Fan Bi
Founder & CEO • Blank Label
Fan Bi is an entrepreneur bringing custom clothing to the general public. Has been in DTC eCommerce for over 13 years. He is the founder and non-executive chairman of the custom menswear brand Blank Label.
Photos courtesy of Fan Bi
In my opinion, to be most successful, you need the triple threat—IQ, EQ and hard work.
At 22 years old, Fan Bi co-founded Blank Label, a retail company specializing in quality garments, superior customer service, and custom menswear. Fan was born and raised in Sydney, Australia, and always had a strong interest in sports and fashion. Fan often explored apparel design by painting his canvas shoes or fading and ripping his denim as a kid. Fan’s parents wanted him to study medicine or law. However, while studying at the University of New South Wales, Fan took an Introduction to Entrepreneurship class that changed his career path entirely. He was captivated by the possibility of building his own organization and designing an exciting and fulfilling career.
After earning a degree in finance, Fan studied business administration and management at Babson College in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2009 his apparel customization skills from his youth, abilities in finance, and entrepreneurial education came full circle as Blank Label was born. Fan and his team saw the opportunity to “build a category-defining brand, centered around custom clothing,” and that they did. Today, Blank Label is an innovative retail space that creates personalized fits to help men feel comfortable and confident in their clothing.
Fan co-founded Blank Label on the belief that business strategy is a design issue. He approaches every design by asking what customers want and how his company can design them the best possible product. He strives to find the most powerful way to communicate to his customers that he understands their needs and will guarantee they’ll love the product. In 2010, Fan and Blank Label co-founder Danny Wong implemented this strategy by collecting customer data. They found that their customer base wasn’t the hip, creatives they had imagined, but rather 30-somethings with white-collar jobs. As a result, they shifted their focus from custom designs to customizing work clothes for comfort.
Over a decade later, Blank Label is an award-winning custom menswear brand with stores across the United States and online. Today, Fan is an established and innovative entrepreneur. His success is rooted in a strategic approach to listening to customers and remaining agile while providing them with the quality clothing they desire.
As CEO Fan Bi oversees vision, strategy and finances for Blank Label.
PErsonal History
Dave, a Blank Label client, is an IT Sales Professional who values the customized experience Blank Label offers.
Where Creativity Began
“As a child, I had a strange balance between liking both sports and fashion. I was a competitive basketball player, spending hours in the gym each week, but also had a strong penchant for fiddling with clothing design. This included painting my own canvas shoes, and fading and ripping my own denim. As an only child with parents who worked a lot, I was mostly a self-learner, which probably helped develop my curiosity as an adult. Being the child of traditional immigrant parents, the ‘allowable’ paths were pretty limited to being a doctor, lawyer, or banker. I never thought I’d go into a creative or design field because it just wasn’t accepted.”
A World of Entrepreneurship
“Growing up in Sydney, I feel fortunate to have received a really well-rounded education. It wasn’t until my second year of college that my eyes really were opened to a world of entrepreneurship, and specifically the power of designing not only your career but a company. I took an Intro to Entrepreneurship class, and it changed my trajectory from banking to company-building. I became enthralled by the idea that you could take control of your career and build both an organization and a career to your choosing. To demystify the process and build confidence that I could go down this path, I would go to events on a weekly basis and talk to as many entrepreneurs as I could to learn their stories, and I started to believe I could be like them.”
Strategy = Design
“I spend most of my time on strategy, which is essentially a design problem. What do consumers want, how do we design the best possible product for them, and how do we communicate most powerfully that we understand their needs and that they’ll love our product? This is wrapped with questions like: how do we do this in a cost-effective way, and how do we get every team member to be marching in the same direction?”
A Future of Opportunity
“We believe we have a big opportunity to build a category-defining brand, centered around custom clothing. We’ve seen it work for over 15,000 clients, delivering a personalized product that meets their needs far better than a modular, off-the-rack item, and we see it working for many, many more.”
Blank Label provides menswear for work, weddings, and every occasion in between.
Blank Label continues to provide remote services for customers.
Starting a business from scratch is a humbling experience. I was particularly naïve to do it without the requisite industry experience, as Blank Label was started straight out of college. It’s an all-consuming experience…you really have to be an evergreen optimist and be patient.