Ben makes $15k a month whilst studying full time. Here’s how.
Ben Mallin is a third year university student enrolled at UNSW. Originally studying engineering/computer science, he now studies a bachelor of science, majoring in mathematics. His activewear brand, which he co-runs with his friend Marcus Dimitri, earns them around 15 thousand monthly.
What was the idea behind VRTX, and how did it come into being?
VRTX started in 2021. It was the middle of COVID and we were three high school mates. We were pretty bored and we were playing a lot of fifa, and we just had the idea one night playing fifa – we’ll customize jerseys because we love sport. We love design. We kinda love bringing our ideas to life.
So we go, ‘yes, sweet’. Let’s just start making Jersey designs because we really like it and we’ve got time because we’re bored. So one of my best mates, Marcus, he just jumped onto Photoshop, did a few designs, and he chucked them on TikTok. And then people on TikTok replied to the comments saying, “wow, you guys do such cool jerseys. The designs are awesome. We love it. Can we buy it? Send us the bank account number. Can they be shipped to me? And we’re like, oh, we’re just doing designs for the fun of it.”
But people actually wanted to give us money. And so we’re kind of 15, 16 year olds in year 11 at school in COVID, and these random people online are wanting to give us money for designs that we’ve customized on jerseys.
So we go, “wow, there could be a business here that people obviously want Jerseys customized, we can customize them. Let’s go”. So we kind of started from there.
How have you grown the business since you started?
Well everything’s gonna come down to marketing, it just depends which venue you go down – paid ads, social media, word of mouth. For us, it’s mostly been word of mouth. So knowing people mostly. The first couple deals were just friends, family, people we know. We just said, Hey, here’s what we do. And people go, yes, we, I need some jerseys, I need some polos.
Then the first big deal was the sports show charity match.And that just came about because I love sport, I love Rugby League. I saw on Instagram, that they were having a charity match similar to what the side men do for football in the uk. And I go, yeah, this is a great event. Love to get behind that. So sent them a message.
So apart from people we know, it’s just sending cold VMs cold emails to people saying, love what you’re doing. Here’s who we are, here’s what we do. I would love to partner. Then they say, yep, jump on a call, do some designs for them, and go from there.
So word of mouth, people we know, but then also a little bit of just cold outreach.
How do you handle running the business as well as uni?
That’s tricky. The rough balance I have is just to have a really bigday or week leading up to tests and assignments. And then the other time is just going really big on VRTX. So I don’t have a good system where it’s like half the day.
And do you find that works well for you?
I find it’s currently working well. Do uni when uni’s needed, do VRTX when VRTX is. It’s not perfect, but good enough to understand content and get through, while still having time I can actually dedicate to VRTX and not have a million things I still need to think about.
Can you walk me through the process of how the whole thing works?
So it’s very much just sending a client exactly what they want. So some clients will say, “Hey guys, here’s the design I had in mind. I’ve either sketched it, or done something up depending on my graphic design ability. Can you guys replicate this?” We say, yep, send them a design. Or some people say, “Hey, we want some jerseys for our team. This is our team name. Just make it look good.”
So some people know exactly what they want, some people have no idea. But whatever it is, they send us their team name, colors, and then we’ll get them a design. They’ll go, yep, that’s good, except I want this color to be this color, and I want this graphic to be this graphic.
Can you move the logos up or down? And small changes. So we’ll change it, send it back to them. They’ll ask more changes and you revise it until they’re happy with it. Once they’re happy, you’ve done all the hard you go. You now have a product that they exactly want and they’re happy with, so then just send the invoice.
They pay.
And then once production’s done and we ship it out to them and it’s, that’s, that’s an order.
Who manufactures the jerseys and the activewear?
We have a big range of suppliers that we work with. We started with just one supplier and at the moment we have 10+ different suppliers who manage different orders depending on the size of the order, and the specific things that are included in it. We’ve got some in China, some in Pakistan, which is very helpful. Things like Chinese New Year come around, and all the Chinese factories close down because they’re on holiday. But we can still roll orders out because we have a diverse supply range.
How did you find these suppliers or manufacturers?
Two main ways. One’s online. Obviously manufacturers are wanting to get people like us to work with them. So they all have websites online, but they also have trade shows. We’ve gone to a lot of trade shows in Australia, we’ve been to a couple in Sydney and Melbourne where suppliers will come out from overseas and put a few of their samples up and talk to you in person, which we found really valuable.
And we’re going to China this year for the Canton Fair. It’s the world’s biggest trade manufacturer. Every manufacturer will be out there.
What’s the biggest lesson that you’ve learnt along the way?
I think the lesson is that people are the most important. Everything will always come down to the people side of things in lots of different areas. For example, someone like the sport shared guys who run the charity match, one of our first clients, they’ve kind of stuck with us the whole time.
They really like us as people, trust us as people and like working with us. Even though the quality and the designs are fantastic, the people, the relationship makes it easy as a business decision to stick with the same people.
So treating people right will always pay off. If we’ve ever got an order wrong, which happens, delays happen, mistakes happen – part of life. We’re all humans, but we’ve found owning up to it, saying we’ve made a mistake, we’re very sorry, we’re happy to refund, we’re happy to make this right, tell us what you need to do, has always put us in a better position. It’s a short-term mistake because we’ve prioritized the people side of things.
What’s a bit of advice you’d give to a uni student who was thinking of starting their own business?
Definitely do it. For a few reasons. Number one, it gives you a bigger perspective.
You’re obviously learning things, studying content, doing assignments, but it’s not the same as the ride or die of we’ve put money, time, effort, our reputation into this, and we need to actually make this work.
And also the younger you start, the quicker it takes to learn and make the mistakes. We’re four and a half, almost five years now. We’ve been around for half a decade and we’re only just starting to actually make significant progress or get people on board, sign bigger clients, get bigger revenue and had we started when we were 30 – you have full-time jobs, families to feed, mortgages – it makes it a lot harder to be able to make mistakes and take those risks, whereas uni is actually the best time because you can make mistakes. You can afford yourself time to learn.