About INNI: From Yion's Perspective

Curious to know more about the story behind INNI? 

We catch up with Yion Lua, INNI’s Sales and Marketing Manager, to hear about her journey with INNI. 

So Yion, how did you first hear about INNI? I first heard about INNI through their Twitter and Instagram accounts. The technology behind the product sounded really interesting, and it made me want to find out more about it. I was so impressed by the product that I contacted the people who were behind INNI. By a stroke of luck, I was offered a job position in INNI, dealing with different aspects of marketing. 

INNI also joined a start-up competition called Start-Up@Singapore. Tell us about this competition. Start-Up@Singapore is a start-up challenge organized and supported by National University of Singapore (NUS) Entrepreneurship Society, NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, NUS Business School Alumni Association and NUS Business School. Having seen more than 3500 teams and 10,000 participants taking part in the past 14 years, S@S has established itself as a credible and competitive platform. It has helped countless entrepreneurs make the critical transition from paper to product. 

Could you share with us about INNI’s experience at Start-Up@Singapore? Start-up@Singapore came across as a great opportunity for INNI to increase its brand awareness, so we decided to give it a shot. One of the requirements for the competition was that we had to do up a business plan which had to include content like market research, financial reports, logo designing, market research, etc. I am proud to say that INNI managed to clinch the Infocomm Challenge runner-up award in Start-Up@Singapore 2014 and this has gained us a vast amount of awareness all over the world, especially in Singapore. Afterwards, many publishers and influencers contacted INNI for possible collaborations and partnerships. 

What did you learn as an individual from the competition? Just as it’s one thing to join a team, it’s quite another to perform as a team member. To put it simply, teams don’t work without teamwork. In INNI, we always believe in working as a team, and to feel driven by what we do. I was constantly motivated by my team members and leader to ensure that the scope of our project remained well defined throughout the course of the project. Whenever conflicts arise, we would always make sure to resolve it quickly and fairly. Assignment is shared fairly among our team members and the specific tasks were made clear at the start. After all, communication plays an important role for good teamwork. When there is good communication and goals and objectives are clearly articulated, work can be done very smoothly and efficiently. 

Before we end off, could you tell us what lies ahead for INNI? Right now, we are working very hard to increase awareness about nail wraps. We want customers to know that not only is it easy to put on, it also doesn’t have the strong, toxic smell most nail polishes have. Furthermore, the designs look much prettier than what nail polish can do most of the time. At the same time, we want to establish INNI nails as the brand leader in this market. What differentiates us from the other brands is that we offer customizability at affordable prices, and it works on many nail shapes and sizes. Even though we are a relatively small company now, we are confident that there will be a steady shift from nail polish to nail wraps. When that happens, our company will be at the forefront of this change.