While Jasmine Ting and Mandy Cai, cofounders of The VIA Space, have only been working together since early 2016, this concept has been brewing in Ting’s mind for a few years. Combining her experience on both the business and creative sides in starting her fashion label Arete, and Cai’s expertise in digital marketing, the duo’s ‘lifestyle curation platform’ opened its doors in July.
Each season, The VIA Space rolls out a new theme and Ting and Cai invite brands with similar mindsets to this cross-functional space to host events and showcase their products or services to engage their target audience and use this opportunity to encourage crossover collaborations.
“As a brand, you can spend a lot of time talking about yourself, but that’s not the best way to get the message across,” Ting says, speaking from her own experience of founding Arete. She believes that a better way to communicate its intrinsic value is to create alliances with other brands. This collective spirit of uniting likeminded brands and individuals is exactly what Ting and Cai want to achieve at The VIA Space.
For the ‘Flourish’ theme this summer, they are working with 15 different labels, such as fitness brands GuavaPass and Olive Branch and Shanghai-based jewelry designers Angie Wu (Awu) and Julie Pang (Okra). Ting equates the experience of visiting The VIA Space to walking through an art gallery, where it’s all about the experience of unraveling the journey. 
From the Arete pieces at the showroom near the front door to the Jova all-natural scented candles and Coco-Mat furniture in the main space, there’s a cohesive overarching concept that celebrates what Ting describes as an “international modern Asian lifestyle,” and an East meets West mentality that speaks to an internationally-minded audience.
Ting tells us that the space’s next theme will build upon ‘Flourish.’ She also teases that the next iteration of The VIA Space may extend beyond its current home on Yan’an Xi Lu into something bigger and better. Here’s hoping that the concept will blossom across the city.
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Photos by Derryck Menere
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