Ben Ang, chief executive officer of XM Studios, with one of the collectibles that the firm sells around the globe. — TODAY pic
But the owner of Xenomorph had made them an offer they could not refuse — he would help with half of the rent and the brothers would need to just hand over 50 per cent of their profits. No other upfront costs was needed.This would mark the start of what would later become XM Studios, a premium collectible figurine company founded by Ang in 2014.
The demand for shiny, new figurines has also gone up as many collectors are idling at home with nothing else to do but admire their toy collections, Ang said.When Ang and his brother took over the hobby collectibles store in 1997, the “nerds and geeks” — like himself — who would spend their disposable income on model kits and figurines were few and far between.
Still, the doubling of their workload meant that Ang and his brother Seng had to work seven days without rest for 10 years, drawing S$600 a month in salary each and taking a break only during Chinese New Year.“Every day, we worked from nine to 10, painting and painting and teaching and teaching,” he said.For one thing, the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak had hit the store’s bottom line.
After a string of setbacks and rejections spanning two years, Disney finally called back in 2014.Cobbling together S$50,000 in startup capital from friends and family, they negotiated with Disney to pay the licence fee in instalments to buy them time to get things going.And then they were off — well, not quite. XM Studios was born, but the early days saw many detractors.
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