Why Staying Small Is A Radical Choice in Fashion
This entry is, in many ways, the second part of our article "Why is Smaller, Better?"
It is also the story of my journey to becoming the maker-founder of a slow fashion brand.
Unlike many of my peers in fashion, I never wanted to start a brand,
As a creative, I wanted nothing more than to work for others. To focus on nothing but conceptualising, sketching, draping and making led me to spend 14 years of my career as a womenswear designer in London, Hong Kong, China and Spain before relocating back home to Singapore.
Personal Transition
Something shifted when I hit my mid 30s and was confronted with the meaning crisis. Suddenly, being a 'fashion designer' was no longer enough. It felt superficial, hollow and mis-aligned with my values to churn out collections season after season, designing another pair of pants just because the commercial team said so.
Working in China, the factory of the world, I saw things I could not un-see.
Bales of unused fabric amounting to thousands of metres written off and discarded, just because a global brand had changed their design direction - a little late as usual.
You see, the prints of luxury brands are always IP protected so factories are often unable to reuse or resell these fabrics even after they are written off.
Little did I know then, that what I was witnessing was only the tip of the iceberg.
Fast forward to today, my career has taken a different trajectory.
Beyond running Su By Hand, I still consult for the industry - albeit in a different capacity as a sustainability and circularity specialist. The services I now render in my corporate life is no longer design but ironically, managing the consequences of the industry's poor decisions through the up-cycling, textile-to-textile recycling and down-cycling of textile waste. We're talking pre-consumer waste - i.e excess fabric and unsold inventory that has never been used, but can neither be sold nor donated.
Does this still make sense to you?
Seeing the industry's problems on a macro scale has fundamentally shaped my beliefs on the values that a brand should bring to the world. Su By Hand was never meant to exist beyond its first run as a making-for-making's sake passion project, a revolt against fast, mass manufactured sameness. Little did I know then that those early experiments in botanical colours would lay the foundation of our slow fashion ethos - timeless, conscious and Nature-inspired.
From the get go, I wanted to create "clothing to be cherished; the kind that remains in your wardrobe for years simply because of its beauty, and innate quality."
CAROL silk top, an ice-dyed piece unique lined in silk, crafted with french seams and proudly made in Singapore is a great example of our human-made ethos.
Beyond products, Su By Hand is committed to advancing a vision of fashion that is kinder, more meaningful, and rooted in intrinsic value.
Systems at the Expense of Humans
Small does not mean no growth, but rather, growth that remains human in scale and accountable in consequence.
How do we grow in a way that still allows us to deepen rather than dillute what we stand for?
How do we balance revenue needs and business growth (new launches, deeper inventory) whilst staying true to our slow fashion ethos?
I’ve often mulled over what the optimal scale looks like for a small-yet-mighty brand.
For that, I love the concept of the optimal tribe size (Su By Hand is far from it):
"Sociological research has shown that the maximum "natural" size of a tribe/group is about 150 individuals - beyond that number, social order tends to destabilize and the group splits off into small subgroups". - Yuval Noah, 'Sapiens - A Brief History of Humankind' (2014).
Working across brands of different scale has taught me the impossibility of maintaining true brand ethos once it is no longer founder-led.
Systems erode responsibility; and efficiency, hierarchy, and scale can often come at the cost of ethical reflection.
"Once a brand becomes an institution, its primary goal shifts from care to continuity." - Max Weber, 'Economy and Society (1922)'.
This is something we see over and over again, not just in the world of commerce but also in history. Hannah Arendt describes in her book "Eichmann in Jerusalem", the banality of evil. Beyond a certain scale, personal responsibility dissolves into systems.
Harm comes less often from bad intention than the person who says, "I was just doing my job". From the brand marketing lead who fails to check the accuracy of product claims to the production controller who turns a blind eye to factories that subcontract - responsibility is not an easy game for corporations of scale.
The Beauty of the Small Business
A few years ago, I was nominated to my surprise for the President*s Design Award (P*DA) in Singapore for achievements in purposeful design. It was a surreal experience to be the only fashion nominee amongst architects responsible for multi-million projects. The real struggle however, was trying to articulate to the judges my motivation and belief in the value of intentional smallness.
Our society, even the most forward brands and thinkers are conditioned to think in terms of scale and efficiency. More scale = more customers = more inventory = lower unit cost of goods = more profit = even more growth and scale.
Except, tangible metrics do not measure intangible value.
That's not to say that small businesses are always above bad decisions as some, especially family businesses - can lack transparency and necessary checks and balances. But while large corporations are driven mainly by compliance, individuals can be motivated by personal responsibility.
As small business owners, we are directly accountable to our customers. Any feedback that I receive, has an immediate impact on my next decision both as a designer and a founder. From working with customers on customised alterations for better fit rather than opting for simple refunds, our focus has always been long-term value creation both for our customers, and for the fulfilment it brings me as a founder.
Meeting other founders in this journey of becoming (it's a role I'm still growing into) a brand owner, has made me an even stronger advocate for small businesses. This was not always the case and I was not always conscious about supporting local producers or small businesses.
The beauty of a small business lies in the fact that it does not require inflated levels of profit to survive, let alone thrive.
Every purchase sustains a handful of people, not thousands of headcount. Remember that ubiquitous company that seems to be everywhere, is constantly growing but still remains 'unprofitable'? This is the problem of scale; when growth becomes an end in itself, shareholders' value increase whilst customer value quietly erodes.
Smallness keeps us close—to the making, the people, and the responsibility that comes with both. From the hobbyist baker who took a leap of faith to the corporate executive with a side hustle, small businesses are more often than not, a labour of love. With age, I've come to learn that acquiring products that come with a story, gives me intangible joy.
In a world that measures success in scale, we believe care can only exist at a human size. If this resonates with you, we invite you to support fashion and goods made with intention—and to choose small, with us.
xx,
Supei
PS: Meet me and other founder-led small businesses in the next edition of Boutiques Fair Singapore SS26 from 15-17 May 2026 at the F1 Pit Building.