Today’s Notable Young Entrepreneurs are Luca Daniel, Mario Christian, and Heng Tang, who are using innovative technologies to craft luxury jewelry that’s never been introduced before in the Canadian market. We caught up with them to find out what inspired their business and what advice they would share with other young professionals…
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WORK
1. Describe what you do in less than 140 characters. Go.
We design beautiful, innovative, luxury jewelry using cutting-edge 3D printing and digital fabrication techniques, and we support charities that we care about.
2. What was the inspiration for your career route?
Coming from the world of architecture, you’re always looking to make things better, more functional, and more beautiful, and to do your best with as little of an environmental footprint as possible. We started DCT to re-invent the way jewelry was made and offer an experience like nothing people have seen before in the luxury jewelry market.
We saw that there was a huge opportunity to translate our expertise in design to a medium that hasn’t seen too much innovation in the last century.
3. What is the most memorable milestone in your career so far?
The most memorable milestone for us was when we launched or brand on The Shopping Channel (TSC), then landed a partnership with Holt Renfrew shortly thereafter. On TSC, our first show was a dedicated feature on our brand and it was pretty exhilarating to be live on national television for a full hour. Lots of fun.
4. Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years?
Hopefully we’re still designing innovative products and doing what we love. Jewelry is just one medium that interests us and our goal is to build a comprehensive design firm, not just a jewelry brand.
5. Do you have any advice for other young professionals?
Everyone works differently, so make mistakes, learn about yourself, and try to surround yourself with people that encourage you. Also, don’t try and do things alone. Look for help when needed. Ego is a poisonous thing.
You need to care about what you’re doing, put LOTS of hours into your craft, and have uncompromised integrity. If you can check off all those boxes, you’ll be in a good place.
6. What is one major challenge that you’ve had to overcome in your career? How did you overcome it?
Our biggest struggle was having to actually build a commercial business. Design is fun and it comes second nature to us, running a business doesn’t. Translating a passion into a profitable brand takes a lot of work and takes courage to move forward from a lot of failure.
7. What does the word notable mean to you?
Notable is doing something that excites you and inspiring others to do that same.
PLAY
1. Where is your favourite place to wine/ dine in your city and why?
Salt on Ossington is absolutely amazing, both for dining and drinks. It’s small and still very under the radar, and their seafood dishes are out of this world. Highly recommend the Yellowfin Tuna Tiradito, Grilled Octopus, and the Lobster Papardelle.
2. What’s the most visited website on your Internet browser? The most played song on your phone?
TechCrunch. Easily.
Billy Joel, Downeaster Alexa.
3. Who’s one person you think everyone should be following on social media?
Bill Nye the Science Guy.
4. What’s your favourite country to visit and why? And what’s the next one you plan on travelling to?
We left our hearts in Greece many years ago and we’ve never really gotten them back. It’s the perfect and most beautiful destination. We’re already booked for Croatia in a few months.
5. What gives you the greatest FOMO?
We’re a pretty tight-knit group. If one of us isn’t able to make it to something the rest of our team is attending, we get pretty annoyed!
6. What’s your guiltiest pleasure?
Gummy candy.
7. What’s something you wish you didn’t spend so much money on? What’s something you wish you spent more on?
We wish we spent less money on office gadgets and more money on eating healthy!
8. And finally, what does success look like to you? Work, play, or otherwise…
Success is being genuinely happy, whatever you do in life. That’s rare.
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