Priyanka Sharma

consultpriyanka1@gmail.com

CHINA, a land of history and culture, is also home to pandas and paradise for food lovers.

The country, especially a city like Shenzhen with its thousands of restaurants offering not only cuisine from different provinces of China but from around the world, is capable of making a foodie out of the least food enthusiast.

And that is exactly what happened to beautician and hairstylist, Leanne Coop, who wouldn’t in a million years have imagined herself working in the food and beverages industry. She found herself being pulled into the scrumptious industry in China.

Leanne had been working in the cosmetics and skincare industry in her home city of Manchester for over four years and even though she was quite good at what she did, she found herself wanting and searching for something more.

Her friends kept suggesting that she go to China, especially Shenzhen, because that’s where things were happening. In 2013, Leanne finally gave in to the curiosity roused by their constant suggestions and came to Shenzhen for the first time.

For the first year, in order to find her footing in a new city on literally the other side the world, Leanne did what almost every foreigner does in China — she taught English. One year was as long as she could take it. Teaching wasn’t for her.

In 2014, Leanne met two business partners and they started organizing style workshops. After a year of working together, they realized that all three of their visions were no longer coinciding and parted ways.

Leanne continued to organize make-up and hairstyling tutorials, but now her courses were more personalized to an individual’s style and personality. This would be as close as she would get to realizing one of her earlier dreams of owning a salon. Unknowingly, she was also learning a lot about marketing and branding oneself in the Chinese market.

Come 2016, Leanne met a corporate English trainer, identified as Dane, who brought her out of her comfort zone.

Leanne believes that our dreams and aspirations do evolve and should evolve with us. As a kid, one wants to be a ninja and it’s perfectly reasonable, but then comes high school, and that dream evolves into an aspiration to make video games with ninjas, which makes perfect sense as well, and by the time they graduate from school and find their footing in the real world, they end up making sketches or animations with fighters and wrestlers.

Just because we didn’t end up fighting on rooftops clad completely in back, doesn’t mean we gave up on our dream. As we matured we changed with time, as did our dream.

So, in 2017, when Dane suggested to provide marketing services specifically for restaurants in Shenzhen, being a people’s person, Leanne didn’t hesitate and together they started Crafty marketing.

As time passed, Leanne and Dane’s relationship evolved into something more than friendship. She didn’t want to mix her professional and personal life and was also itching to create something of her own.

The idea came from the dozens of messages she would get in a day from people asking for restaurant suggestions, her feedback on their food and daily discount offers.

“I realized there wasn’t a common platform for restaurants and their customers to reach one another,” said Leanne.

In the fall of 2018, Leanne decided to fill that void by creating 88HAHA, literally meaning lucky-lucky, happy-happy, a bilingual WeChat mini program with listings of restaurants in Shenzhen.

“We initially planned for a website or an app, but China demands something more accessible, so we decided to rather go with a WeChat mini program,” explained Leanne.

88HAHA, scheduled to go live Jan. 1, is a search and discover directory of restaurants in Shenzhen, where restaurants can create their own page and manage it however they want for free. Customers can search for restaurants based on location, cuisine, pricing and customer reviews.

88HAHA will help restaurants by providing them data analysis on their customers and accordingly providing them customized marketing services.

Along with the basic information, customers will also be able to find the location pins, check the menu and even call the restaurant with a simple click in the mini-program.

The bilingual aspect of the mini-program will make sure that the flow of information is from both local and expat customers and restaurant owners alike.

The launch of 88HAHA is going to make life so much easier and dinners so much more delicious.

When she’s not visiting and reviewing restaurants, Leanne spends her free time connecting with her friends and acquaintances over her favorite app, WeChat, while enjoying a glass of her favorite drink, red wine.

A delightful person to meet, Leanne recently moved to Bao’an and plans on staying there for a long time, as she loves the open spaces, affordable sizeable apartments, green surroundings and, foremost, the Bao’an community.