That’s My Bag, Baby: Tycoon Kuok’s Daughter Hopes to Hook Asia on Secondhand Luxury

What can a billionaire’s daughter do to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming “daddy’s boss?” Sell used designer handbags online—for as much as $20,000 a pop.

Yen Kuok, the youngest child of Malaysian Chinese billionaire Robert Kuok, is launching Guiltless International Limited, a global site for secondhand luxury goods, in May.

Secondhand luxury websites are popular in the West but are still quite rare in Asia, largely because of the stigma over used personal goods. The 26-year-old Ms. Kuok believes the market has room to grow given Hong Kong’s sky-high housing prices and a boom in aspirational shoppers.

“No matter how wealthy she is, no woman turns down a good deal,” the billionaire’s daughter said over a dimsum meal of barbecued pork buns and stir-fried glutinous rice cakes.

Competition is heating up in this fast-growing niche. Auction house Christie’s introduced pre-owned handbags in Hong Kong in 2014. Alibaba Group Holding said in March it will spend at least 100 million yuan ($15.4 million) on the development of a digital flea market in China this year amid growing interest in its used-goods mobile app Xianyu, known as Idle Fish in English.

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Ms. Kuok said that about two years ago, she spoke about the concept of Guiltless with Alibaba chairman Jack Ma, who bought Hong Kong’s leading English language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, from Mr. Kuok last year.

Asked whether she may one day seek to sell her venture to Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, Ms. Kuok said her startup is self-funded and that she isn’t considering taking investments or selling the company at this stage.

ENLARGEThe Guiltless showroom. PHOTO: GUILTLESS

Ms. Kuok said she views Guiltless as the first step toward becoming someone her father would be proud of. In kindergarten, Ms. Kuok told her teacher that she wanted to be her dad’s boss because in her young eyes, her father represented the ultimate pinnacle of achievement and success. “What could be even better than that? His boss,” Ms. Kuok said.

“My papa isn’t tech savvy at all,” Ms. Kuok explained. “But because of the boom of Alibaba, Tencent and other technology companies, he became more open to the idea of ‘e-something.’

Guiltless is set up in the Hong Kong headquarters of Kerry Properties in North Point, a residential neighborhood. In her office and showroom sit dozens of Hermes bags, rows of designer clothing and even special-edition items, such as Dolce & Gabbana porcelain dolls selling for about $1,500 each and a World Cup limited-edition football made by Louis Vuitton.

She is selling designer brand clothing and leather goods at prices that are 20% to 60% of original prices. She buys some inventory from friends and brands. In some cases, she provides a marketplace for the seller and buyer.

Ms. Kuok says she developed an online shopping habit when she was living in the U.S. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a degree in international relations and worked as an investment banking summer analyst at JP Morgan New York.

After she returned to Asia, she found a lot of secondhand luxury websites didn’t take her things anymore, because they don’t do business in Asia. Ms. Kuok saw an opportunity and wanted to fill in the void.

Ms. Kuok started collecting Hermes bags about three years ago and now has amassed a formidable collection of about 100 Birkins and Kellys at Guiltless. A real Hermes 35cm Birkin bag should have exactly six stitches above the embossed logo, she explained, with the stitching tilted towards the right ever so slightly.

–Wei Gu. Follow her on Twitter @weigu.