Exploring Life & Business with Donnie Chen of Pallette Market

Today we’d like to introduce you to Donnie Chen.

Hi Donnie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a first-generation immigrant. My family moved from Taiwan when I was nine years old. I didn’t speak a word of English at the time, but 90’s rap music quickly became my English tutor. I still remember using a cassette recorder to record songs directly from the TV speaker. I would then put on my headphones and repeatedly click on “stop”, “rewind”, then “play”, in that order, to write down rap lyrics.

As I grew up, friends from different cultures opened my eyes to just how different cultures can be, yet at the same time just how similar we all are. Every culture is deeply rooted and blossomed from the love of “family” and “community”.

I’ve known Eiji for over 20 years, and we’ve been great friends since the start. Eiji is the “tech guy” at Pallette Market. He wasn’t always into coding, as his career started out in sales in the automotive and manufacturing industries. Eiji is a self-proclaimed introvert. He found always having to meet strict sales targets and talking to people really stressful and out of his comfort zone. He lost motivation in his career and in life in general. Luckily for him, he found coding. He quickly fell in love with every aspect of web development and was drawn to the idea of limitless creation when it came to making apps and the endless amount of things to learn.

I knew Eiji well, and our personalities fit together very well. But it wasn’t until Eiji found coding that our skillsets also complimented each other. I’ve always loved starting and building new businesses. This drive took me back to Taiwan, where I started, then sold, a group of restaurants that I built from scratch. I guess I can say, where Eiji loves building digital structures, I love building business structures.

When Covid-19 happened, all of a sudden I had some extra time on my hands. I connected with Eiji to catch up and quickly found myself pitching the idea to work on something together. After many brainstorming sessions and app ideations, we finally landed on Pallette! The idea came by chance. One day I really wanted to eat Jamaican jerk chicken, but because we were under lockdown, the only way to eat it is to cook it myself. Normally I’d just drive to my favorite Jamaican joint to pick it up, but now I needed to cook it myself, where do I start? I suddenly realized, if I’m having trouble looking for where to buy jerk chicken in the city, what about people living in the suburbs? Thus, Pallette Market was born!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
One of the earliest challenges we faced was the decision to build Pallette Market ourselves. Rather than using an “out-of-the-box” white-label SAAS marketplace platform. We knew exactly what functions and features we wanted to build for our users, and we couldn’t find a suitable SAAS platform. This decision has proved to be very challenging for a team of two founders. We needed to think of all of the logic behind each structure, function, and feature. We also needed to create our own algorithms. To this day, we are still constantly adding, improving, and fixing Pallette Market.

Another major challenge was the design of Pallette Market. How do we use design to stand out from other marketplaces yet at the same time be relatable to every culture? We found other marketplaces tend to use safer, more neutral colors, often using one accent color with one main background color. This wouldn’t work for Pallette, as every culture has its own favorite color. We tried every combination but couldn’t find colors that were relatable yet also bold enough to stand out. Then it dawned on me. If I’m walking down the street, how would I know I’m approaching a cultural neighborhood? What would I commonly see before I start to see store signs? Street art and graffiti. Graffiti used to be frowned upon but has since become a part of our culture. Street artists tell many stories using eclectic bold colors and brave strokes. We want Pallette Market to embody this essence of culture in its design theme. That is why we feel it is fitting to feature and accentuate street art from every culture throughout Pallette Market. We have also partnered with street artists to launch and display their art pieces on Pallette Market.

There have been many challenges, but every time we faced a challenge that completely drained our energy, we would receive supportive and positive feedback from users which then rejuvenates us!

As you know, we’re big fans of Pallette Market. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Pallette Market is a marketplace that makes it easy to discover and support products and brands from diverse cultures and backgrounds. It’s the online version of cultural neighborhoods such as Chinatown, Little Mexico, Black-owned businesses, Little India, etc.

When a person is often exposed to something, it’s more likely they will understand, appreciate, and support it. It’s when something is foreign that they may become fearful of it. For example, If you live in the city and products from other cultures are available, but there’s no one to show you how to appreciate them, you wouldn’t know where to start. This problem is even more pronounced if you live in the suburbs, where culturally diverse products are not easily accessible!

We want to make sharing knowledge and discovering new products easy. If there isn’t a middle ground to spark that connection, it will be much harder to bring people together. We want Pallette to be that middle ground.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love how multicultural this city is. I also love how I can go for authentic foods from all cultures right here in this city! Not only do we have authentic foods, but we also have fusion cuisines that just knock it out of the park! The ingenuity of second-generation immigrants developing bewildering works of art by combining their roots with their upbringing is just amazing!

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://www.pallettemarket.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pallettemarket/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pallettemarket
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/pallettemarket