Tatler Home Magazine Interview [Startek]

Full Report:

Speaking about what first led her into entrepreneurship, Startek's Winifred Chung lit up and said, "It gave me the feeling of technology being fully integrated into everyday life. I was truly drawn to this product from the very beginning." She recalled that when she first entered the upstream side of the smart glass industry, the company's meeting room had an oversized smart glass panel installed for use as a whiteboard. With a touch, it would instantly turn transparent. From that moment on, she fell in love with the technology at first sight, and ten years later she made the bold decision to found Startek.

Bringing Art into Everyday Life

Stepping into Startek's display space feels almost like entering an art gallery. Instead of following the building materials industry's usual functionality-first display style, the brand invited a rising illustrator known for ecological art to create the visual presentation. Through detailed illustration and smart glass technology, special protected Taiwanese species such as Taiwan cypress, the Taiwan blue magpie, and the leopard cat appear within shifting light and shadow. This not only gives visitors an immersive experience, but also reveals the brand's commitment to sustainability.

Chung recalled traveling in different places and noticing that whether it was a three-year-old child or an eighty-year-old elder, visiting a museum felt as natural as making a trip to PX Mart. After founding Startek, she frequently collaborated with interior designers. Beyond taking on the technical challenges proposed by designers, she came to feel that compared with technological innovation alone, artistic expression is better able to reveal different dimensions and layers of life. "A shift in light and shadow, a touch of color, all of these are expressions of art. I hope to reflect the essence of human life through art."

Creating Experiences That Make Customers Say WOW

Looking across the market, people's expectations of life have long moved beyond simply "having a place to live." Consumers are paying increasing attention to the quality of everyday life, and that is precisely why Chung set out to build a brand that stands apart. To create deeper dialogue with consumers, she compares her brand to Starbucks: both sell products, but through a different format they create a completely different experience. "Instead of putting coffee beans in burlap sacks and selling them by weight, what I most want to create is a peak experience, helping customers arrive at solutions they would never have imagined on their own." She deliberately moved away from the mindset of an upstream manufacturer and built a gallery-like, curated retail experience. "An upstream mindset is truly very different from channel development. You would never ask a coffee bean factory to look like Starbucks." This strategy allows Startek not only to sell building materials, but also to actively expand the possibilities of smart glass. In Taiwan, where living spaces are often compact, Startek's self-developed folding wall systems, transparent wardrobes, screens, and other smart-glass-based applications are all eye-opening.

Building a Sense of Alliance

Chung majored in both law and business in college and later earned two master's degrees. She jokes that she "set aside her martial arts" when she entered this field. While others changed into suits and entered industries with starting salaries several times higher than hers, she jumped into this one instead. She is candid about the fact that, as a woman and an outsider at the beginning, communication with tradespeople in the building materials and interior renovation world was not easy. "In this kind of arena, people can tell whether you have the right presence, and you have to build a sense of alliance with the master craftsmen." She also found that if she wanted smooth communication, she had to speak in the same language and adopt the same way of conversing in order to build trust. "I have always felt that I can learn from them. Once you spend time together and build rapport, you often gain unexpected rewards, because they will start revealing some of the finer details of their craft."

Technology Should Feel as Natural as Breathing

Her experiences communicating with veteran craftsmen in traditional industries, her belief that technology should make life more convenient, and her development of an entirely new business model through art curation all reveal Chung's blend of rationality and romance as a founder. At the end of the interview, when asked how she defines technology, she said emotionally, "Technology should be like breathing. You should not have to do anything deliberately. It should simply exist naturally." Perhaps that is also the truest expression of how she has always felt about the smart glass technology that captivated her at first sight.