{"id":13155,"date":"2018-10-19T22:19:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T14:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=13155"},"modified":"2018-10-19T22:19:27","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T14:19:27","slug":"jibabom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2018\/10\/19\/jibabom\/","title":{"rendered":"The Statement \/ JIBABOM! story, so far"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"770\" height=\"434\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/d6ZOGNjAyjs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/statement.sg\/\">Statement<\/a>&nbsp;is a t-shirt company that we started in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/visakan.veerasamy\/media_set?set=a.10150340477698915.356918.650823914&amp;type=1&amp;l=eab8a039f1\">posted some ideas on Facebook<\/a>, and they were pretty well-received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Desmond (who I met via a Facebook group for Singaporean musicians) messaged me to say that he was interested in pursuing this idea together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We reached out to Eugene from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LessThanPositive\/\">Less Than Positive<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 who was also running a t-shirt business \u2013 to ask him for advice and suggestions. He set us up with his t-shirt printer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We started doing&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/visakan.veerasamy\/posts\/168031349979624\">flea markets<\/a>, which was an interesting way to get feedback from potential customers, and to meet other vendors and entrepreneurs operating in spaces similar to ours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We began to get&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/statement.sg\/pages\/about-us\">media interest<\/a>. We were even featured in a local documentary about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=P3NIqB3dbX0\">Singapore Icons in Pop Culture<\/a>, and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/lifestyle\/stylish-hongbao-and-humorous-t-shirts-add-funky-modern-touch-to-chinese-new-year\">in the Straits Times<\/a>. \ud83d\ude02<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 \u2013 to their credit, they were very kind in the way they told us to stop using their intellectual property.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Currently, as 2019 approaches, we\u2019re starting to think about what we\u2019d like to do next. When we started out, this was just a fun little experiment, a side-project. We\u2019ve been pretty lucky to get the opportunity to build a brand \u2013 to be something that some people recognize \u2013 and so we want to do something more with that opportunity. That\u2019s how the idea of JIBABOM was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On retrospect, \u201cStatement\u201d isn\u2019t a very clever name for a t-shirt brand. If you Google \u201cStatement t-shirts\u201d, you\u2019re going to get all sorts of search results, because \u201cstatement t-shirt\u201d is effectively an everyday category of items. It would be like naming your restaurant \u201cTasty Burgers.\u201d In contrast, JIBABOM is a really unique phrase, and I think it captures our niche identity more intensely and accurately than \u201cStatement\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Further reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shopify.com.sg\/blog\/building-a-six-figure-business-shopify-singapore\">Statement\u2019s Story: How an Entrepreneur Converted His Passion for Politically Edgy Memes to a Six-Figure Business<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.referralcandy.com\/blog\/tshirt-marketing-case-study\/\">Ecommerce Marketing Lessons Learned From Making $100,000 On The Side (With T-Shirts!)<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.referralcandy.com\/blog\/ecommerce-marketing-framework\/\">From $100k to $1m \u2013 The Marketing Frameworks And Tools We\u2019re Using To Grow Our Ecommerce Business<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Statement&nbsp;is a t-shirt company that we started in 2011. I&nbsp;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&nbsp;Less Than&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[578],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5gxNz-jibabom","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}