But that didn’t put him off dabbling in fashion.
When one of Ben’s clothing sponsors approached him to start a sneaker store a few years later, he jumped at the chance.
“I still felt unfulfilled and had a passion [to start a business]. I like sneakers very much,” he said.
Together with his sister, he invested around $100K to open Leftfoot at The Cathay in 2007.
Unfortunately, his timing could not be worse. The global financial crisis hit and the business struggled in its early years.
He decided to leave after three years due to differences in running the business. That experience cost him “around $70K to $80K”.
When 8days.sg reached out to Ben, he shared that luck also plays a part when it comes to running a business.
“Though I made a loss when I left the business, Leftfoot is still around and doing very well,” he said.
“Having a celebrity brand attached to a business doesn’t guarantee success. A lot of factors come into play.”
One of the benefits is there is less to worry about when it comes to marketing the business.
“But on the flipside, everything you do will be magnified,” said Ben.
He recalled an incident where he was reprimanded by a customer who had waited more than two hours for his food at the fish head steamboat joint when it first opened in 2022.
“There were so many customers, but we didn’t have enough kitchen staff then, so we couldn’t keep up with orders. The customer came up to me and said, ‘Just because you’re an artiste, you can do a business like that?’ I had a lot of questions marks in my mind. What has this to do with me being an artiste?” said Ben.
“I said to him, ‘Sorry for keeping you waiting.’ But he told me, ‘You don’t need to apologise to me, because you are already in the wrong.’”