TREA was founded by Treacious when she was 19 years old. The intention was to purely sell some self-designed t-shirts and canvas bags (with her design skill) on Facebook to earn some pocket money. She started off with a second-hand heat press machine that was bought at with the money given by her dad despite telling him that she might lose this money. He told her not to worry about it and just do it. Up till today, this very same machine is still alive and running! A modified printer and some printing material was purchased with her savings from years of angbao money. The sales of t-shirts and canvas bags were quite popular back then with lesser competitors. And with the pre-order concept as Treacious only print the designs on t-shirts or canvas bags when there is an order for that particular design. This little start up manages to see profits in 2-3 months’ time. Slowly she started to receive requests to print customers’ own design, which opens up to the market of custom printing instead of selling her own designed merchandise. And this increases the sales significantly. Her house slowly becomes not just a mini factory but a warehouse and this started to disrupt the lifestyle of others living under the same roof. Therefore, she decided that she needed to rent an office.
WHEN COUPLE BECOMES BUSINESS PARTNER
Treacious was doing everything alone for the past 2 years until she met her boyfriend Andy, who is very supportive of her entrepreneurship. He eventually became the co-founder of TREA. Despite having full time jobs back then, both of them would sacrifice their after working hours and weekends for printing production. This continued for 3 years until they decided it is time to take the leap of faith to focus solely on building up TREA PTE LTD. It was a courageous yet scary move as there is no turning back for both of them. During the first few months, the sales made can barely cover their salaries as most of the revenue comes from small orders. Andy therefore made the move to venture into the corporate sector as he believes to be the only way to get more revenue. They moved TREA to a bigger office, with no investors, no mentors, just pure belief that with the combination of both of their strength and potential in this customisation industry, TREA can perform better if they give their full energy, time and focus in it. Thinking back, they would say it was totally a gamble.
Fast forward to today, TREA has been expanding their product range and company one step at a time during these 4 years. TREA has come a long way from a “one girl show” home start up 9 years ago to now operating in a 1700sf office space. Right now, from where they climbed, they are having more employees and staff to help the company instead of just the 2 of them when Andy joined the company 7 years ago. Years of working with China and Malaysia factories have resulted in their unique selling point for being able to customise products from scratch especially textile products, which make them able to stand out among other stronger and older competitors.
COMPANY AND VISION
TREA vision themselves as a customisation company that does beyond just printing. Customization should be extended to the product design itself such as being able to manufacture the product with the dimension, material and function that the client is looking for. TREA aims to produce as many unique merchandises as possible and make every product a masterpiece of their own. In years to come, TREA wants to be seen as an all-rounder customisation company that is able to transform an idea and a sketch into a physical product that speaks for the brand. By making a custom product the most valuable marketing tool for every company that comes to them.
Check out: The Finest Tshirt Printing Companies in Singapore
