INLUSTRIS was founded by Fuxiao Bai / 白拂晓, a Chinese American storyteller, dreamer, and builder. Born in Gansu, China, and having lived and grown up on three continents (China, UK, USA) and ten cities over the course of his life, Fuxiao brings a Chinese/Asian Diaspora as well as Western perspective to his work and storytelling.
Tell us about yourself—personal and professional background.
I’ve been a visual artist all my life, always loved drawing and doodling as a kid and eventually majored in Studio Art in undergrad, which was highly unusual for a 1st generation Chinese kid in the 2000s.
I shifted focus towards writing and creative direction while in film school at the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA) because I realized the kinds of things I wanted to do required leading creative teams rather than doing everything by myself. And so I spent almost a decade in the Hollywood system building up my skills and collaborating with a wide range of artists and designers. Even though I wasn’t able to land an “industry job” during those years, I was able to spot the limits and shortcomings of Hollywood and the Western cultural sphere as a whole—especially its fast diminishing relevance to the world’s largest consumer base in the Asia Pacific.
This became painfully clear following a work trip to China in 2016, where I worked on several film projects in Beijing and Inner Mongolia. After multiple collaborations in LA with Chinese filmmakers and production companies, I realized just how much untapped potential lay in creating and developing original entertainment/transmedia franchises and consumer brands that intelligently incorporated East Asian culture with Hollywood blockbuster polish—a potential that Hollywood has yet to reach because of its inherent insularity, nepotism, and systemic arrogance.
There is a massive widening gap between what the global Asia Pacific audience is ready for and what Hollywood Western cultural brands are able to actually deliver—and this is where I feel the Asian Diaspora can plant our own freestanding pillar and bring out our best directly to that consumer base, but first we must build the companies and creative infrastructure to make this possible.
What led you to found INLUSTRIS?
That’s a long and winding story, but here were the major decision points for me:
My chief motivator was originally to create more and better representation for Asians in entertainment and fashion/apparel, so that Asian Americans could see ourselves reflected in fully humanized leading roles, as well as desired faces representing our own culture and artistic traditions, especially in fashion/lifestyle brands.
Over the past few years, with Asia rising to become the largest consumer base on Earth, and China set to overtake the US as the largest film market, I saw an opportunity to position INLUSTRIS as a global-facing, Asia Pacific oriented brand as opposed to one focused on North America and Hollywood.
Another driver in my decision was realizing during my time in Hollywood that the kinds of stories and brands I wanted to create, as in ones that I KNEW on a gut level would be very appealing to both Western and Asia Pacific audiences, would never be allowed through Hollywood due to their own insularity, myopic arrogance, and exclusionary gatekeeping. So I left that non-starter and became a self-starter to build INLUSTRIS—especially in an era where much of Asia is still just building up their own entertainment and fashion brands, and creative infrastructure.
What’s your message to other Asian Diaspora creators and entrepreneurs?
I want them to realize the following:
1. Recognize that Asia is not only a massive market to connect with (a full 40% of world population with growing purchasing power), but that WE have the opportunity to build our own foundational infrastructure into Asia going forward---everything from creative development and production, to financing, talent, and merchandising, and pave the way for ourselves instead of fighting for crumbs at someone else's table.
2. Recognize that the paradigm has ALREADY SHIFTED among Asia Pacific consumers--they no longer look to Hollywood or Western brands to determine what's cool, can Asian Diaspora creators really afford to stay trapped in the old paradigm?
3. Understand that there’s so much of Asian cultures and peoples that the Western creative sphere is neither capable of nor interested in properly exploring (leaving billions of $$$ on the table), which is just the beginning of the massive creative and market potential at hand for us.
4. Recognize that Hollywood is now a redundant middleman that Asia has already sidelined in terms of "cultural leadership" in the global majority. It make no sense for the Asian Diaspora to follow the "lead" of out-of-touch Western gatekeepers in terms of what we should be creating. Time to trust our instincts and project our image, cultures, and stories on our terms.