It’s getting really easy to shop for unique and collectible fashion items nowadays (and at a very good price too!) with just so many online fashion boutiques around. However, most of them only offer women’s wear. That is why we are happy to introduce Thiefbite for this issue of D.I.Y Rocks! as it is one of the few local online fashion blogs that caters to both men and women. From pre-loved to brand new items, indie labels to well-known high street brands, they’ve got it all. Hypptunes talked to Thiefbite partners, Farid and Bono about their label to give you some idea on what the label is all about. So read up and make sure you drop by www.thiefbite.blogspot.com right after!
What is Thiefbite all about?
ThiefBite was born through a thorough observation on the blog shop community as a whole. It is a combination of passion and love towards fashion and the online business. There are a few approaches to make online shopping experience more interesting, so we try to explore ways to get people attracted to our blog. ‘Thief’ means a collection of ideas that are combined into one formula and ‘Bite’ means an aggressive side of our competitive attitude.
Who are the people behind Thiefbite and what made you guys start Thiefbite?
Farid is the founder of Thiefbite. He started by only taking pre-orders for men’s clothing and shoes. Months later, Bono joined the label after both of us agreed to include women’s wear for Thiefbite. Bono had earlier started selling a small collection of her favourite trends through Facebook. Today, Thiefbite caters for both men and women.
How and where do you get your fashion items?
We mainly get our stuff from Thailand and China. We offer purchasing service for our customers via taobao.com (China’s largest online shopping site) for the pre-order items. However, they need to wait a few days to receive the items due to the shipping schedule. We sell men’s wear according to today’s trends from shoes to leather jackets and graphic shirts. For the ladies, we would say that the range is wider because today’s trends can be modern, vintage or both at the same time. Women’s wear includes vintage bags, dresses and fancy tops.
Do you closely follow trends when getting your stock? Or do you go with your instincts and try to start a trend?
As mentioned before, YES! Fashion is our passion and hobby at the same time! We do follow the latest trends and observe the current “IN” thing that might tickle our customers’ fancy. But on picking up an exact style, you can say that we do follow our instincts on most of the collections. It’s a gamble, but we believe that any of our customers can rock any outfit depending on their own styles! They can mix and match and it’s interesting to see how 2 different customers who bought the same top can work it in their own different styles! Everyone has the freedom to creatively express themselves through clothing!
Apart from selling your things online, what other methods of shopping/payment/delivery do you offer? (e.g. like do you participate in monthly bazaars, deliver by hand, etc)
We only accept cash, you can either bank it into our bank account or if you prefer to meet up, we also do cash on delivery, normally around Shah Alam, Klang or Petaling Jaya. We’re still quite new, but yeah we are starting to participate in fashion bazaars now.
Do you consider the customers’ needs and requests? And do you take personal orders from customers?
Yes we do consider customers’ needs, so we always try our best to satisfy our customers in any way possible. Sometimes it can be challenging when we receive weird orders from customers. For example, once there was one customer who ordered parts for a Fixed Gear bike from China which is totally out of our range. Anyway, we do restock some items if there are high demands from the customers.
How has the business been so far?
We are grateful to say that so far, our customer base has expanded from only our circle of friends to new people we barely know, which is awesome. Based on these little experiences we have gathered, we will always try to improve to make things better between us and our customers. So it will be a win-win situation for both sides.
How often do you get new arrivals?
We do it on a weekly basis. At least once a week, we take pictures and upload them the soonest possible.
How do you normally promote Thiefbite?
Besides our official website on blogspot (http://thiefbite.blogspot.com) we also have a Facebook account. At least there’s one medium that most people connect to everyday. We also try to penetrate our target market through forums like Mudah, Cari, Lowyat and Carigold. We mingle with students, corporate workers and people from different backgrounds to spread the word about our business and also spread flyers to let people know about our existence!
What are your future plans for Thiefbite?
Meeting new people and making new friends throughout the past few months have been very rewarding. We received some remarks that are helpful for us to improve for better and easier deals in the future. Hopefully Thiefbite will have its own store one day. That would be a thief’s dream!
Here are some of the yummy goodies you can get from thiefbite:
Pretty cool stuff right? And they won’t burn your pockets! So wait no more, grab them while stocks last!
i love thiefbite!