Ming Thein is the vision behind MING: he has a diverse background that bridges both the creative and corporate, with more than 10 years in strategy and finance and 20 years as a photographer, with seven as a full time professional. Ming was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1986, educated in Australia, New Zealand, and finally graduated with a masters’ degree in theoretical physics from Balliol College, Oxford at the age of 16.

Somewhere during the mechanical portions of his degree, he contracted the watch bug made worse by a Lange 1815 graduation gift from his parents. It would follow through his early career at KPMG and The Boston Consulting Group, where the generosity of online collector communities allowed him access to their events and watches. His contributions to the community were driven by knowledge (including numerous attempts at movement design) and photography: capturing a personal interpretation of a watch, Ming in a way made them his own and shared a different vision with the collector’s community