Championing affordability and quality workmanship in fashion, Malaysian clothing brand Oxwhite now strives for sustainability
CK Chang's entrepreneurial success story started with a simple Oxford White shirt. In 2018, the Negeri Sembilan native launched Oxwhite with the intent to offer consumers an affordable but high quality option to purchase the classic white collared shirt, with collar size, sleeve length and overall cuts designed specially for Asian physiques.
The brand was a hit. Now in its third year of business, Oxwhite has since expanded its offerings beyond formalwear to include work-from-home essentials that cover activewear, minimalist T-shirts, innerwear and more recently, a line of quality, eco-friendly bamboo towels. To date, it has served over 250,000 customers. Then, in 2020 – amidst a disruptive pandemic – Oxwhite announced a commitment to become a more sustainable fashion brand, swapping out plastic wrappers on certain products for brown paper packaging and developing a line of activewear made from recycled polyester.
But can sustainability and affordability truly go hand-in-hand? As the founder of this growing e-commerce fashion startup, Chang tells us how Oxwhite's sustainability goals factor into its product expansion and what the pandemic has revealed about consumers in 2021.
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What's changed today for Oxwhite compared to when it first launched?
One difference is that the demand for the formal white shirt is not growing. The pandemic aside, youngsters today are wearing more casual attire for work. So although we started with a niche market, we’ve done our best to expand and offer a greater variety of products by sourcing from some of the world’s best factories in this region and selling directly to consumers online, saving a lot on traditional retail costs and passing these savings on to the consumer.
What did you learn in the early days of Oxwhite?
From what we did with the white shirt, I learnt that it was possible to produce something of high quality of workmanship and still make it affordable. Our direct-to-consumer business model opened a way for us to let shoppers wear a slice of everyday luxury without breaking the bank.