At just 31, Savina Chow has already built — and rebuilt — her entrepreneurial journey three times over.
While she’s established a reputation as a fashion insider — her creatively curated Instagram feed (@savinachow) showcases chic outfits and collaborations with luxury brands like Fendi and Louis Vuitton — beyond the curated posts lies a story of relentless hustle and resilience.
She’s a founder who has navigated the highs and lows of three very different businesses, from fashion to beauty to FMCG, learning hard lessons at every step.
We spoke to her about her entrepreneurial journey and what kept her going through the challenges.
Savina has been working since she was 14. “I took on multiple part-time jobs… I even worked as a telemarketer and made sandwiches at Subway,” she said.
The drive came partly from necessity — she wasn’t academically inclined, and growing up without financial comfort meant she had to find other ways to get ahead. Working taught her soft skills that school didn’t.
That said, she always knew where her heart was. Fashion was her “first and biggest” love, and since young, she’d found creative ways to immerse herself in that world.
In secondary school, she ran “online sprees” — essentially, early shopping concierge services where she helped customers order items from the US, adding a 20% markup to compensate for her time. Later, she took on retail jobs to gain hands-on experience and get a feel for what it was like to work on the shop floor.
After completing her Fashion Diploma at Temasek Polytechnic, Savina dreamt of pursuing the arts further, but private school was out of reach financially. “So instead of going to university,” she said, “I simply set myself on a different path to building my first business.”
At 20 years old, Savina launched her first business: Eight Slate, a fashion label she hoped would stand out in Singapore’s burgeoning e-commerce scene.
“The online fashion and e-commerce industry was peaking, and I knew I had to be part of it,” she shared. “My limited and biased research at the time told me that the offerings available were mostly dresses and office essentials, so I wanted to throw my ideas and effort into a range that was more tailored and definitely unique.”
With just S$10,000 of her savings, she funded her first collection: six black-and-white designs in three sizes. She handled everything herself, from design and production to photography and website creation. Simple pieces were made locally in Singapore, while more complex designs were produced in China.
Despite her youth and limited resources, Eight Slate quickly gained traction. Retailers in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the US picked up the brand, and she even hosted pop-up events at Robinsons Singapore.
But the early success came with challenges. “The single biggest hurdle was funding,” she admitted.
“I had no cash buffer, and spent everything in production immediately upon launch — of course, there was never enough cash to move to the next stage, whether it was producing more clothing pieces or developing better sales campaigns.”
After three years of running Eight Slate solo, Savina brought on a strategic partner to help grow the brand — a decision that would end in legal disputes, though she preferred not to go into detail. Navigating the lawsuit alone became a crash course in resilience and resourcefulness.
“I didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer,” she recalled. “One of my husband’s friends took the case pro bono. The massive takeaway for me from this was that there are really bad and really good people, and I needed to learn to spot that difference in real-time.”
Though Eight Slate ultimately closed, the venture laid the groundwork for Savina’s entrepreneurial mindset. She had learned how to design, produce, and sell a product from scratch, as well as how to navigate the highs and lows of business — lessons she would carry into her next ventures.
Three years after Eight Slate’s closure, Savina embarked on her next venture: Beaubit, a beauty platform that began as a digital magazine and quickly evolved into a multi-label e-commerce store.
During the interim, she had spent time on content creation, which allowed her to stay connected to the fashion and beauty world while reflecting on “the mistakes from the failure of Eight Slate.”
Beaubit featured nearly 100 brands, including international ones like Aesop, Tamburins, Dr. Barbara Sturm, Sunnies Face, and Grown Alchemist, alongside up-and-coming Asian beauty labels. But reaching that milestone wasn’t easy — in the first two years, Savina focused on securing partnerships with these brands, building credibility and establishing Beaubit as a trusted platform.
Finance quickly became a hurdle once again. “I’ve had to learn the hard way that beauty retail is a capital-intensive business,” she said, especially as maintaining a vast portfolio of brands required substantial upfront investment in inventory.
Fundraising was equally difficult — post-COVID, Savina shared that investors “were no longer as interested in the aesthetics segment.” Though Beaubit was profitable, growth without external funding was tough, she recalled.
To sustain the business, Savina was pursuing her content creation work full-time. “I must have spoken to at least a hundred investors, many of whom have questioned my choice of being an active founder and an active content creator without realising why I had to do what I did.”
But her persistence paid off. In 2023, Beaubit was acquired by a strategic partner, though Savina didn’t share further details. Meanwhile, she had already been working on her own brand, Blunies, a deodorant line entering the FMCG market.
Deodorant may seem like a simple category, but Savina saw an opportunity to bring something new to the market. In 2020, she launched Blunies, a brand focusing on gentle formulations and appealing scents.
She spend months developing the deodorants, working with chemists to balance efficacy with skin-friendly ingredients like AHAs, collagen, and probiotics. Fragrance was a particular focus: “We work with a global firm to develop my scent ideas into actual fragrances,” shared Savina. “Our process is extensive and takes approximately a year to get to production sample.”
The first batch of 5,000 units sold out in the first month, confirming initial consumer interest. But scaling production without external funding was a constant challenge. Every decision, from formulation to packaging, had to be carefully managed to maximise limited resources.
After two years of bootstrapped growth, the stress of sustaining the business took its toll — Savina took a one-year break to focus on her health. The plan, once she returned, was initially to sell out remaining inventory and slowly phase out the brand, as all financing options had been exhausted.
But one morning, she decided to give it one last shot. She reached out personally to every retailer in Singapore, asking if they would consider stocking Blunies. “I had no expectations and accepted that a non-response was probably a sign from God to let this venture go,” she recalled.
Just seven days later, the first positive reply came: health and beauty retailer Guardian invited her for an in-person meeting, and within a week, a trade agreement was signed.
“On the day we signed our trade agreement, I applied for a [small] bank loan to sustain our inventory required for offline retail,” she shared. “We launched in 60 stores for the first three months, and soon after, we secured full distribution in all Guardian stores.”
Today, Blunies continues to grow steadily — it’s currently stocked in over 130 stores in Singapore, with plans to expand its retail presence and product lines.
Through all three ventures — Eight Slate, Beaubit, and Blunies — Savina has learned that persistence, adaptability, and creativity are key to navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.
She’s faced financial constraints, investor rejections, and the pressures of bootstrapping, yet has continuously found ways to turn challenges into opportunities.
“What you lack in monetary resources, you can make up for with human capital and sheer grit,” she says. Limited resources force creativity, and the ability to pivot when necessary keeps a business adaptable.
For Savina, the journey is still ongoing. She intends to keep moving forward, carrying the lessons from her very first venture and refusing to look back, letting experience guide her next steps.
