USA

This 26-year-old’s blue-collar business brings in $1.3 million a year

This 26-year-old’s blue-collar business brings in .3 million a year

Zames Chew and Amos Chew are co-founders of Repair.sg.

Courtesy of Repair.sg

Growing up, Zames Chew thought he wanted to work in a white-collar role at a company like Google, but his career took a different direction. Today, the 26-year-old runs Singapore-based handyman service Repair.sg alongside his 24-year-old brother and co-founder Amos Chew.

Their Singapore-based company, Repair.sg, brought in 1.7 million Singapore dollars (about $1.3 million) in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

“When I was younger, my dream was always to work in big tech,” Chew said. But one day in early 2016, he discovered a gap in the market.

“Our parents were looking for a service provider to fix something around the house,” Chew said. “I was just looking online and… [seemed] not being able to find service providers anywhere [online] during the day. So I thought…let me create a website and see what happens from there.”

So when Chew was 16, he spent 30 Singapore dollars (about $23) to buy a website domain name, got his father to help him register the business, and Repair.sg was born.

Nearly a decade later, the business, which started as a blue-collar side hustle by two brothers, now has more than 20 employees and is on track to generate nearly $2.3 million in revenue by 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

Starting a side hustle at the age of 16

As children, the Chew brothers loved to be hands-on.

“My brother and I used to do everything together. That means building Legos, building computers, taking things apart,” Chew said. “[We] We always build projects together and this [been] Our dream… is to work together when we are adults.”

The two were able to realize these dreams during their teenage years after starting Repair.sg. Chew said the company’s growth slowly gained momentum until the last few years, when it started to accelerate rapidly.

During the company’s first three years, the brothers were still in school, so they had to work for the business between classes or in the evenings.

“What a lot of people don’t know is that there is a lot of education… [and] There is a license behind some of the services we do and it goes beyond just buying a screwdriver and a hammer [to] things,” he said. So they spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and licenses necessary to run their business.

Additionally, before the business grew, they did most of the work themselves, such as changing lights and fixing furniture. “For the first seven years, maybe even through early 2024, [the business] We were on the verge of death most of the time,” Chew said. “We were young and not very good business owners.”

Chew said in the early days, he and his brother did whatever people wanted to hire them for, going so far as to set alarms for 4 a.m. to make sure they could respond to early messages from potential clients.

Looking back, Chew said there were many hard lessons learned during this time and some jobs they should not have taken.

“[Maybe] the expectations were completely different, or maybe they were really cheap and painful for us, or… they weren’t very nice people,” he said. “We took whatever came our way because we believed in the societal belief that we were less than others or not respected, so we were kind of grateful for everything we had.”

Both brothers began to grow and scale Repair.sg by 2021 when they decided to grow it from their hobby into a full-blown business. The duo also decided not to go to college so they could focus on their jobs.

Blue collar stamp

The Chew brothers are part of Generation Z. In some cases, blue-collar industries are preferred over white-collar ones or the choice to go to college.

Although the duo enjoyed their work, they faced a lot of opposition from both parents and strangers, Chew said. “Growing up, our parents always [told] It tells us things like: ‘If you don’t work hard, you’ll end up doing manual labor, and that’s going to be terrible. “Don’t you want to sit in an air-conditioned office?” he said.

“[And] when we start talking [with customers] … they would say this to our face: ‘You are children. You should be studying in school and not doing this kind of work. “This is for people who, quote, unquote, haven’t made it in life,” he said.

Because of the social stigma associated with blue-collar jobs, Chew says he and his brother tried to keep their jobs private for a while.

“We were always very insecure about what we were doing, because while we enjoyed it, the negativity affected us. So we were careful not to publicize that we were doing it,” he said.

But now he has realized that fundamentally the work they provide creates great value for customers. Additionally, he enjoys the job and enjoys working with his brother; After all, this was more important than how others viewed their profession.

“I’m optimistic about the future of this field,” he said, adding that he’s seen an increase in the number of young people entering blue-collar industries in the past few years. In fact, Chew says some of his friends have left their white-collar jobs for blue-collar ones, and “many of them are happier than ever.”

“I’m glad I didn’t listen to anyone else and [kept going]Because if I had to sit in an air-conditioned office and type on a computer five days a week, I don’t think I would have as much happiness, fulfillment and joy as I do today running this business with my brother,” Chew said.