Beon and Candy of leatherprince met online and dated long distance from Singapore and Taiwan before Candy moved to Singapore and the pair married. They have backgrounds in shoe repair and lab work and for a short while Candy helped out repairing shoes with Beon. It wasn’t long before they came up with the idea to take the leather stitching skills Beon acquired, pair them with Candy’s love for illustration, and develop the business idea for leatherprince.

I used to be a cobbler in Singapore working for my father and Candy was a lab assistant in Taiwan before we got married in June 2007, which ended a long distance relationship of three years. We met each other on the Internet, fell in love and got married, and now we run an Internet business together — amazing! Candy moved to Singapore and helped in our cobbler stall but we soon found the shoe repair work to be unsatisfying, as we both wanted to draw cartoons instead. At that time, I was learning leathercraft from our friend Cody. An idea flashed in my head that we would be able to utilize our own illustrated designs with colorful leather and this is how we started leatherprince!

We didn’t really plan too much ahead. We don’t allow ourselves to think about failing to sell online, we try to stay positive even when sales are slow; we take that time to focus more on our designs and always make new things to keep our shop fresh. There’s a Chinese word that means “fate,” which we strongly believe in; we can never know what will happen next but we choose to enjoy what we are doing right now and live happily.

We enjoy making custom orders, requesting that the buyer name the item for us and write a little story on why they wanted the design — this way, we can have record of why the design was created, particularly if we decide to sell more of the design in our shop. We find this is meaningful to us, using our craft to fulfill someone’s needs, and hope we can handle every request. We believe our best marketing is by word of mouth from our customers, family and friends.

We really enjoy being a team, being our own bosses, and having a break anytime we want. We are glad to have each other to share the workload and we brainstorm ways to improve our shop all the time. Sometimes we work alone and it’s so lonely!

We are very grateful to have this option to sell our creation online. And thank you to all of our customers! I would also like to thank all of my family for their full support and understanding. Thank you!