Nic Sim

Nic has always been entrepreneurial. When he was 7 years old, he started earning his own money when he sold Superman stickers to his classmates.

From Artist to Entrepreneur

This entrepreneurial spirit spilled over to his undergraduate life. He started to draw on tee shirts and sold these to his friends when he was studying at Universiti Sains Malaysia (he majored in Fine Art while pursuing a degree in Education). His hand-drawn t-shirts were popular among his university friends!

Although he was studying for his degree in Education, Nic couldn’t imagine himself a teacher in a Government school. He refused to conform, preferring to carve his own path.

“My first and only job was as an art director in an advertising agency despite not knowing how to design using a computer! My ability to market myself convinced my then employer to hire me to lead an entire team of far more experienced graphic designers,” Nic recounts.

He experienced agency work for a year but it turned him off. The hours were long and the deadlines, tight.

He used to go home, shower and return after dinner to his office where he continued to work till the early hours, accompanied only by The Beatles. Until today, The Beatles’ song “Let It Be” still reminds him of the time he used to slog at the office!

The experience made him realise that he never wanted to work for others. He decided to start his own business because he knew that he could do so much better on his own. 

This was how Redbox Studio was “born” in 1998, right in the middle of the turbulent Asian financial crisis.

Inspired by Wing Chun

Nic believes his knowledge, practice and competition experience in Chinese wu shu during his teenage years in Kuching, Sarawak may have been the catalyst for the Redbox X Factor, a system he developed in 2008.

The Redbox X Factor which has evolved into the One Mountain One Dragon system is deeply inspired by the highly lethal yet supremely elegant martial art style of Wing Chun, made famous by the movie “Ip Man”. Martial art principles from Wing Chun are the foundational principles of the Redbox X Factor system which he created to enable business owners understand marketing and business.

Says Nic, “We’re not your regular web designer company. If you want a website that performs well in search engines as well as gives your customers a compelling reason to buy from you, we’re the people you work with.

Our strength has always been in marketing – just look at our clients’ results. Because I’m a business owner, I understand that business owners need their websites to market for them. We’ve always designed websites that have helped our clients attract sales!”

The Power of Thinking

Nic started conducting workshops to teach business owners about web design and marketing in 2009. In 2013, he started experimenting with Marketing Mojo Meetups where he shares a lot of what he thinks about – smarter and more effective ways to market.

He used to share during Tech Tuesday – educational sessions to help business owners get clear about websites but these sessions have been discontinued as he was getting too busy. 

“Everything begins with the right mindset and the right question. Ask the right question or solve the right problem and you get the right answer. If you don’t, you’re running around in circles.”

All Redbox Studio workshops are pure education sessions without any pushy sales or over-hyped claims. Nic always believes that every workshop or session must be of value.

“When you educate sincerely, you are engaging in the best type of marketing,” he says.

Nic says he is fortunate to have learnt art, typography and design from his tough-as-nails professors. The knowledge of manually producing design when computers were just coming into play means that he understands the importance of design as a communication tool versus design for design’s sake. Over the years, Nic has nurtured this as the foundation for the remarkably distinct communication style which Redbox Studio is well known for.

“Redbox Studio has always been built on ethics, good design and topnotch content. We empower clients with websites and marketing strategies so they can run a successful, world class business,” reiterates Nic.

Nic has been featured in Men’s Health Malaysia magazine (December 2005),  Graduan (2006), China Press (2017), Sin Chew Daily (2018) and more with regular interviews by business undergraduates as a unique case study for their business and management courses. 

Connect with Nic

He enjoys reading business books, sipping pu-er and liu pao tea and watching sunsets. He is still passionate about all things design. Read this interview to learn more about Nic.

He considers himself fortunate that he lived in the era of Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs and Cantopop group, Beyond – three of the greatest creative legends of all time in his opinion.

He is also an artist whose artwork have been bought by private art collectors in The Netherlands and Singapore. 

Nic was a two-term chairman of Mensa Penang, a high IQ society. He is also the co-founder of a community book adoption centre where books are given a new lease of life while helping dialysis patients. 

He published his first book in August 2016 which he co-authored with his business partner and wife, Krista Goon, titled Web Wisdom. He also invented a game to teach entrepreneurs how to leverage time called Big Timer.

Besides managing the web design business, he spends his time conducting workshops to help entrepreneurs understand the fundamentals of business. 

If you’d like to invite Nic to speak on topics such as entrepreneurship or marketing or invite him to conduct workshops, please contact him.