10 Years of APOM: From Selling Tees to “Rebranding Malaysia”

In 2015, advertising veterans Chantelle Teoh and Kelvin Long grew tired of the generic, "embarrassing" souvenirs found at Central Market. They wanted products that actually spoke the language of Malaysians, literally.

Starting with a single t-shirt design complaining about cigarette prices ("Mahal Bro"), APOM (A Piece of Malaysia) has grown from a bazaar pop-up into a 7-figure retail brand with five stores, including Bangsar Village and The Campus, Ampang.

The husband-and-wife duo joins BFM  to discuss the journey from "Bazaars to Bangunan." We explore how they navigate the "Dreamer vs. Integrator" dynamic as a married couple, the operational PTSD of the 2020 pandemic, and why they believe the future of retail lies in data-driven humor.

We discuss:

• The Origin Story: Moving from the "Doof" bean bag business to APOM as a creative release from client work.

• Product Market Fit: How they tested witty designs like the "Mahal Bro" and "Jalan Bapak Kau" shirts at bazaars to validate the concept before committing to a lease.

• Retail Operations: The reality of scaling from selling single items to managing hundreds of SKUs, warehousing, and the financial "flywheel" of margins and Opex.

• The Co-Founder Dynamic: How a husband-and-wife team functions by respecting the split between the "Dreamer" and the "Integrator".

• The Cringe Filter: The difficult product development cycle of walking the fine line between witty cultural commentary and "cringey" humor.

• The "Blast" Campaign: How they pivoted during the pandemic lockdowns to support 14 local designers when tourism vanished overnight.

• Future Vision: The plan to expand beyond KL and build a "Departmental Store" concept to house top-quality Malaysian goods.

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