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However that didn’t put him off dabbling in style.
When considered one of Ben’s clothes sponsors approached him to start out a sneaker retailer a number of years later, he jumped on the likelihood.
“I nonetheless felt unfulfilled and had a ardour (to start out a enterprise). I like sneakers very a lot,” he mentioned.
Collectively together with his sister, he invested round S$100,000 to open Entrepôt at The Cathay in 2007.
Sadly, his timing couldn’t be worse. The worldwide monetary disaster hit and the enterprise struggled in its early years.
He determined to depart after three years resulting from variations in operating the enterprise. That have price him “round S$70,000 to S$80,000”.
When 8days.sg reached out to Ben, he shared that luck additionally performs a component with regards to operating a enterprise.
“Although I made a loss after I left the enterprise, it’s nonetheless round and doing very effectively,” he mentioned.
“Having a star model hooked up to a enterprise doesn’t assure success. Lots of components come into play.”
One of many advantages is there’s much less to fret about with regards to advertising and marketing the enterprise.
“However on the flipside, every little thing you do can be magnified,” mentioned Ben.
He recalled an incident the place he was reprimanded by a buyer who had waited greater than two hours for his meals on the fish head steamboat joint when it first opened in 2022.
“There have been so many shoppers, however we did not have sufficient kitchen employees then, so we couldn’t sustain with orders. The client got here as much as me and mentioned, ‘Simply since you’re an artiste, you are able to do a enterprise like that?’ I had a whole lot of questions marks in my thoughts. What has this to do with me being an artiste?” mentioned Ben.
“I mentioned to him, ‘Sorry for maintaining you ready.’ However he advised me, ‘You don’t must apologise to me, since you are already within the improper.’”