Loop Garms Is Hiring
and addresses: Is vintage dead?
Read our first conversation on their brand vision.
Why’re you hiring?
FJ: We’ll be 2 in February. If we want to do anything bigger — content-wise, bringing stuff in — we need manpower.
I: We hired Xin Qin in July. In August, we started looking for a core team. We should be able to buy clothes without closing on Wednesdays, one week a month.
After we’d close shop, we’d stay back to film past midnight, 4 to 5 days in a row.
We were stretching ourselves too thin. It’s not efficient.
Who’re you hiring?
FJ: Someone super patient. There are a lot of things you can’t see immediately with this business. They’re not perfect, but make up for our weaknesses.
I: A believer. It’s conviction. Hours are long, pay’s not good (in the beginning), it’s grinding for something we don’t know will succeed. But we strongly believe once we have a core team, things will start moving. Being able to talk to people is one thing. Being able to make people feel comfortable, connect is another.
FJ: On paper, it’s Operations / Buying.
Who applied?
I: We received hundreds of emails, spent 3 hours filtering people we wanted to meet: compelling cover emails that directly answered our questions.
FJ: We’d read great emails, reply them, they’d ghost us. Why don’t they want to check their emails?
I: They’d ask, “Just wondering: are you hiring? Can you let me know your schedule? I’m still in school, so some days I may not be able to make it.”
FJ: Where did they get that sentiment from? We wrote it in our post. “Believer. Inclusive. Unprejudiced. Appreciates vintage. Values stories. Patient. Dreamer. Family”. A lot of people interpreted it differently.
People would send two-line emails. “Hey man, I need some extra cash for my future.”
People we’ve never seen before will come in and tell us they love what we’re doing. People would email us saying, “Oh, I see you guys are hiring. Let me know if you want to hear from me.” I do, that’s the point! Then they send password-protected resumes!
I: People say, you can hire part-timers / interns first. That’s a short-term quick fix. When they move on, we have to fill gaps again. We want to build something solid, someone to join us as core members.
FJ: Xin Qin and I worked together in an agency before. We left our jobs and moved on. When she came here, she and Isaac hit it off immediately.
It’s a vibe you can’t force.
I: Sometimes we question, are our expectations too high?
Xin Qin.
FJ: From the get-go, we didn’t want it to be 2+1. We’re looking for family.
I: Every Tuesday, we have team dinners to feedback. It’s still more splitting work than doing more things, but we’re trying [check out their new IGTV series].
FJ: We’ve a huge whiteboard at the back filled with ideas, how we want Loop Garms to look in 4, 5 years.
Is vintage dead?
FJ: It was never dead. It wasn’t something that needed to be brought alive. It’s already there. It’s not a trend.
I: Oversaturated, maybe. It got hot locally in the past 2 years. That’s why people thought it was a new thing. It’s plateaued.
Competition keeps us consistent; we’re here every day.
FJ: It’s like when Shake Shack, Five Guys opened. People went Uhuhuhuh. But what about McDonald’s. Singaporeans love new things, things that aren’t always there, things we have to chase after.
When it’s always there it’s not so cool.
Plateauing also means Singaporeans have accepted buying vintage shopping as lifestyle. But the customer has evolved. We notice people who used to come by a lot who don’t come by anymore.
I: People fly here for us. We’ve many overseas customers, even people from countries with mature vintage scenes.
FJ: I want to be that store people say, “Remember that store we used to hang out there?”
