'There's a time for profit and there's a time for making a difference': How a mobile tailoring business turned mask provider

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In conjunction with Total Defence Day on Feb 15, CNA speaks to the co-founders of a mobile tailoring business who exemplified social and economic ...

SINGAPORE: As the COVID-19 pandemic began to creep its way through Singapore, Kenneth Chia and Lyn Chan began to receive calls from fabric sellers in Chinatown.

With excess fabric on their hands, and the need for masks among Singaporeans, Ms Chan and Mr Chia decided to take matters into their own hands." what we could do for the people around us, basically the people in our industry, so we thought - let’s start this initiative of doing masks," said Ms Chan. " after the Chinatown people, the uncles and aunties were supplying us fabrics, that's where the big brands of fabric suppliers started to come to us. Put it this way, the Chinatown uncles and aunties did help us in our initial stage when we started to go full time into tailoring," said Mr Chia.

"There are easier ways to make masks, like for example: you cut the rectangle shape, and you pinch the top and pinch the bottom," said Mr Chia. "But to us, it is pretty ugly, so us being vain and liking to wear this funky stuff, we want to match the pattern, that’s why it took a bit of work." While their business also was hit hard during the pandemic, the duo managed to sustain themselves due to a"war chest" initially reserved for expansion plans.

"As we were exploring doing the masks, one of the things that we asked was how we were going to sell the masks? So the first thing was that we sold to our existing customers and secondly thing was we actually did personal posts on Facebook," said Ms Chan.

 

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