The Son Who Nearly Died Now Runs the Business

In 1990, a two-year-old boy’s kidneys failed while his mother flew between Kuala Lumpur and Brunei, serving the Royal Family as their personal hairstylist. The babysitter couldn’t handle the intensive medical care. The prestigious appointments couldn’t be cancelled. And the mother—who had fought through workplace bullying in London and Singapore to build her salon empire—stood at the edge of abandoning everything.

I am happy to pass the baton to my son Marcus, giving him a lot more authority to plan for the rest of the year.

“I really found I had to choose between career and family,” Winnie Loo (盧美媚) later acknowledged. The pain of that period still surfaces in interviews decades later: “The fear in his eyes and the screams when we walked to our car made it even harder. The pain of dropping him there made my heart ache.”

She didn’t quit. The boy recovered. And in 2024, that same child—now Marcus Teo, 36, Business Development Director of A Cut Above—received formal operational authority over the business his mother almost sacrificed for his survival.

This is what succession looks like when crisis forges both generations.

The crisis that almost ended everything

The timeline matters. By 1990, Winnie Loo had already survived career-defining adversity. Bullied as “Tiny Winnie” in London for her 40-kilogram frame. Driven out of a Singapore salon when six colleagues united against her as their “common enemy.” She’d returned to Malaysia, built A Cut Above from a 428-square-foot salon, and earned appointments serving Brunei’s Royal Family—validation that her skills matched her ambition.

Then Marcus’s kidneys failed.

The babysitter who had cared for him since his first month couldn’t manage the intensive medical attention required. Winnie was traveling frequently for royal appointments—prestigious work that demanded reliability. The conflict between professional success and maternal duty reached its breaking point when the family enrolled Marcus in nursery despite his medical condition.

The image haunted her for years: her sick toddler’s screams as she walked to the car, the fear in his eyes when she left him there. This crisis “almost triggered her into leaving the business entirely”—a fact she has openly acknowledged.

What saved both career and child was partnership. Richard Teo—who had joined as business partner in 1979, married Winnie, and become co-founder of the A Cut Above empire—took on what Winnie calls the “strict parent” role. He handled discipline and business structure while she provided creative direction and guidance. The division of responsibilities that had built their business now extended to family crisis management.

Marcus recovered fully. But the experience shaped everything that followed—for mother, for son, and for the business they would eventually share.

Growing up in the business that almost didn’t survive you

Marcus Teo’s childhood was inseparable from A Cut Above’s growth. The salon that his mother almost abandoned to save him expanded from one location to eventually 19 salons and over 300 staff at peak. The academy his mother founded in 2004 professionalized Malaysian hairdressing. The awards accumulated—World Master of the Craft, EY Woman Entrepreneur of the Year—while Marcus watched his mother transform industry perception.

For second-generation business children, this creates a particular kind of pressure. Your survival story is bound to your parents’ career sacrifice. Every success they achieve afterward carries the weight of what they almost gave up for you. And the question lingers: Are you worth what they risked?

The public record shows Marcus entering the family business formally in the 2010s, eventually taking the title of Business Development Director. He married Juvene Goh in 2016 at the St Regis Kuala Lumpur—a society event that signaled his position in Malaysian business circles. But titles and weddings don’t prove leadership capability. For that, he needed to demonstrate strategic thinking independent of his parents’ established playbook.

The test came through Restyle+.

Proving capability through eco-salon development

The Restyle+ with Aveda concept represented A Cut Above’s pivot toward sustainable luxury—eco-conscious beauty for consumers seeking premium positioning with environmental credibility. Marcus co-developed this concept alongside his father Richard, creating the strategic framework for a new salon brand that would complement rather than compete with the flagship A Cut Above locations.

The partnership with Aveda—the Estée Lauder-owned brand known for environmental commitment—required different capabilities than traditional salon operations. International brand partnerships demand negotiation skills, quality assurance protocols, and marketing alignment that pure operational management doesn’t test. Marcus wasn’t just running salons his mother had built; he was building something new within the family portfolio.

