Behind the Brand: Tapuh Clothing

Small brands give us a platform to buy beautiful clothes that are exciting, timeless and truly stylish.

Tapuh is a brand that has captured my heart over the past year.

I came across Claudia (Founder, designer and maker of Tapuh) and her sumptuous sets on Instagram (@tapuhclothing), and my goodness I have not looked back.

I’m such a fan of Claudias designs, the silhouettes, use of colour and high quality fabrics - I could go on for years. The timeless designs are something you can wear forever, and that to me is worth the investment.

Here I am below in a few (don’t judge me but I have more than just a few of her pieces…)

Left to right: In the Rebecca trousers in the Shrimp linen, the middle I’m in the Rebecca trousers and Cloud 9 top in Paprika red linen and then I’m in the Cloud 9 top in the Shrimp linen, styled with some jeans in the last pic.

Hear about Tapuhs story from Claudia …it will make you love her designs even more….

“So with Tapuh... It basically all started with the trousers. I used to make the Rebecca Trousers for my sister Rebecca (who saw that coming haha) and she said she received so many compliments for them and people asking where she got them from.

She kept encouraging me to start selling them but I never felt like I was the kind of person that could be my own boss and put myself in such a vulnerable position with my name out there. Fast forward a couple of years to Summer 2020 I started making masks for friends and family, I think I ended up making around 100 masks with the option of giving them away for free or for a small donation from a list of charities I had prepared. It ended up expanding and so I started selling them to family-of-friends, coworkers-of-family and friends-of-family-of-friends etc... This simple type of transaction gave me a better understanding of providing a product for someone and gave me confidence and reassurance in my abilities as a seamstress as well as a business woman. 

I think the idea of creating a clothing brand felt so giant and scary, and normally when something seems like that I run, but my sister helped me to streamline it and we agreed I would just sell three different products in a handful of colourways, trousers, bags and masks. We drew up a business plan, came up with a timeline, drew a logo and came up with the name - Tapuh.

I come from Borneo-Malaysian descent with my Ah Kong (grandad) being raised in a small village in the jungles of Sarawak called Mentu Tapuh and so the name is a hark back to that part of me. Tapuh was born with the threads of all my family woven into it, it's my Ah Kong, it's my Granny who was the first person to put me on a sewing machine, it's my sister who was by my side as I birthed this little baby, it's my mum and my dad who nurtured and raised me into the person I am today.

Tapuh is family and with it I want to create family, a little space of fun and art and creativity to encourage people to feel comfortable and glamorous all at the same time. I'm not the best business woman when we talk strictly business, but somehow, I've managed to keep this thing going for two years and every time I open a message from a lovely customer with them in my clothes it's so overwhelming and rewarding. It's really challenging running Tapuh by myself and I'm constantly doubting myself but something keeps me going and I'm so glad it does! “

Claudia and I decided to take some time to sit down this Friday afternoon, and natter about our journeys as small brand owners.

It was a really lovely catch up, and a useful conversation to have as we both found that our journeys, although the process of our brands are different, the small hurdles are still the same….

Holly: Well, hello! Thank you for being the first person for my small brand Saturday profile.

Claudia: it’s really exciting thank you for asking me

Holly: I’m so obsessed with Tapuh, you were the person I wanted to ask first. I love your story about how you got started by the way. I think it made me want all of your stuff a little bit more if that’s possible.

Claudia: I always kind of preferred just sewing stuff for myself because I knew what I liked, and I started like five years ago maybe, I had no-confidence in my abilities I think idea of selling to people something was tricky. At that age I had bad imposter syndrome so it wasn't really until I actually started to make masks during the pandemic. I made about 100 in the end, for my friends, and family. I was doing it free but eventually was asking for donations to different charities. And it was all out of fabric that I already had in my collection I just had for years, then after that I had to start buying fabric, so I started to see how I could make things on a bigger scale.

Holly: How did you make that jump from selling to friends and family to selling to other customers?

Claudia: To my mum's work co-workers as she would take orders, come home and tell me who wanted some….. and Instagram helped quite a lot.

Holly: Did you always sell via Etsy?

Claudia: No, through Instagram and through word of mouth initially….then I start to make trousers for my sister, and then that's when my sister came back like saying she had so many compliments on her trousers and I should sell them.

Holly: What does your sister do as a job, just out of interest??

