Dressed in a loose white t-shirt, baggy black bottoms with an excruciatingly tiny pair of spectacles perched on his nose, FLYNOW's founder and CEO Somchai Songwatana looks every inch a fashion designer.
What he does not look like is your typical businessman. Which is ironic, considering that this is the man who single-handedly spent the last nearly 30 years growing the Thai label into an international phenomenon with roughly 200 points of sales worldwide and 60 concessions in Thailand alone. And all this with a start-up capital of merely US$8,000 in hand when he was 20 years old.
"I'm a creative person but I'm very lucky that I come from a family of businessmen which instilled within me the belief that you can be creative and business savvy at the same time," says Songwatana, who was in Singapore for the opening of the first FLYNOW standalone boutique here at the Raffles Hotel Arcade.
FLYNOW's fashion boutique at the Raffles Hotel Arcade.
"It is only when your business is successful that you can have fun with work and be more creative so that's the policy that I've taken as I grew FLYNOW all these years."
It was this very same business acumen that allowed him to spot a niche in the Thai fashion market some 30 years ago when the industry was still fairly insular.
"At that time, not many foreign brands had entered the Thai fashion market yet, so what we did was to tailor FLYNOW to the needs of the local Thai consumers who were looking for something a bit more designer and different," he recalls.
"Our prices were not low but we offered them well-crafted garments that were more interesting and used colours and prints which were not common. For example, we used a lot of black and white in our designs, which was a real novelty in Thailand back then."
The name FLYNOW, he says was inspired by the concept of the present - "if you do something good today, you will reap it tomorrow, but if you make a mistake today, you will have to fix it tomorrow," says Songwatana - and the idea that he wanted the brand to "fly and climb upwards towards success". The result, was FLYNOW, a culmination of both words.
He adds: "Many Thai labels simply took a foreign name and changed it a bit to suit their purposes, so for example if the foreign brand was called Nancy, the Thai equivalent would be Nancie. But that wasn't what we wanted to do, because we are an original brand and that warranted an original name."
It was a vision that worked, judging from the fact that from there, FLYNOW started to acquire a cult following of local Thai buyers as they went on to become one of the most successful labels in the country.
Head designer Chamnan Phakdeesuk explains that FLYNOW"s unique selling point is its attention to detail. "We are very careful when choosing fabric and our clothes always look very neat. The lines are clean and the pieces look chic and our customers really like that."
FLYNOW's current Autumn/Winter 2012 collection for instance, aimed to bring colour to the season, with simple and clean shapes while utilising techniques such as colour-blocking to make the colours on the garments stand out.
That said, it wasn't until the 90s that FLYNOW started to venture out of Thailand. But once it did, it almost immediately hit its stride internationally.
Having already stabilised the business in Thailand, in a stroke of inspired genius, Songwatana decided to send Phakdeesuk to London for three years to study the market, which resulted in FLYNOW making its international debut at London Fashion Week in 1995, the first Thai label to ever do so. "Showing in London was what helped us to launch ourselves internationally," he says.
On whether they faced difficulties when trying to break into the international market Songwatana says that all the challenges were internal rather than external. "It was up to us to convince the media, international buyers and the rest of the fashion community but this was a challenge that we set ourselves, not challenges posed to us by others," he reveals.
Having weathered through a particularly tough economic crisis, Songwatana says that he plans to do more fashion shows in Paris to build brand awareness and that his main business strategy moving forward is to grow the brand by opening more points of sales and standalone FLYNOW boutiques outside of Thailand.
The Singapore outlet, which is owned by multi-label boutique Front Row's founder Ann Kositchotitana is FLYNOW's first standalone boutique in the Asia-Pacific region (outside of Thailand) and stocks pieces from FLYNOW Black Label (from $120 to $450) and takes orders for the semi-bespoke FLYNOW Gold Label (prices upwards of $1,000).
FLYNOW previously only stocked its Black Label range when it used to be stocked at Front Row. "FLYNOW was taking up too much rack space in Front Row, and that to me was an indication that the label warranted its own shop," she says.
Songwatana reveals that the decision to open in Singapore was based on two key factors: firstly, that there was already a good base of local customers and tourists buying FLYNOW here and secondly because Front Row has been a good partner for about five years now.
"We've had a lot of offers to open standalone boutiques worldwide before but we didn't feel that we were ready yet," says Songwatana. "My business philosophy has always been slow but steady. It wasn't until now, that I felt that we were ready in terms of financial capability, design and production. But now we are and I want to grow the business in Asia and the Middle East."
Asia, he muses, is the main driver for businesses right now.
"A lot of brands want to come into Asia, which also makes it the best time for Asian labels to shine," he says.
Not that he is resting on his laurels simply because things are looking good in the region at the moment.
"I don't believe that success is born out of luck," he concludes. "Success is created out of working hard after an opportunity is given to you. Just because it's the time for Asia doesn't mean that as an Asian label we will automatically be successful, we need to continuously work hard in order to ensure that it happens."
