important in kind of making that jump from luxury to tech?

JIE
I don't think is about the industry because by the end of the day is still retail is just different goods before is luxury, now is fast consumer goods. For me, I've tried to link the similarity between those two jobs, and to, to really bring what I have learned from luxury into my current role. The reason being is first of all, I think eventually the retail gonna be all more personalised by the end of the day is the end user is the customer, they want something more tailored. The reason fast, fast consumer goods cannot afford that is because, you know, the margin is low. But we given the AI the data, the you know, the date, the big data, all those kind of tools we can apply and use. I believe the service when they can be tailored can be more personalised. So I started to put this concept into my current role to try to design a tailored customer journey and put this into the staff training as well. So I think that's, that's that's the first part. I try to find the similarity and with the different things, I guess, you know, there is no Not much. You just need to learn, you just take, you just need to learn gain in a very short period of time, because certainly is retail but you know, completely different industry, the way people calculate certain things that people communicate is different. So you have to really adopt very quickly and understand what is going on what are they looking for. But so from this part, the MBA really helped me a lot in terms of the operating design, operational process design, and really strategy make a stripe strategy making, like when you, when they give you this opportunity, you really need to think from layer by layer, what do you want to do? What's the goal, etc. And all of this, I have learned from MBA mainly from marketing and, you know, operation and also strategy management.

The Modern MBA  16:09  
And what are some of the challenges that you've faced in getting to this point, can you talk us through some of the challenges that you faced? 


JIE 
The challenges is really, at the moment, the COVID, we had the retail store opened on the 11th of December, and we only opened for nine days, then the EU, the UK going through a tear for lockdown. And it wasn't really ideal, like, you know, all the plan or the implementation was scheduled has to be stopped. And you have to adapt to the scenario, the situation in a very short period of time to come up with a solution. We either, you know, make redundancy with the whole retail team. Or if we want to keep them, we need to at least to manage to have a breakeven point. And with retail store itself, we don't have any online appearance, we didn't have any investment for e commerce. So we were really in a very tough situation. So going on digital was the only solution I can think of so we really quickly designed and tailored a new you know, ecommerce, but you know, online strategy, and restructured the whole retail team into semi marketing team and the e commerce team to really make sure that you know, at least we promote the store, we promote the brand in in all kinds of way we want, we were in forum, but we're in Facebook or in Instagram. So it was really challenging by not just doing the thing by also give the team the confidence because they were hired for retail job, how you can lead the team how you can, you know, ensure them that you know we can do better is it was the whole journey was a bit challenging. But now, you know, somehow after I think we worked on this very stressed for four months time, and now we can see a really really good improvement we have we reach Facebook, one post we can reach out to one 1500 people it was quite a huge achievement for us from you know from zero until now.

The Modern MBA  19:00  
So where do you go from here in terms of your career and your personal development? What are what are kind of your plans for the future?

JIE 19:08  
For me, I'd like to at the moment I will really focus on what am I doing and try to maybe open the second or the third store. And in the long term I Jumana is I developed some interest into consulting because I do find is very satisfying if you can really find the problem and giving gave a solid and thorough plan and strategy to deal with it and to improve the situation. I find that is really attractive. So I may also you know think about moving into consulting and so with the digital transformation. By the end of the day, I think is about consumer, I really want to help the consumer or the company to really promote the right item to the right people. So, customer can spend more money and company can earn more revenue. So I think there's something in the very in the long term I'd like to do.

The Modern MBA  20:29  
Yeah, absolutely. No, that sounds really exciting. And And so finally, what tips would you give to other people in your kind of situation, so either people coming to the UK, as international students, or perhaps people looking to MBAs who are looking to work in the in the retail sector.

JIE  20:52  
I do think, to come to the end to the MBA is quite important, at least for me, it opened lots of different doors for me. And I think if I had the chance to do it a bit earlier in my career, I choose that so maybe after works three to five years, that would be the ideal time I think to to do the MBA and come to the UK come to Warwick, I think is to study in the UK. I enjoyed it. I liked it. The environment, the people's mentality is something I quite like. And I think this matches my personality as well. And optimise your time if you come over to the UK, or any word to study, enjoy the view. But also, study keep yourself up. Keep yourself focused. 

The Modern MBA
Definitely.  I think it's I know from my time studying abroad, it's very easy to get kind of sucked into all the fun stuff.