77th Street (clothing)

77th Street

File:77thStreet.jpg
Company type	Private
Industry	Clothing
Founded	1988
Headquarters	Singapore
Key people	Elim Chew, Sulim Chew, Chris Chew, Samantha Tan
Website	http://www.77thstreet.com/

77th Street is a clothing company based in Singapore founded by Ms Elim Chew in 1988 with a small shop at Far East Plaza, Singapore.

Today, 77th Street has a stronghold in local street wear fashion and accessories scene with a chain of 12 retail outlets around Singapore, 1 retail training centre at ITE College East and the 77th Street Plaza located in the popular shopping district of Xidan in Beijing, China.

77th Street was the first fashion retailer to win the prestigious “Most Distinctive Brand” of Singapore Promising Brand Award given by The Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME) and Lianhe Zaobao in 2004.

History

Elim founded 77th Street in 1988. It was her first foray into the retail industry and has since established a firm footing in the street wear scene in Singapore. It started with a humble beginning at Far East Plaza level four with only a 180 square feet store. With the help of her sister, Ms Sulim Chew, who was in charge of sourcing trendy items from Britain, the second shop was opened three years later in 1991 at the same mall but on level three. Subsequently, about one new store was opened every one to two years.

77th Street’s first overseas expansion attempt was a joint venture store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with a Malaysian partner in 1995. However, the store was not doing well and 77th Street had pulled out of the partnership since. The breakthrough in foreign markets came in 2003 when 77th Street successfully secured and signed an agreement for a 400,000 square feet mall which was conceptualised into a youth shopping cum activity belt in the popular shopping district of Xidan, Beijing, China. The following year, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth & Sports (MCYS) and Senior Minister for State for Trade & Industry and National Development was the Guest of Honour for the official opening for 77th Street Plaza at the Xidan Cultural Centre. Not only this marked the company’s first business venture in China, it was also the first Singapore retailer to set up a shopping mall in China.

The Founder - Elim Chew

Elim founded 77th Street in 1988. Her first attempt into the retailing turned out to be a huge success in the retail scene. Prior to that, she was in Britain undergoing a hairdressing course and returned to Singapore to open a salon.

In addition to expanding her retail businesses, Elim lent her expertise, experience and time to various youth organisations in Singapore. She co-founded Singapore Street Festival - a platform for showcasing local talents in areas such as performing arts, visual art forms, fashion, entertainment and sports, The Young Entrepreneur Mastery (TYEM) - a non-profit academy that supported youth entrepreneurship and inculcated an entrepreneurial mindset in out-of-school youths. Elim was also a founding member and director of the Social Innovation Park (SIP), a social enterprise incubator which aimed to provide a replicable set of integrated services and resources that would help create a platform to support social entrepreneurs' business models that advocated societal change. Through this platform, she championed Pop and Talent Hub, the first social enterprise talent development platform in Singapore which gathered talents from social homes, institutions and also professional artists to sell their artworks with the objective of making them self-reliant.

As part of Elim’s on-going community campaigns, she launched My Voice in 2004 which was a book featuring 77 earnest real life experiences written by youths from all walks of life. My Voice was supported by MCYS, South East Community Development Centre (CDC), UFM 100.3FM and Drama Box. The 2nd edition of My Voice – Breaking Free was launched subsequently on 9 December 2006. All proceeds from the sale of My Voice was used for funding life skills, entrepreneurial and creative skills workshops run by TYEM, which guided youths to take on life challenges with purpose and confidence.

On top of that, Elim also sat in over 20 committees. She chaired and co-chaired several public service, youth and community groups including the Programming Committee for *scape. *scape was an iconic youth community space for free expressions supported by MCYS and National Youth Council of Singapore (NYC) and Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) of Ministry of Trade and Industry. She was a member on the Board of Trustees , Entrepreneurship Committee and Investment Committee at the National University of Singapore.

Her accolades included being named the “Most Promising Woman Entrepreneur of the Year” by ASME in 2001, awarded “Mont Blanc Businesswomen Award” in 2002, “Young Woman Achiever Award” by Her World and “Leadership and Mentoring Award” by Research Communications International in 2003. She acknowledged that her first award in 2001 gave her the opportunity to become a youth ambassador in Singapore.

Youth Olympic Games YOG 2010

77th Street put a team of local designers together to create T-shirts inspired by Singapore's Youth Olympic Games YOG bid. It had also collaborated with CityCare, a volunteer group, to make 50,000 car decals to giveaway to drivers to display as a gesture of supporting the country's bid.