Campus Digest

Mark Siu: Turning failure into fuel for success

14 Oct 2024

In a world where success is often glorified, it is important to remember that failure is an inevitable part of the journey.

Mr Mark Siu, an alumnus of the Department of Computer Science, has emerged as a successful entrepreneur through persevering in the face of both failures and successes. Starting as a junior employee at a corporate, Mark made a bold decision to leave a stable job and founded his own security solutions start-up, ETG Tagging Solutions Limited (now known as ETG Holdings Limited), which has become a leading pioneer in its field. He credits much of his success to valuable life lessons learned from setbacks and challenges along the way.

Dare to innovate

With a view of life as an ongoing contest of wins and losses, Mark took initial failures in stride when first establishing his business. Acquiring new clients for a new company was challenging, and he recalled going door-to-door to promote his business and being rejected. “Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, and some others may run faster than us. When I fail, my self-reflection is a source of motivation,” he says. 

Rather than dwelling on losses, he used them as motivation to improve. Realising the need to innovate ahead of its peers, he soon took his business into retail security and became the first company in Hong Kong to introduce the open-sell retail environment of smartphones, which has since transformed people’s purchasing experience.

Mark believes in celebrating small wins, noting that “10 small achievements are just as vital as a big accomplishment.” By setting periodic goals for himself to realise his long-term business plan, he has cultivated a sense of progress and maintain his motivation.

This approach, combined with the desire to drive innovation, has served him well in his business endeavours. His company introduced solutions for open merchandising to Hong Kong in 2009 and has since assisted more than a thousand retail shops to set up intelligence-based loss prevention systems. More recently, the firm has provided people counting solution that helps various sectors improve operational efficiency. 

Learning from the “big data” in life

While the COVID-19 pandemic has widely impacted businesses around the world, ETG has shown exceptional resilience in overcoming the obstacles. It utilised the people counting solution to help retailers, schools and organisations to manage occupancy capacity for keeping social distance and thereby protecting public health.

For Mark, the key to success is seizing opportunities and leveraging one’s strengths. He says: “Equip ourselves, and victory is just a matter of time.” With the right preparation and persistence, he has led his company to rise above the challenges. Through failures and successes large and small, he sees each experience enriching his pool of “big data” of the knowledge and wisdom he has accumulated. It is through continually learning from this “big data” that he can find his edge and thrive.

Mark credits his Computer Science education at HKBU with fostering an understanding of the importance of technology in today’s fast-paced world, and he believes people are the greatest asset in making the most out of using digital tools. To nurture future talent, he has supported HKBU students in participating in the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp where they learnt entrepreneurship and innovation skills. In addition, he shared his entrepreneurial journey and experience with HKBU students, inspiring them to dream big and grasp opportunities to fulfil their career aspirations.

A sports enthusiast with a passion for football, he uses an analogy to encourage young people. He says: “May my continual recoveries from ‘repeated failures’ be a kind of encouragement to all fellow students. Giving young people the room to grow is what makes a society progress, so get on the field and get ready to score!”