Claudia: She’s a professional photographer so she actually shot all of the first ever promotional material which was really lovely because I think that, again, gave me a kind of confidence as she was there how to say ‘this is the product. It’s really well made. I will help you set up an image for yourself, and take it from there’ .

Holly: So she already was on your wavelength with your vision for it??

Claudia: yeah yeah, she was very much guiding me and also at that time I was experimenting with the little bags (that are now available to buy) and that was when she was like ‘look you can sell masks, bags, and trousers. You don't have to do have a massive inventory of things, it can just be like what you can manage. You don't have to do it if you don’t want to do it.’ That way it definitely felt way less daunting.

Holly: The reason I was asking was my sister and I had always used to have the same conversations, where I was like ‘you should be selling your knits’ and I am really shameless with pushing myself online so it was easier for me to do it. I can completely understand that something you have made yourself comes from such a personal place, that you almost are too close to it to be able to see how good it is yourself.

Claudia: It definitely is still like that now, I mean what works with my slow fashion is the fact that I am a slow paced person so I like that it really works the way I want at the pace I want.

Holly: It’s hard to put yourself out there. I found you because Jenny Garcia tagged you in when she'd held at one of your tops in a shop in Bristol! I saw it and I was like that is what I have been after for years!! Amazing, well shaped linen pieces.

Claudia: Oh so glad to hear it thank you that’s so nice.

Holly: Do you have an idea of where you might branch out? Or can you not say?!

Claudia: oh no no I'm happy to sort of divulge a little bit for sure. I've got ideas and I really really want to start putting them in motion so I can get them out because I really want to expand.

Holly: Exciting! When you’re sewing, do you have people with you? Or is it is it you on your own in your studio?

Claudia: It’s literally just me so every single thing that sort of it had posted out is literally just me at the moment. And I'm busy reaching a point now I can't do any more then I'm able to do that so that means that the business is kind of like ground to a halt slightly, I really would love to be able to hire someone and have a little bit of help just cause I've got like three jobs within this job and it doesn't mean I'm amazing at all of them. I find keeping really on top of my Instagram, my social media and almost everything else always ends up becoming a bit forgotten about.

Holly: I’m exactly the same. I prioritise getting orders out and my customer service, marketing, and working on details but all admin takes a back seat. Do you think that you’ll set up your own website so you're not having to pay your Etsy commissions??

Claudia: That's actually yeah that's definitely on the cards at the moment. An objective for 2023.

Holly: Have you always worked for yourself? Or have you been having to juggle other jobs at the same time?

Claudia: oh yeah I've always had to get other jobs to supplement the money.

Holly: Learning about the finance side of business, managing cash flow, budgets etc is the side of running businesses that I would really like to cover with these ‘behind the brand’ profiles. How are we meant to know about this side of business stuff? It's so hard to even open a business bank account, for example, I’m not even talking about borrowing money, this is just opening a business account. When I did it I felt like I had to jump through so many hoops.

Claudia: I literally had this issue last week I try to open up a business account (because again that's something confusing as having all of my different yeah funnelling into the same account) and I was denyed being able to simply open a business account.

Holly: It's crazy. You just want to ask banks - are you kidding - why is this something that's so hard to do?? How is any small business meant to move forward and establish itself.

Claudia: It's so frustrating.

Holly: It feels like we should've been taught about this at school. It’s like they expect you to know how to do all of this stuff or what you need and it's like ‘I don't know that - I'm learning as I go’.

Anyways, something I HAVE to know is, do you struggle to choose your colours for Tapuh??

Claudia: OH MY YES. If I could just choose for myself then it would be all bright colours. For me, red is a neutral.

Holly: I get it.

Claudia: But I need to think about my customers who want a more neutral option. And the earthy tones are a good option as they pull the colours all together.

Holly: I think you can divide your customers with too many options, and it’s tricky as you want to go with your heart but you also need to wear your commercial hat and think of casting a net to a wider customer base. And those customers who might be more timid with their colour choices might eventually learn to become more brave with the va-va-voom colours.

Claudia: that’s what I love! The messages from customers who have just fallen in love with a colour outside of their comfort zone.

Holly: I’m so excited to see what Tapuh has coming up for this year. Thank you for being my first ‘Behind the Brand’ interview!

You can find Tapuh here on Instagram (@tapuhclothing)