Women are making their marks in every business sector around the world. The amount of their dedication and commitment has helped them overcome many obstacles and become an inspiration for everyone. Their remarkable stories exemplify what it takes to be successful. One such exemplary leadership is displayed by Chelsea Chen, founder and CEO of Gloture, a crowd funding support and digital marketing services company. Chelsea ran a successful Taobao online shop in 2009 while she was still finishing her undergraduate degree in chemistry. It was her first taste of business, and soon after three years, she had a solid understanding of the importance of marketing and strategy to run a successful e-commerce site. Her early career experience was in the finance world, working for Citibank. Later, Chelsea came to Japan from China to graduate school and in search of new opportunities. After completing her master’s degree, she realized her passion was to work with global organizations, especially those that are at the forefront of technology. “While I do not have a formal background in technology, I am attracted to all things tech and wanted to build a community around that,” says Chelsea. When asked why she chose to start a company in Japan, Chelsea explains, “Japan is a beautiful country, and there are a lot of opportunities for businesses wishing to expand in APAC. That’s why I started Gloture in Japan to pursue my passion in tech.”Driven by Passion and Commitment to Create Value
Chelsea Chen
founder & CEO, GlotureBeing a female in the male-dominated world presents both challenges and opportunities. Chelsea started Gloture when she was 25 years. Initially, she started her business in the B2B space and during the time she didn’t think of it as a big deal as it was pretty normal in China. However, Chelsea learned that being a young female, a foreigner with no connections was very difficult to survive in Japan. After a couple of small successes and big failures, she realized that she can’t change the environment and needed to change her way of doing business. Accordingly, she dropped everything and started over from scratch and turned the keywords to speedy, flexible, international, and local and succeeded. She shares, “I learned shifting the angle is very important, we can always turn disadvantage to advantage by taking some action.”
Chelsea sets her organization apart by focusing on flexibility. While Traditional PR marketing agencies are traditionally expensive and very rigid in their form of a formal working style, Gloture is fast, flexible, and aims to have fun. The company has an excellent connection with the local Japanese media where its clients are featured numerous times in TV, print, and tier 1 and 2 online publications. It also has a diverse customer base that includes small startups to organizations with over 60K+ employees, making Gloture well versed in anticipation of customers’ needs.
Centrally located at the heart of Roppongi Tokyo, the company gets energy from the global metropolis. With staff from all around the world, Malaysia, Philippines, USA, Russia, China, and Japan, while all are from a diverse background, they shared a passion for gadgets, innovation, and international business. The company works with international clients and helps them bring their products and services to the APAC.
“We help our customers Japanize their products and services, with translations, content development, and in some cases even sell their products on our e-commerce platform,” explains Chelsea. She believes that her mission is to create an exciting playground that everyone enjoys and carries a vision to color the world and drive the future.
She further adds that she loves working in Japan because of the tradition and respect of the country, where some of the world’s oldest and respected organizations are present. She also acknowledges the opportunities for new businesses in Japan. Interestingly, Chelsea mentions that the only area that could use improvement is the banking system and some of the government procedures where still many of the forms are still paper-based and is required to be chopped with a seal.
Learning Something New Each Day and Growing
As a young professional, Chelsea Chen always knew her many diverse skills and talents would come together to help her achieve something big. According to her, success is learning something new every day, always moving forward, and doing exciting things. The avid entrepreneur plans to launch lifestyle technologies, a sub-brand of Gloture. “I want us to produce and promote the most innovative brands and be a creative maker as well as deliver more exciting products to the world. I want everyone to think Gloture is the coolest company for working for,” Chelsea concludes.