In 2012, DC Shoes collaborated with world-renowned Singapore sneaker artist Mark Ong, also known as SBTG (Sabotage), to launch the "Enter the Dragon" Chinese New Year campaign across Southeast Asia. The collaboration combined traditional Chinese symbolism with streetwear culture and included limited edition apparel, retail activations, and a regional MTV commercial , all filmed and directed by Melvin Ong (BetaPhats), Mark's brother.
Singapore: Where Culture, Creativity, and Commerce Collide
When my wife and I moved to Singapore, we knew we were entering one of the most dynamic cities in the world.
Singapore sits at the crossroads of East and West, a place where cultures, languages, and traditions intersect daily. It's a city built on global trade, innovation, and a deep respect for heritage.
For someone working in the action sports and streetwear industry, it was a fascinating place to operate.
The region we managed, South Asia, included markets like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. These were young, energetic markets where skate culture, surf culture, and streetwear were gaining real momentum.
Our job wasn't simply to sell product. Our job was to build brands. And building brands in Asia meant understanding culture deeply.
That meant celebrating moments like Chinese New Year, one of the most important cultural events across the region. Chinese New Year is not simply a holiday. It's a season of symbolism, family reunions, prosperity rituals, and traditions that have been passed down for generations. For brands operating in Asia, it's also one of the biggest retail periods of the year.
We wanted to celebrate it in a way that felt authentic. And that meant finding the right creative partner.
The Introduction That Changed Everything
I first met Mark Ong through a close friend and business partner, Lucas Ng.
Lucas was our licensed retail partner for DC Shoes in Singapore, and he had been instrumental in helping us grow the brand's presence in the market. Together we opened several key DC stores across Singapore, including locations in ION Orchard, The Heeren, Tangs VivoCity, Tangs Orchard, and The Forum on Orchard Road.
One of the projects I'm still incredibly proud of today was opening the first DC Shoes kids store anywhere in the world, inside The Forum on Orchard Road.
Lucas had deep connections within Singapore's fashion and creative communities, and one day he suggested I meet someone who had already become a legend in the global sneaker world. That person was Mark Ong.
If you're a sneaker enthusiast, you probably already know his name. Under the moniker SBTG (Sabotage), Mark had built an international reputation for creating hand-painted custom sneakers that blended military aesthetics, street culture, and art. Collectors from around the world sought out his work. Major brands had already collaborated with him.
But despite that global recognition, Mark remained deeply connected to Singapore's underground creative scene. When we first met, what struck me immediately wasn't just his talent. It was his authenticity. He was thoughtful, humble, and deeply passionate about storytelling through design. We hit it off immediately.
From Business Relationship to Real Friendship
Living abroad has a way of accelerating relationships. In Singapore, our professional connection with Mark quickly became a personal one. Before long, Mark and his wife Sue-Ann became close friends with my wife and me. We spent time together outside of work , dinners, events, creative conversations, and plenty of laughter. Years later, we even vacationed together in Palm Springs, California, something that still makes me smile when I think about it.
That friendship is important context for everything that followed. Because the best collaborations don't come from contracts. They come from trust.
The Year of the Dragon: A Perfect Creative Brief
When we started planning for Chinese New Year 2012, the calendar marked the Year of the Dragon.
The dragon is one of the most powerful symbols in Chinese culture. It represents strength, prosperity, imperial authority, and good fortune. Unlike Western dragons, which are often portrayed as destructive creatures, the Chinese dragon is considered a benevolent symbol of power and protection.
Mark drew inspiration from another traditional element of Chinese culture: the ceramic dragon plate. Historically, ornate dragon plates were used during imperial times to serve meals to the emperor. These plates were not just tableware; they were symbols of power and prestige.
Mark combined this imagery with the DC Shoes logo, creating a graphic that resembled a traditional porcelain dragon plate wrapped around the DC emblem. The concept tied beautifully into another important Chinese New Year tradition: the reunion meal. During Chinese New Year, families gather for a large meal celebrating unity, prosperity, and the year ahead. The dragon plate symbolized that moment of gathering.
The design became the centerpiece of the entire collaboration.
Designing the Product
The collaboration focused primarily on a limited edition series of DC Shoes T-shirts. Two colorways were released: Red, representing luck, prosperity, and celebration, and White, offering a clean canvas for the dragon artwork.
Red plays a huge role in Chinese New Year retail culture. Retailers across Asia decorate their stores in red during the holiday because it symbolizes prosperity and success. Even from a merchandising standpoint, red sells incredibly well during the season.
