She brought in a team of research and development experts from the UK, poured millions of dollars into research, and established a new retail brand, Innotier, the following year.
Innotier’s products, which include masks, clothes and bed sheets, can inhibit and eliminate 99 per cent of the Covid-19 virus immediately upon contact, and the mask can last for up to 200 washes, she said.
Lam claims that customers do not need to wash the mask every day and that it can be worn for almost four years.
She opened her first pop-up store in Shanghai this month and has been exploring opportunities to cooperate with Saudi Arabia’s health authorities to bring her products to the Middle East.
Last week, executives from the Future Investment Initiative Institute, also known as the FII Institute, came to visit her shop in Sheung Wan to gain a better understanding of her products. FII is a non-profit organisation run by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund.
The technology behind Lam’s product involves the release of silver ions from the fibres. The positively charged ions are released in the presence of respiratory moisture and act to eliminate viruses and bacteria on the surface of the fabrics, according to Lam.
Silver has been used for centuries in medicine to prevent infection, reduce inflammation and kill bacteria.
Although many silver ion products claim to block the coronavirus, Lam’s have been approved by international institutions such as SGS, one of the world’s leading inspection, verification and certification organisations.
Lam’s background is in the AML Group, a gloves maker co-founded in 1963 by her father, Frank Lam-Chi-kuen, and Edward Cheng Wing-chung.
By the early 2010s, AML had sales of over HK$1 billion and counted major brands such as J. Crew, Gap and Nike as clients. It was churning out 40 million pairs of gloves from 20 production bases in China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Cambodia.
Lam joined her father’s company after graduating from the University of Toronto in 1996 and was the managing director before it shut down when Cheng and the Lam family parted ways. She dabbled in a few business ventures before setting up her own manufacturing business, Julius Group, in 2016.
The establishment of Innotier has earned Lam several awards, including Sustainability Leader of the Year and the Hong Kong Sustainability Award from the Hong Kong Management Association.
“It is worth noting that masks take up to 450 years to degrade in the sea, and Innotier’s commitment to protecting the environment while doing business is commendable,” she said.
