You don’t need to spend a fortune on luxury designer brands to look expensive, especially on a classic white shirt.
“We don’t believe that people should pay an exorbitant amount of money on high quality shirts. A lot of premium products are not expensive to make but they are just expensive to sell,” said Oxwhite founder CK Chang.
CK Chang's story begins when he couldn’t find fulfilment working at his uncle’s company where he has worked for 10 years in the retail industry in wholesale and distribution. He started to question about the kind of role model he wanted to be for his children. Looking up to his role models like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, Chang decided to quit his job in order to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams.
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Thus, he created Oxwhite in 2018 with the mission to make luxury affordable for consumers through his online platform and convinced his co-founders Vince Tan, Tai Zi Kang and Ho Kam Wai to come on board. During their official launch on 30th June 2018, Oxwhite successfully sold 2,500 white shirts within 3 hours and continued to sell more than 10,000 classic shirts the next day.
Oxwhite is clearly not your average luxury e-commerce startup
The affordable luxury brand aims to disrupt the dress shirt market with its pre-order model by offering RM400 (US$97)value at only RM69 (US$16.70) for a premium quality shirt. This is made possible by their exclusive partnership with top factories that have experiences in producing clothing for high end brands. Focusing on bringing value to their customers, Oxwhite eliminates the middlemen and unnecessary inventory costs in order to reduce their cost mark up with their pre-order business model.
As of August 2020, Oxwhite has achieved close to RM8.4 million (US$2.04 million) online sales transactions and the company is on track to fulfil its RM12 million (US$2.91 million) revenue pledge to investors despite the recent movement control order.
In December last year, Oxwhite raised RM5.02 million (US$1.2 million) from 485 investors through an equity crowdfunding event in Malaysia. Although Covid-19 has affected their supply chain, the company tripled its sales during the movement control order period. Chang shared that expanding their product lines attributed to their success by having the right products such as inner wear, casual T-shirts, bath towels were essential especially when everyone is stuck in their homes therefore seeking for more casual and home items.
Small but mighty - Building a power team
Oxwhite started with one person working from a cafe for six months and grew to a strong team of 20 people today.
“I think of myself as a leader that inspires my team members to grow every single day and none of my team members came in with the right skill set at the very beginning. They all came in with the same purpose and that is ‘Here to learn’ which makes the Oxwhite team culture today,’ said Chang.
Chang proudly shared that one of his earlier employees who started working at a cafe handling customer service has grown to be Oxwhite’s Marketing Lead spearheading all branding activities after joining the company for one and a half years. Oxwhite team has a good mix of the young and the old but 90% of employees are less than 25 years old.
“We have someone who joined us after retirement, she’s about 65 years old. The senior members focus on our corporate sales, in customers returns and fulfilment department,” he added.
Handing off HR to focus on the business
Oxwhite prides itself on being a technology-driven company. Much of that innovation is the result of using digital tools to collaborate better and faster in his small team of 20 employees. Chang and his team spend most of their time in marketing, sales, customer success and distribution. He realised that payroll and HR were areas he’d much rather have someone else manage so his team can focus on the business.
“I don’t have a full time accountant so I handle my company’s finances managing millions of turnover a year. The last thing I wanted to do is wear a HR hat,” said Chang.
So Chang hired a part-time staff to take care of HR matters for his company and that’s when his staff introduces Swingvy to him.
“Swingvy fits in well because the interface is great and very easy to use. My part-time staff has no issue when managing our payroll and employees leave online via the Swingvy HR platform. And, my team can easily apply for leaves through the mobile app,” said Chang.
With Swingvy, Oxwhite team is able to focus on what matters, confident that the back-office HR functions are being taken care of. He also loves knowing that an expert support team has his back 24/7. Ultimately, choosing Swingvy also saved his company money and time so he can focus on scaling up his business. Chang said he knew the company would get a better setup through Swingvy than they would have independently.
Are you searching for an HR platform to support your growing business?
Swingvy is an all-in-one cloud-based Human Resource Management System (HRMS). Swingvy’s mission is to create a workplace where work empowers people. By seamlessly connecting all HR information — HR, leave, claims, payroll, and benefits — Swingvy automates all administrative work without hassle. Learn more: www.swingvy.com
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