Three Restyle+ locations now operate across the Klang Valley: Mid Valley, 163 Retail Park, and NU Sentral. Each represents Marcus’s strategic fingerprint on the family business—proof that second-generation leadership can extend rather than merely maintain founder vision.

But developing a new concept is different from running the entire business. For that transition, Winnie had to step back.

The baton-passing that completed the arc

In 2024, Winnie Loo made the announcement that succession watchers had anticipated: “I am happy to pass the baton to my son Marcus, giving him a lot more authority to plan for the rest of the year.”

The phrasing matters. Not ceremonial title transfer, but “authority to plan”—operational decision-making power that affects strategy, not just execution. Marcus now determines how A Cut Above’s eight salons and academy develop, while Winnie focuses on external representation: speaking engagements, her presidency of the Branding Association of Malaysia, international judging roles at hair competitions in Shanghai, London, and Tokyo.

“I hold a microphone more than a pair of scissors now,” Winnie has said of her evolved role. The transition mirrors patterns seen in successful family business handoffs worldwide: founder transitions to governance and industry leadership while next generation takes operational control.

For Marcus specifically, the timing creates unique poignancy. The child whose illness almost ended his mother’s career now leads the business she chose not to abandon. The impossible choice she faced in 1990—career or family—resolved into something neither binary nor tragic: a son who could continue what she started, precisely because she didn’t quit when his survival demanded everything.

What this succession teaches

Most family business successions fail. Statistics vary by study, but roughly 70% of family businesses don’t survive generational transition. Only 12-15% make it to the third generation. The reasons are predictable: founders who can’t let go, successors who lack capability or credibility, family dynamics that poison business decisions.

A Cut Above’s transition offers three lessons for founders and successors navigating similar passages.

First, crisis-forged bonds create different succession dynamics. Marcus isn’t just inheriting a business his mother built—he’s continuing a business that almost ended because of his own medical emergency. That shared history creates accountability that purely professional succession lacks. He carries the weight of what she almost sacrificed; she carries the knowledge of what she almost lost. Neither can treat the transition casually.

Second, independent strategic contribution matters. Marcus’s development of Restyle+ with Aveda proved he could build, not just maintain. Before 2024’s formal authority transfer, he had already demonstrated capability through a measurable contribution that extended the family portfolio. Successors who cannot point to independent strategic achievements will always carry questions about whether they deserve their positions.

Third, role evolution enables clean handoffs. Winnie didn’t just transfer authority to Marcus and retire. She evolved into industry leadership roles—BAM presidency, international speaking, competition judging—that use her credibility differently than salon operations. This creates space for Marcus to lead without his mother’s presence overshadowing daily decisions, while keeping Winnie engaged in ways that don’t compete with her son’s authority.

The 2024 baton-passing wasn’t sudden. It was the culmination of 34 years of shared history, from the kidney failure crisis through recovery, from watching his mother build an empire to developing his own strategic contributions within it.

The question succession always poses

Every family business succession asks the same question: Can the next generation earn credibility independent of the founder’s reputation?

For Marcus Teo, the question carries additional weight. His mother didn’t just build a business—she almost abandoned it to save his life, then chose to continue despite the impossible demands of early 1990s working motherhood. Every success A Cut Above achieved afterward happened because Winnie Loo didn’t quit when quitting would have been understandable.

Now Marcus must prove that her choice was right twice over: first, that staying in business while managing his medical crisis was survivable for the family; second, that the business she preserved is in capable hands for the next generation.

The Restyle+ development suggests strategic capability. The formal authority transfer suggests family confidence. The eight current salons and award-winning academy suggest a foundation worth preserving.

But succession is never fully proven until the founder is gone and the business continues thriving. That test lies ahead. What’s clear now is that the child who almost ended A Cut Above’s story in 1990 is writing its next chapter in 2024—and the founder who almost quit is watching with the particular satisfaction of a mother whose impossible choice produced exactly the leader she needed.

The son who nearly died now runs the business. The question is what he’ll build next.

Last updated: January 15, 2026