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The CP Group executive explains why the city keeps calling him back
Dressed in a slick suit and sitting in a pristine office, an impassioned discussion of Star Wars figurines is the last thing you’d expect to come out of CP Group executive Alex Jiaravanont’s mouth. As he explains the notion of “kitbashing”—a technique where models like the Millenium Falcon are cobbled together from different kits—he says, “I always considered myself a ‘kitbashed’ person.”
While Jiaravanont is ethnically Thai-Chinese and was born in Bangkok, his “kitbashed” story is a very Hong Kong one. He spent his early years in the city before studying abroad in the US. Initially, Jiaravanont decided not to work at his family’s business, CP Group, and struck out on his own as an architect moving from Hong Kong to Shanghai and later New York. But something brought him back to the city he calls home.
By this point, his father Apichart Jiaravanont was living in Hong Kong at the time that CP Group—a sprawling Thai business empire and the first foreign company to ever be registered in China—wanted to expand its presence in the city. As time went on and Jiaravanont became a father himself, the idea of making up for lost time began to appeal to him.
“I didn’t get to spend much time with my father,” he admits. Jiaravanont decided to leave his job as an architect and joined CP Group, returning to Hong Kong to help develop the business’ investment arm CT Bright as its vice president.
More than anything, Jiaravanont says, “I just saw it as an opportunity to reconnect with [my father] because he’s not getting any younger.”
