Lidan Liu

EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ Asia-Pacific Class of 2024
Founder and CEO, HOTO, Greater China

Lidan Liu is the founder and CEO of HOTO Tools, a home tool design and production company based in China. HOTO blends practicality, technology and contemporary design to produce stylish yet user-friendly products. The company has established itself in North America, Australia and Greater China.

As a designer, Lidan Liu noticed that most design-related decisions were made not by designers but by business executives. Her vision was to establish a platform where every aspect of a product, from its structure to marketing, is driven by design. Prior to founding HOTO in 2016, Lidan Liu was a part of designaffairs GmbH, a preeminent innovation design consultancy based in Germany. 

Over her distinguished career, Lidan Liu’s noteworthy contributions to the design sphere have merited her numerous invitations to adjudicate esteemed competitions, such as the German iF Design Award and the German Braun International Design Competition.

Under Lidan Liu’s guidance, HOTO has garnered significant accolades, including being named among the top 100 Asian companies and one of the Top 25 innovative companies in China by the iF Design Awards — consistently from 2015 to 2021. Lidan Liu’s illustrious career is punctuated by the receipt of more than 50 international design awards, encompassing notable honors, such as the Good Design Award, IDEA and the Red Dot Design Award. These substantial contributions have been integral in HOTO's rise to the second rank in the iF Design Tool category in the year 2022.