KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian shoe designer Christy Ng hopes to reach more global customers with the launch of a 3D shoe design engine by the middle of this year.
Ng, the founder of Christy Ng Sdn Bhd, said currently foreign customers, mainly from the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and Canada, make up 40 per cent of the total customer base.
“We expect by next year, our foreign customers will overtake the portion of our local customer base, which currently stands at 60 per cent of our total customer base,” she told Bernama.
Ng said the shoe design engine, which will be launched on its website www.christyng.com, will enable customers to choose, design and decorate their own shoes.
“Customers can choose what kind of shoes they prefer and design them using the material and colour that they choose, and the best part is they can see how the shoes look like in 3D before they commission us to make the shoes.
“This will be exciting as all this while we have been selling custom-made shoes,” she said.
Ng said the idea for the shoe design engine came from a customer who requested tailor-made shoes from her.
“We believe when this comes alive by the middle of this year, we foresee a huge growth as it will be the first of its kind in Malaysia,” she said.
On sales growth, Ng said the company, which started as a hobby in July 2010, saw a huge leap in sales from RM1,000 a month to between RM30,000 and RM50,000 monthly, mostly driven by overseas purchases.
“In five years’ time, we hope to grow our sales to a much greater height with a bigger proportion of sales coming from countries like the US, UK and Canada, to support our exponential growth,” she said, adding that the company sells up to 600 pairs monthly.
Ng recently won the inaugural Alliance Bank Bizsmart SME Innovation Challenge 2013, bagging RM250,000 for her business expansion.
“This competition really helped us as it gave people from outside the country some sort of impression of our business.
“With the cash injection coming in, we plan to use the money wisely such as creating the shoe design engine and getting more overseas sales and penetrating more markets,” she said, adding that all the company’s shoes are locally made. — BERNAMA