Design file: Maxime Dautresme

"In I999, I left Paris and my architectural studies to design a restaurant for a friend in Miami. That didn't work out and I ended up bartending. There I met a German entrepreneur and, in American Dream fashion, it was like, 'Oh cool, we like the same music, let's start a business together.' Little by little, we got bigger clients, bigger projects. Later stints design-ing and creating at Ogilvy Shanghai and DDB Hong Kong led to [the creation of] Substance in 2011."

"I was tired of not being able to sell quality design. Design is a hard sell in Asia (other than in Japan). With a cluttered industry you need to have good design and innovation to stand out. We have all the big companies coming to Hong Kong now. It's very exciting."

"No, not really. In each project some of the things you initially love you tire of the quickest and the things you think are not so good you end up loving. All projects have their ups and downs and I find you change how you feel about them all the time. But Bibo was amazing and challenging."

"With Bibo we had three things: street art, fine French dining and the space. French haute cuisine has a very traditional heritage and it's not something you might instantly associate with street art. So we had to weave them together to make it work, make it believable. We started with a fictional character, Bibo, and tried to create a place he would want to visit."