| Soon Yu | |
| Birth Date: | 5 August 1965 |
| Birth Place: | Taiwan |
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Soon Yu (born August 5, 1965) is a Taiwanese-American speaker, writer and former adjunct professor at The New School's Parsons School of Design.[1] Yu is the founder of Gazoontite and the author of the book Iconic Advantage[2] [3] [4] and Friction[5] .
Yu was born in Taiwan and moved at age 3 to Davis, California, where his father was an agricultural geneticist.[6] Soon received his BS in electrical engineering from the University of California, Davis in 1988[7] and his MBA from Stanford University in 1993.[8]
Soon served as the global VP of innovation and as a corporate officer for VF Corporation from 2010 to 2016.[9] [10] [11] Prior to working at VF Corporation, he has also worked at The Clorox Company[12] He left his management position at Clorox to pursue a sales associate position at Crate & Barrel, taking an 85% pay cut and earning $5/hour to gain retail experience.[13] He has also held positions as an engineer with Advanced Micro Devices, an associate consultant with Bain & Company,[14] general manager at Chiquita Brands International,[15] and chief marketing officer at SafeWeb.[16]
In 1998, Yu founded Gazoontite, a retailer of allergy and asthma related products.[17] [18] [19] It was one of the first retail/eCommerce companies to promote and build its business model around the multi-channel shopping environment.[20] Two years after its launch, The Wall Street Journal identified Gazoontite as the “poster child of Web-era excess and stupidity”, however, in the process Yu set the tone for what is now referred to as omni-channel retailing.
His book, Friction: Adding Value By Making People Work For It won the 2022 NYC Big Book Award in Sales & Marketing.[21] His book, Iconic Advantage, won the 2019 Axiom Business Book Award in Advertising / Marketing / PR / Event Planning. [22]
Books