Xmashed Gear
shop.xmashed.com
Xmashed Gear specialises in humorous T-shirts influenced by the gaming culture. A game designer by day, Xuanming was designing shirts for American websites by night when it occurred to him that Singapore needed its own geek apparel outlet.
Five years ago, there were a few indie tee outfits, but none of them focused exclusively on geek and gamer culture. Xuanming takes quality very seriously, so when the brand was started, a sizeable amount of time and money was spent looking for reliable production and warehousing facilities. Reaching out and creating awareness in the gamer market was also a challenge, and he credits being at local gaming convention GameStart for helping to connect with Xmashed Gear’s audience.
Now he’s working on more products, such as lady’s tank tops and more. As he still has a day job, it affords him the luxury of aiming long-term rather than succumbing to short-term survival-driven decisions.
Aftershock PC
www.aftershockpc.com
Aftershock produces high-performance custom PCs and notebooks. While studying in Canada, Marcus was so impressed by the service and product of a local custom notebook company that he decided to start one in Singapore. Back in 2012, not many local companies created gaming PCs. Now there are more than 10 in an aggressive industry. To stand out from the crowd, Marcus and his team have to continually offer the best price/ performance ratio to customers through their products.
The challenge in attempting to deliver this outcome for customers lies in fluctuating component costs. In the effort to make PCs truly personal, they also offer custom paint jobs, water cooling systems and even custom cable braids to take PC building to the next level. Marcus is now working on new web experiences to help customers visualise their new notebook.
He has also branched out to starting sister companies such as PRISM+ to make optimised gaming monitors.
Seedly
seedly.sg
Seedly is a personal finance platform that helps millennials make smarter financial decisions. During his last semester at NUS, Kenneth would frequently discuss the pains of managing monthly cash flows with his friend and Seedly co-founder, Chew Tee Ming. With college and housing debt at its highest levels in three generations, the cost of living was a real concern for them and others around them.
So they developed a mobile app that acts as a personal financial assistant. While there are actually many other expense-tracking apps available, Kenneth and Tee Ming complement their app with a community platform that would allow users to get financial questions answered. The current obstacle is to scale up the concept and bring it to customers in the region at a more rapid pace.
Personal finance can also be a dry subject, but they feel that approaching it in their unique way helps to remind people of its daily importance.
