The Merry Riana Show – featuring Elim Chew

Starting a business and building an empire on your own is never easy, but it is not impossible. There are an increasing number of people today who starts out as a young entrepreneur, looking for all kinds of business opportunities to make it into a career. However, not all can be successful in their first tries.

Elim Chew, the founder of a trendsetter for hip street wear fashion retail store in Singapore 77^th Street, share with you her experiences of starting out as a young entrepreneur through my audio interview with her. Being an expert in retail business, Elim is also a social entrepreneur who founded The Young Entrepreneur Mastery (TYEM), a non-profit academy that supports and nurtures youth entrepreneurship.

Elim was a hairstylist before she started her retail business. She has started her Street Wear fashion empire 21 years ago, and today, 77^th Street has achieved an excellent standing in the local retail market, where it owns 16 outlets in Singapore and a shopping mall called 77^th Street Plaza in Beijing文化广场, China. In addition to that Street Wear is now recognized everywhere around the world. “When we first started people thought we were cult, and we used to be very odd, but today they look at us differently because we are now recognized by the world, recognized by the people, and also recognized by the fashion, high-end fashion as well” she says.

This remarkable success does not drop from sky, but it is through long period of her perseverance, hard work and building the brand that she attained all these achievements. 77^th Street first started as a very small store in Far East Plaza selling iron-on t-shirts and also corporate print t-shirts. Having the spirit of perseverance, flexibility and being opportunistic allowed Elim to grow her business. At that time Elim would agree on any of their business from printing their t-shirts, polo t-shirts, glass, balloons, to providing stirrers and helium tanks. Her advice for young entrepreneurs who want to venture into business is simple. Being opportunistic is the first step. Next is to be flexible. You have to accept all kinds of business that you think you can handle and allow the scope of your business to widen. This can effectively boost the revenue of your business and sustain it, especially at the initial stage of development. You need to do as much as possible by being flexible, so as to gain more experience in overcoming different kinds of challenges, “because entrepreneurship is about experience,” Elim says.

A lot of young entrepreneurs who failed at their businesses because they are jumping into business without experience, and also without a finance budget plan out as well. Elim set up 77^th Street with her hair salon financing the expenses. Financial control is important to help sustain the expenses of the business. A lot of young entrepreneurs “just go into it with high rental, and then roll profit, thinking that if I sell cheaper than next door I can make it, but actually it’s not true. That’s how the market dies,” she says, because this affects the whole chain where the low prices that they’re offering are insufficient to cover their costs of rental and staffs. However, not all failed businesses are your fault. Sometimes, circumstantial changes affect you, and your business fails. In this case, you’ll have to use experiences to solve the problems, and if you do not have enough yourself, you can approach mentors who have more experience for you. Keeping yourself spiritually high would help you as well. Even when things are not doing well, but if your spirit is high, you will be positive in facing the challenges thrown at you.

What kept Elim going and being inspired always is through her work in helping others to achieve success. She has also set up PaTH (Pop and Talent Hub) at Vivocity to help those under-privileged or less-advantaged people in starting their entrepreneurship as well. These people would create crafts or art or anything personally, and sell it through PaTH. Elim says, “I just want people to remember that they can use their hands to make money, and that’s basically a space for creativity. So you got a new business, you got to try something, then you try.” This is how entrepreneurship starts and being active in it would keep your momentum going.

There are a lot of females in the business arena, but there are many factors that stop them from being successful. One of the reasons is because they sacrifice their time for their children or family. They stop themselves from advancing because they want to spend more time with their family; and this is good sacrifice. However, females can be a great entrepreneur as they can multi-task – in being many roles – and they are also very detailed. But of course, it takes a good team of female and male to work together and make the business to excel.

In relation to Female 50 Most Gorgeous People, I asked Elim about her definition of gorgeous, and to her gorgeous is someone who is attractive and good looking, and also with a lot of depth, because beauty also comes from the heart. “When you’re a beautiful person, you love people, and you love what you do, it actually shows on face” she says. Before we ended the audio interview, Elim also said that networking is important in your walk of entrepreneurship or even in life. Females should network with other females during events, and this is where you’ll gain support and advices from people. Stay connected.

Click on the picture to listen to the audio interview"

Related posts:

1. Merry Riana & Elim Chew
2. The Merry Riana Show – featuring Adam Khoo
3. Elim Chew in Merry Riana Show
4. Audio Interview :)