Statement is a t-shirt company that we started in 2011.
I posted some ideas on Facebook, and they were pretty well-received.
Desmond (who I met via a Facebook group for Singaporean musicians) messaged me to say that he was interested in pursuing this idea together.
We reached out to Eugene from Less Than Positive – who was also running a t-shirt business – to ask him for advice and suggestions. He set us up with his t-shirt printer.
We started doing flea markets, which was an interesting way to get feedback from potential customers, and to meet other vendors and entrepreneurs operating in spaces similar to ours.
Over time, we found that people were particularly interested in Singaporean and Singlish themed t-shirts, and so we started doing more of that. That became the niche that we focused on.
We began to get media interest. We were even featured in a local documentary about Singapore Icons in Pop Culture, and in the Straits Times. 😂
In 2016 we had a bit of a run-in with the Singapore Kindness Movement for using their mascot Singa in one of our t-shirts – to their credit, they were very kind in the way they told us to stop using their intellectual property.
Currently, as 2019 approaches, we’re starting to think about what we’d like to do next. When we started out, this was just a fun little experiment, a side-project. We’ve been pretty lucky to get the opportunity to build a brand – to be something that some people recognize – and so we want to do something more with that opportunity. That’s how the idea of JIBABOM was born.
On retrospect, “Statement” isn’t a very clever name for a t-shirt brand. If you Google “Statement t-shirts”, you’re going to get all sorts of search results, because “statement t-shirt” is effectively an everyday category of items. It would be like naming your restaurant “Tasty Burgers.” In contrast, JIBABOM is a really unique phrase, and I think it captures our niche identity more intensely and accurately than “Statement”.
We’re currently working on making a card game called JIBABOM!, and we will likely come out with a JIBABOM line of t-shirts as well. Looking forward to sharing all of that with you!
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