2025: A Year of Building a Space — and Learning How to Hold It
As 2025 comes to an end, I’ve been sitting quietly with everything this year has held.
Not just the numbers, the milestones, or the challenges — but the becoming that happened alongside building Finix and The Finix Store.
This wasn’t a year of loud wins or dramatic breakthroughs.
It was a year of learning how to stay.
With uncertainty. With fear. With myself.
In many ways, I was building two things at once:
a physical space in the world, and the inner capacity to hold it.
The Space We Built Together
When I first envisioned The Finix Store, I never wanted it to feel like a typical retail store.
I wanted it to feel like a sanctuary.
A place you could stumble upon, wander into, and feel your shoulders drop just a little.
A space where you didn’t have to rush, impress, or perform.
A space where you could linger — even if you didn’t buy anything.
This idea eventually found language in what people call a retail third space — somewhere between home and work. But for me, it was always intuitive. I simply wanted to create a place where people could be.
This is where our Bali-Sabi philosophy truly came alive: imperfect, lived-in, soulful, and grounded. Not polished to perfection, but warm, human, and real.
Over time, the store became a place where brand communities met other brand communities. I always imagined it as a shared home for local and regional emerging brands — where people could meet the makers, discover new stories, and connect beyond the products. In a world that lives so much online, watching people linger and talk in the space reminded me that we weren’t just holding things, but relationships
Throughout 2025, we experimented, hosted, gathered, and slowly shaped what this space could become.
Our Grand Opening started it all. We invited Singapore's beloved local Baby Queen Opera Tang to perform live in the store, and the space erupted — people stood close, cheering in unison as she lip-synced the house down to ABBA and our late Ms Houston with death-defying splits and drops. It was loud, joyful, and deeply communal; people stayed, mingled, drank, lightly browsed and shopped at their own pace — just presence and belonging, a true third space in motion.
Later, during our Christmas Get-Together, the store opened up again as a place of community. We invited friends and collaborators across F&B, lifestyle, and experiential offerings. People came to hang out, chat, explore, and reconnect. Some arrived alone and left having made new connections and discovery new brands and products. Others simply stayed because the space felt safe and welcoming.
Looking back, these gatherings quietly became proof of something I deeply believe in:
that a retail space can be more than a place to buy — it can be a third space, a place of discovery, belonging, and calm.
And without me fully realising it at the time, this space was also holding me.
The People Behind the Clothes — And What’s Beginning to Take Sha
Another quiet but meaningful evolution this year happened behind the scenes — within our design and production team.
In 2025, something clicked. The right people came together — not just in skill, but in sensibility. There was alignment, trust, and a shared understanding of movement, flow, intention, and restraint. Designing no longer felt like pushing uphill alone; it became collaborative, grounded, and alive.
Watching this team come together reminded me that Finix has never been just about me. It’s a collective process — one that flourishes when everyone involved feels creatively safe, respected, and held.
Because of this, I feel a deep sense of excitement about what we’re creating next.
As we move into 2026, you’ll begin to see our collections come full circle.
Our FLOW line is evolving into something especially close to my heart — more creative, experimental, elegant, and fluid. The silhouettes feel expressive yet refined, bold yet grounded. It feels like the clearest articulation of Finix’s soul so far.
Our FORM line will also see a refresh and jumpstart. This is the collection that grounds the brand — what we lovingly call the Finix uni-form. FORM is about foundational silhouettes that truly take you anywhere: from workout to hangout, everyday life to your next holiday. It’s the backbone of Finix — understated, versatile, and quietly powerful.
And for those of you who’ve been waiting, our FIT line is getting a thoughtful reset as well. Our wellness and athleisure pieces are expanding beyond the studio and gym, designed to move with you outdoors too — think nature trails, forest walks, gentle mindful hikes, or a slow day by the beach or lakeside.
And yes — I hear you.
New colours are coming.
Many of you have asked, and we’ve been listening closely. We’re working on bringing in richer, more exciting colours that complement different seasonal skin tones and palettes, so more of you can see yourselves reflected in the clothes.
I honestly can’t wait to show you what we’ve been working on. It feels like Finix is stepping into its next chapter — more assured, more embodied, more itself.
The Conversations That Found Us
2025 also brought moments I never quite planned for — being invited to speak on retail panels and podcasts. Not as an “expert,” but simply as someone living the journey in real time.
We weren’t there to present polished frameworks or perfect answers. We were there to speak honestly — about building slowly, experimenting openly, getting things wrong, listening closely, and continuing anyway. Those conversations reminded me that people weren’t drawn to authority or certainty, but to lived experience — to the truth of building something human, imperfect, and still unfolding.
What This Year Taught Me About Myself
On a personal level, 2025 stretched me in ways I didn’t expect.
For most of my life, I believed my struggles were mainly about mindset or mental health. I thought my anxieties, fears, and self-doubt lived in my head — that if I just thought better or practiced more self-care, I would eventually outgrow them.
This year, I made a revelation that changed how I see myself entirely:
that so much of what I was experiencing was rooted in my body, in my nervous system.
I began learning about nervous system regulation almost by accident — and then couldn’t unsee it. I started noticing how my body reacted before my mind could catch up: the tight chest on slow days, the constant alertness during uncertainty, the exhaustion that rest alone couldn’t fix.
It wasn’t that I was weak.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t cut out for this.
My body had simply learned, over time, to protect me.
I also learned that trauma and triggers don’t just live in memory — they live in the body. That understanding softened the way I spoke to myself. It explained years of crippling anxiety I had tried to “fix” mentally.
Healing, I realised, isn’t about outgrowing fear or forcing it away.
It’s about learning how to hold it better.
Learning how to stay present instead of panicking.
Learning how to breathe, feel, and remain — even when things don’t feel safe yet.
And as I learned to hold myself better, I found that I could also hold this business better.
Growing Into the Role of Holding
Finix didn’t suddenly become easier in 2025.
Retail didn’t magically stabilise.
The fears didn’t disappear.
But I changed.
I became steadier. More compassionate. More honest with myself. I stopped seeing anxiety as something to conquer and started seeing it as something to listen to.
Growth this year wasn’t about expansion.
It was about capacity.
The capacity to stay open during quiet periods.
The capacity to not abandon myself when things felt scary.
The capacity to lead without burning out.
Looking Ahead
As I move toward 2026, I no longer separate business growth from personal growth.
The sanctuary we’re building — the store, the community, the clothes — mirrors the work I’m doing internally.
What began as a year about space and retail became a lesson in presence, pacing, and belonging. In learning how to be a more mature founder — not by hardening myself, but by becoming steadier and more grounded.
If 2025 taught me anything, it’s this:
growth isn’t something we force.
It’s something we learn to hold.
Here’s to continuing to build spaces — both external and internal — where we can breathe, belong, and be fully ourselves.