When Jackson Aw had gone into debt and was sleeping on the floor of the Mighty Jaxx studio, he knew he had hit rock bottom. A few years later, when it became a multi-million-dollar company, he knew it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Here’s why.
For a long time, we were conditioned not to talk about failure. The times when life hadn’t gone right were swept under the carpet. But as a society, we are starting to learn that the biggest, most transformative moments of our lives often come through crisis or failure. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who won a Bafta for writing and starring in the feminist sitcom Fleabag, has spoken about how she found a certain “glory in failure”. As have other luminaries including Booker Prize winners, scientists and artists.
In recent years, the notion of “failing well” has gained considerable currency. Books such as Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure by Tim Harford and The Art of Failing by Anthony McGowan, which describes itself as “a chronicle of one man’s daily failures and disappointments”, claim that failure can be transformed into something positive when the right alchemy is applied.
Aw understands this more than most. He started Mighty Jaxx in 2012 with a US$20,000 loan. Today, the Singapore-based design studio is a multi-million-dollar company, working with artists as well as international brands such as DC Comics and New Balance to create collectable sculptures. Its weird and wonderful figurines are admired and collected around the world. But it wasn’t always plain sailing. When he was building the brand, Aw had to sleep in his small, unsanitary design studio for five years.
Based in a very industrial part of the city, he would be left alone when everyone else returned home from work, sleeping on a meeting sofa with a single blanket pulled over him. “It was a strange and difficult time,” he says. “At 2am, random people would open doors, looking for stuff to steal. I got used to sleeping with a baseball bat. People have always said it was so brave of me, but I didn’t have an option. A collector had very kindly lent us studio space and I had nowhere else to go.”
During that period, Aw visited factories and learnt about production processes and techniques, such as hand-sculpting and moulding from scratch. The techniques he learned are still with him today, and his company has produced over 100 original toy sculptures.