The shirts featured the dragon plate graphic prominently across the chest, combining DC's skate heritage with Mark's artistic identity. But the campaign didn't stop with apparel. To extend the story, we also produced a ceramic dragon plate inspired by the design. The plate wasn't intended to be functional tableware , it was a collectible piece used primarily for visual merchandising and promotional storytelling. It quickly became a conversation piece.
Building a Regional Campaign Across Southeast Asia
Launching a collaboration like this across Southeast Asia required careful coordination. The campaign rolled out across multiple countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The goal was to create a unified launch experience across the region.
Retail Windows That Stopped People in Their Tracks
Retail was the heart of the campaign. Each DC store across the region received a custom Chinese New Year window display kit. These kits included mannequins wearing the collaboration T-shirt, oversized traditional Chinese "big head" masks, dragon plate graphics, and red-dominant visual merchandising.
The mannequins wearing the large traditional masks created an immediate sense of curiosity and humor. It was playful, unexpected, and distinctly Asian in its cultural reference. If you walked past one of those windows in January 2012, you noticed it immediately. And that was exactly the point.
A Skate Video With Personality, Directed by BetaPhats
To bring the campaign to life visually, we created a 60-second skate video featuring Mark and his friends skating through Singapore's Chinatown. The twist? They wore the oversized traditional "big head" masks seen in the retail displays.
The video was directed, filmed, and edited by Melvin Ong , aka BetaPhats , Mark's brother. It was a true family affair, and that authenticity shows in every frame. The result was a playful and slightly surreal skate film that blended Chinese New Year imagery, skate culture, and streetwear aesthetics.
The video captured the spirit of the collaboration perfectly. It didn't feel like a corporate commercial. It felt like a creative project among friends.
Watch the Enter the Dragon Video
The original 2012 skate film, directed and filmed by Melvin Ong (BetaPhats), is now on my YouTube channel. Watch Mark and friends skate through Singapore's Chinatown in those iconic big head masks.
When MTV Was Still King
In 2012, MTV was still one of the most powerful youth media platforms in the world. Streaming platforms hadn't yet fragmented media consumption the way they have today. For young audiences in Southeast Asia, MTV remained a major cultural force.
We secured airtime for the Enter the Dragon commercial on MTV in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Seeing the campaign broadcast across MTV was a surreal moment. What started as a local creative idea was now reaching millions of viewers across the region.
Social Media Before TikTok
Looking back now, the digital marketing landscape of 2012 feels almost nostalgic. TikTok didn't exist. Instagram was still relatively new. At the time, Facebook dominated social media engagement.
So we built a large part of the campaign around Facebook. One activation encouraged customers to upload photos of themselves wearing the Enter the Dragon T-shirt. Anyone whose photo received more than 25 likes won a DC Shoes prize pack. The promotion created organic sharing and helped spread the campaign through local communities.
In many ways, it was an early example of user-generated content marketing, long before that term became common in digital strategy.
Press Coverage and Cultural Buzz
The collaboration quickly gained traction in the media. Streetwear platforms like Hypebeast featured the collaboration, highlighting the cultural crossover between skate brands and Asian art. Trend platforms such as Trend Hunter also picked up the story. Fashion publications in Singapore covered the campaign as well, often focusing on Mark Ong's role as one of the country's most influential underground artists.
To help generate media coverage, we sent ceramic dragon plates along with press releases to key editors. The idea was simple: give journalists something visually interesting that tells the story. It worked.
Why Cultural Authenticity Matters
Working in Asia taught me an important lesson. Authenticity matters. Consumers can instantly tell when brands try to imitate culture without truly understanding it.
The reason this campaign worked is because it wasn't forced. It came from a genuine collaboration with someone who understood the culture deeply. Mark Ong wasn't hired as a vendor. He was a creative partner who brought his own artistic vision, cultural knowledge, and personal identity to the project.
That's the difference between cultural marketing and cultural appropriation. One builds trust. The other destroys it.
When you work with authentic voices from within a culture, the result is always more powerful than anything you could create from the outside looking in.
More Than a Decade Later
It's hard to believe more than a decade has passed since we launched Enter the Dragon.
The retail windows are long gone. The T-shirts have become collector pieces. The MTV commercials are now YouTube memories. But the friendships remain.
Mark and Sue-Ann are still dear friends today. And every time I see that dragon plate design, it reminds me of a time when creativity, culture, and collaboration came together perfectly.
The Real Lesson Behind the Campaign
If there's one lesson I've taken from my years working around the world, it's this: great business is built on relationships.
The DC x SBTG collaboration worked because it was rooted in trust, friendship, and mutual respect. It started with a simple introduction from Lucas Ng. It grew into a creative partnership. And it became a story that I'll always remember , not just as a marketing campaign, but as one of those moments where work and life intersect in the best possible way.
Further Reading
