He is managing director of a $4 billion company with 17,000 employees, but Dr Harry Lee Nai-shee always comes to work in a shirt that is unironed.
Dr Lee of Kowloon-based TAL Apparel likes to be a walking advertisement for his firm's process - protected by five patents - that produces men's cotton shirts that can be worn without ironing.
Comparing his wrinkle-free shirt to the ironed but crumpled mess worn by the Post reporter, he adds: 'Also, on mine the seams are flat, not wrinkled like yours. That's also a patented technology.' His family-controlled firm with plants in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and the mainland ploughs one per cent of its turnover into research and development.
The Hong Kong factory employs 1,100 staff and is being automated to make the sewing staff more productive.
The firm also makes extensive use of electronic links with customers that allow shirts to be shipped direct from a factory in Asia to a store in New York without the retailer holding a warehouse of stock.
'During the boom years one of my friends laughed at me and said: 'Why are you still in manufacturing? A real estate deal can make more in a week than you make in a year,' ' he remembers.
But while the property firms now bleed red ink, TAL is making one in eight of the men's dress shirts sold in the United States, about 20 million a year, for labels such as GAP, Boss, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani.