NEWS & PERSPECTIVESTheEpochTimes 9JUNE 20 – JUly 3, 2014

ric samples) whenever possible.

G: They have to know what we want, because their archives literally have hun-dreds of thousands of designs. But after communicating with them for a while, they started to recognise the types of fabrics we’d buy, and they began sending us more appropriate fabrics as well.

It’s not that we don’t want to buy local, but there is no necktie industry in Singa-pore, so there is no one here who sells neck-tie fabric.

Has anything in particular shaped the way you run your business?G: One of the things that struck me before we started our business was the way many SMEs treated their staff. When Diana was working at her events job, one of the things I really hated was how her boss, who paid his staff miserly wages, drove a Maserati! There he was, coming in from 9 to 5 every day in his Maserati, while his staff worked 18 hours a day and were only paid S$1,800 a month. I really couldn’t stand that dis-parity because when you go through the accounts, you know how much they were making from each event. And none of the

staff were getting paid according to per-formance at all.

Seeing that inequality drove me nuts, and I didn’t want to place myself in the posi-tion where you just work for the company like a cog in the wheel, and no matter how hard you work, you get the same remuner-ation. I believe in treating my staff fairly, and when she says she needs to go home, whether or not she has leave, we usually let her go, and the two of will stay behind to finish the work.

D: And she also understands that when it is crunch time, and she has to bring more work home, she will do it, but of course we also pay her for the overtime. It’s a win-win situation.

G: We wanted to be as fair as possible when we designed her pay, in a way that would motivate her to work, so that every day she can see her results. And it’s also really just being a good human being; you treat some-one the way you would expect to be treated.

Do you have any future plans to expand your business into more outlets?G: No, not really, there will only be one

Vanda Fine Clothing.

Do you feel any pressure from compe-tition?G: We are a very, very niche business. There are under maybe 20 high-level tie-makers left in the world, and I would say we offer very good value in the market; it would be very hard for them to compete directly against us at the same prices and level of quality.

D: Over the past few years, we’ve noticed a lot more necktie companies springing up in countries such as Australia, the U.S., and Sweden. But these companies simply out-source the tie-making to factories in Italy, who also produce for a lot of other compa-nies. That’s why a lot of these necktie retail-ers have very similar neckties. On the other hand, our customers know that we make our own products, and we also source for our own cloth instead of buying fabrics that we know other retailers already use.

How do you feel about being your own boss now?G: When you own your own business and are working for it, you get a sense of satis-faction, so even though it’s very tough, it’s very fulfilling because you know you’re making someone happy doing something you like. But it’s certainly much harder than a day job.

D: I think a lot of people have the miscon-ception that being your own boss is very easy because you can be very flexible with yourself, but it actually takes a lot of disci-pline to ensure that you come to work on time so that you can leave on time, and so that your workers take you and their own work very seriously.

Do you have any other interesting stories about your business to share?G: We have a no-sale policy here, because we try to keep our prices fair and transpar-ent. Many retailers like to mark up their prices when they first release their col-lections, then discount their prices once the hype dies down. I hate that, because it forces customers to buy at overly-inflated prices. The way we do it is that we have one price, because everything is made by hand and we don’t save any time if you buy one or buy ten.

But on our wedding day in December last year, we ran a one-time 24-hour sale for fun, to thank our customers. What we saw was… very, very ugly (laughs).

D: By the time we woke up, there were all sorts of crazy emails. People who had bought things 3 months ago were ask-ing for partial refunds. And there were so many orders that it took us 3 weeks just to finish writing everything down on our white board. In fact when we set the dis-count at 20 percent, we actually wondered if it wasn’t enough. If it had been more, we would probably still be clearing orders now (laughs).

G: We did get quite a few new customers though, so that was still a good thing. Prob-ably wouldn’t ever do it again though.

Do you feel that your higher education has helped you in your business?G: Honestly, I went into university want-ing to go into the finance industry, perhaps be an investment banker for 5 years, make enough money, and then do something else altogether. But over the course of univer-sity, seeing everyone else being crazy like that, I realised that wasn’t what I wanted to be. I gradually realised that I would rather do something that I like, rather than just working for money.

But in terms of the skills, the analyt-ical skills I picked up from finance and accounting really helped a lot in making pricing decisions and in cost-related mat-ters. Diana studied business as well, so with both of our backgrounds in marketing, we knew what we wanted in terms of branding.

D: To be very honest, I think our degrees helped in establishing the business, but to keep it going you have to be very true to yourself, to what you initially set out to do. If you say at the start that you want to do classic menswear, but change half-way through, or succumb to certain bad decisions just because you want to bring in more money, then it’s not going to last.

G: When you’re doing a business of your own passion, it’s very important to be authentic, because you may be able to bluff your customers for a month, but over the course of 3 years people will find out for sure. If you don’t stick to your guns, it’s not going to be a sustainable business.

Vanda Fine Clothing can be visited at their website vandafineclothing.com, or at their store at Blk 1014 Geylang East Ave 3 #02-218 on Sat 0900 – 1700 or Sun 1300 – 1700.

Pocket Squares and Lapel Pins

Vanda Fine Clothing store display