Why I Founded the Orange Bay University - From the CEO of Luxe.CO, Alicia Yu

From the beginning, our vision for Luxe.Co has differed from that of a regular media outlet. Over the past three years, by leveraging professional content, solid business cases and expansive databases, Luxe.Co has connected with the best start-ups, investors, entrepreneurs and talents in the luxury, fashion and lifestyle industries around the world, promoting their development and growth.

As the founder of Luxe.Co, the need for an ‘education’ product had come to my attention. For mid- to high-end consumer products, the road to becoming mature companies and brands is long and challenging. At the centre of this journey are the people.

Though the consumer market of China is vast, there are few global-standard Chinese brands. The fashion and lifestyle industries in China are still in the early stages of development, brewing and bubbling, but still only closing in on the boiling point. The production of talent is the biggest hold-up.

During our interactions and communications with investors, startups and entrepreneurs in the fashion field, we found that the industry is in dire need of systematic, profound and focused business education.

Investors focused on emerging consumer products mostly have technology and traditional consumer product backgrounds. To be successful, they need to learn how business works in and the development cycles behind the global mid- to high-end consumer industry, whose core driver is top-quality brands.

The active founders of new brands, though equipped with craftsmanship, are often quite inexperienced when it comes to ensuring that their newly founded enterprises flourish, and do not have the know-how to put together a skilled team able to cope with the ever-changing consumer market and competition.

On the other hand, many traditional consumer goods companies have solid financial and industry resources, yet still have much to learn from the history and growth patterns of Western brands. They are looking for breakthroughs and innovations, while adapting to the increasingly globalised purchasing behaviours and tastes of the new generation of consumers.

Until now, the clear need for business education for these groups has not been met.

While MBA programmes offer systematic management training, they do not study the specifics of different areas such as the fashion and lifestyle industries. Equally, European luxury brand management programmes mainly train management professionals for large Western luxury corporations, rarely touching on entrepreneurship and hands-on investment practices. Therefore, they don’t quite meet China’s needs in terms of talent development.

At the regional and final competitions of InnoBrand and at the annual Global Fashion and Investment Forum, everyone who wishes to make an impact in the fashion industry, from participants, guests and judges to members of the audience, expressed an immense interest in education opportunities.

For many of these investors, entrpreneurs and managers Luxe.CO has served as a dynamic textbook, helping to open their eyes, to learn more and to find inspiration. Luxe.CO is used as a reliable reference point and guidebook for industry research, starting up businesses and making investment decisions.

Thus, we decided to upgrade this intangible classroom, and Luxe.CO’s Orange Bay University was born. This is the world’s first MBA academy for fashion and startups.

We believe in nurturing top-grade leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and management personnel via highly intensive and rigorous educational programmes.

To achieve this goal, we have to see the best in everyone. We cannot be bound by convention and must aim for expertise rather than breadth of knowledge.

The Orange Bay University is a groundbreaker in global fashion business education. Achieving a diploma is not the goal. Rather than building an altar where students are baptised by industry saints, we hope to construct a brand new curriculum that is based on the world’s best business case studies, that closely ties together entrepreneurship and hands-on practice in the fashion and lifestyle industries, and that provides precious opportunities for intensive learning.

At the Orange Bay University, 60 top fashion business case studies are prepared every semester by Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, several top European business schools and the education team of Luxe.CO. These cover the areas of luxury, new retail, independent designers, jewellery, beauty, fitness, home furnishings, gourmet cuisine, healthy living, the fashion media, boutique hotels and more. Over the course of six months, on three days a month, Orange Bay University’s intensive programme takes students into a world where fashion, business, technology, the humanities, design, art and finance collide and converge.

Outside the classroom, 30 mandatory books and a vast amount of other reading materials are assigned. Students are taken to visit major fashion-industry institutions as well as fashion capitals including London, Paris, New York, Milan and Tokyo.

Our faculty is made up of industry elites who have both foresight and a willingness to share. Our students, judging from the first round of admissions, are mostly young investors and entrepreneurs interested in the fashion industry. At the same time, we welcome management professionals, art-school graduates wishing to receive formal business training, and business graduates hoping to acquire fashion-industry knowledge and skills, as well as those who love fashion and are eager to engage in in-depth, cross-disciplinary learning.

We promote life-long learning. It is our hope that the Orange Bay University could truly become a port from where fashion entrepreneurs set sail, an incubator where fashion investors grow, and a community where fashion and business leaders and newcomers alike can learn and share together.While the road ahead is long, we sincerely wish to walk alongside those who share our ideals and aim to make the Orange Bay University the “Harvard Business School” of the global fashion industry.

To learn more about the curriculum, application process and faculty of The Orange Bay University, please visit orangebay.org .