Branding
Qian Hu’s corporate logo is that of a Chinese high fin banded shark (Myxocyprinus asiaticus), or what the company commonly refers to as a high-fin loach.
The story behind their use of the high-fin loach as their mascot comes not long after the Yap family faced the major setback of having lost their entire crop of guppies to the massive flood in 1989. In an attempt to get the business going again, Qian Hu invested its money in raising high-fin loaches. These fishes, at the time, cost SGD 100 to 200 each for a small specimen and the Yap family had been trying to bring the fish up to the desirable market size in order to sell them at a premium. However, tragedy struck whilst they expanded their premises. The move had caused a ‘shocking wave’ that travelled through the tanks of fish, subsequently killing all the high-fin loaches over a mere span of two to three days. This ‘shocking wave’, was in fact the vibrations given off by the power tools used to install new fish tanks. The family had not known that he fish happened to be highly sensitive to these vibrations. Once again, they were left with nothing but two grim lessons. As Kenny Yap recites time and again in his interviews, the lessons learnt were to not “put all your eggs in one basket” and to remember the importance of knowing a product well before investing in it. Hence, their mascot serves as a reminder to them of the mistakes they had made and to never make the same ones again.
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