I had the idea to do an iconic T-shirt brand, and I had a very small amount of money to start up the business. I only had about ¥40,000 and so I thought, well, I’ll just open it up on the street that we live on, because it’s cheap, and it’s close to home.

[Nanluoguxiang] was empty in those days. Pass By Bar was the only Western-style business, the rest was just xiaomaibus and hairdressers ... I can remember the first day I had my shop I only sold one T-shirt. The second day I sold zero. But we didn’t have a lot of fixed costs.

[At the start] I couldn’t afford to set up a WFOE, a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise. So I became friends with the landlord [who still works at Plastered] and I said, “I use your license to sell my stuff, and we’re business partners as such.” Come year three, when I’d made that US$100,000, I registered my own business, and now it’s a proper Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise.

Plastered came from one random idea. I saw someone wearing an “I Climbed the Great Wall” T-shirt walking down a hutong. And I’m like, “Jesus Christ. People are still wearing this stupid T-shirt.” I said to myself, if I could change it, how would I do it? And that’s how I came up with my first design.

Then we found a shop, and I continued to design the rest of the collection with some friends who could design on a computer. I collected objects, tickets, illegal stickers like the adverts, everything around me that represented the Beijing that I love. My passion basically became my work.

We’ve done well over 100 designs since we opened. We do two or three every month. The creative side of the business is my absolute passion. We only hire local matriarchs to work in the shop, we don’t hire young pretty girls. Everyone said to me, “You’re insane, employing your landlady.” She’s worked for me for four years. [Neighbor] Kang Ayi, she’s five years, almost to the day. She’s an ex-accountant, every penny went through her hands. And she also helped me bring up my children, because we shared a courtyard.

In the first year, when we were outsourcing our production to middle men companies, the quality was really up and down, so I hired a car and just drove out of Beijing looking for factories.

I started meeting people in villages who had their own little sewing operations, and I built this network of producers all around Beijing that do our screen printing, our packaging and our sewing. It’s the same small family of factories that we deal with now that I found three years ago now. We only work with factories that have really good working conditions, that are in Beijing, and I have to like the boss.

I’m happiest when I see lots of new products in the store, not when I see lots of money in the bank. Which is why everything in the store changes. The “8” in the window changes every six days, the posters change every eight weeks, new T-shirts every 15 days. It’s just continually re-creating, which is how we stay ahead of the competition. There’s always new stuff. And that’s the blood of the business: creativity.

Plastered’s survival has been down to the whole innocence of it all. It’s just like Steve Jobs said with “staying hungry and staying foolish.” Plastered really is that. From the service, from the ayis, to the decoration, to the designs, it’s all fairly chaotic. It’s never going to be a franchise.

Dominic Johnson-Hill, as told to Caroline Killmer

Up Next: Plastered is preparing to open a second Beijing shop in 798. T-shirts, hoodies, keychains, bags and more are also available at www.plasteredtshirts.com