What do consumer brands such as Thousand Miles, Bottoms Lab, Montigo, and Cosmic Cookware have in common? They were all built by the same Malaysian startup – RPG Commerce.

RPG Commerce is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce startup that develops consumer brands and products targeted foreign markets. Some of their in-house brands are apparel and homeware brands Thousand Miles, Bottoms Lab, Montigo, and Cosmic Cookware.

Since its launch in 2017, RPG Commerce has raised a total of US$34.5 million from Temasek-backed Vertex Ventures, East Ventures, UOB Venture Management, and RHL Ventures, but money doesn’t always buy success, especially in the consumer market, so how has one company been able to launch and operate multiple consumer brands in such a short time?

To find out, we speak to Melvin Chee, the co-founder and CEO of RPG Commerce. We’ll also get into why he started by targeting foreign markets instead of building up at home first, how they’ve managed to successfully launch these consumer brands, and what’s next for RPG.