From T-shirt slinger to retail overlord, BENCH didn’t just enter the Philippine market—it walked in, looked around, and said: mine.
What does it take for a local T-shirt brand to outlive trends, outplay global giants, and still look fresh in your feed 30 years later?
BENCH didn’t just survive the retail bloodbath—it styled its way through it. From rowing Richard Gomez to TikTok-ready drops, the brand has done more than sell shirts.
It built a Filipino fashion empire that actually feels Filipino.
Started in a Shoebox, Built Like a Powerhouse
BENCH wasn’t born out of some overpriced marketing deck or corporate forecast.
It was born in 1987 inside a cramped corner at SM Makati, selling T-shirts that actually looked like someone designed them on purpose.
Ben Chan wasn’t trying to revolutionize anything—he just had better taste than the rest of us and decided to do something about it.
The clothes were clean, cheap, and knew their audience. While other local brands were still acting like they were dressing Marcos-era debutantes, BENCH gave Filipinos something they could actually wear in public without looking like they borrowed their dad’s barong.
By the early 90s, BENCH was moving from SM corners to full-on mall domination.
Celebrity Obsession Turned Into Business Strategy
BENCH didn’t invent influencer culture—it just did it before anyone could give it a dumb name.
In 1991, they threw matinee idol Richard Gomez into a boat, slapped a BENCH tee on him, and rolled camera. The ad looked like it belonged at Cannes, not on local TV. People lost their minds. The campaign won awards, sold shirts, and turned a rowing scene into fashion gospel.
That was the blueprint. Celebrity billboards went up, and BENCH stopped being a clothing brand. It became a lifestyle fantasy with abs. The brand kept stacking its Bench family roster with Kim Chiu, David Archuleta, Bruno Mars, even Korean megastars like Lee Min Ho and TWICE.
You couldn’t ride a jeep without seeing someone’s toned torso in BENCH underwear glaring back at you from a billboard. Subtle? No. Effective? Obviously.
Retail Empire in Every Mall, Every City
By the mid-2000s, BENCH had over 300 stores. Today, it’s past 700.
You can’t walk through a mall in the Philippines without tripping over at least two BENCH branches and an offshoot store that sells its cologne, underwear, or soul. This isn’t retail expansion. It’s empire-building.
While foreign brands were still figuring out where Manila was on a map, BENCH already had the provinces locked down. They used franchising the way other brands use caffeine: relentlessly. Every new mall opening became another red dot on BENCH’s domination map.
And through it all, they kept prices grounded. Affordable enough for students, sharp enough for the city crowd. Try doing that without becoming tacky. BENCH pulled it off and made it look easy.
When Called Out, They Called the Shots
In 2014, BENCH caught heat for a fashion show segment where Coco Martin walked a woman on a leash. Critics lit their torches.
The brand didn’t turtle. It came back swinging with “All Kinds of Love,” a campaign spotlighting LGBTQ+ couples. When censors tried to erase the intimacy by blurring hand-holding, the internet replied with #PaintTheirHandsBack—and for once, Twitter was useful.
This is how you outmaneuver outrage. Not by groveling, but by evolving and making the critics look slow.
One Brand, A Hundred Ways to Stay in Your Life
The brains behind BENCH? That’s Suyen Corporation. A family affair that turned one T-shirt stall into a lifestyle hydra.
Aside from BENCH, they own Human, Kashieca, Bench Body, Bench Fix, Bench Café, and more franchises than a reality show judge panel.
But make no mistake: BENCH is the flagship. The others orbit it like designer moons. From clothes to cafés to skincare clinics, Suyen turned the BENCH name into a lifestyle menu. Go for the shirt, stay for the scent, get your hair cut while you’re at it.
Didn’t Flinch When Global Brands Landed
When Zara, H&M, and Uniqlo landed in the Philippines, BENCH didn’t flinch. It flexed.
Instead of copying foreign trends, it doubled down on its Pinoy DNA. Launching #LoveLocal campaigns, publishing books on the terno, and reminding everyone that Filipino-made doesn’t mean second-tier—it means we set the standard.
Meanwhile, international brands were scrambling to understand the market. BENCH had already been living in it, breathing it, and designing around it for decades.
BENCH Made the Algorithm Its Catwalk
The digital shift didn’t scare BENCH. It gave them more screens to conquer. They ramped up TikTok, nailed the influencer game, and launched a website that didn’t feel like it was coded during the dial-up era. During the pandemic, while others were patching leaks, BENCH kept shipping.
They treated content like currency and fed their followers daily. Fashion became algorithm-friendly. In 2023, they won Apparel Retailer of the Year at the Retail Asia Awards.
Retail apocalypse? Not if your brand already lived online.
You Don’t Just Wear BENCH. You Grow Up With It.
At this point, BENCH is less of a brand and more of a rite of passage.
Everyone’s owned something from BENCH. The smell of their cologne? High school nostalgia in a bottle. That first logo tee? Filipino streetwear before the term existed.
It’s a brand that figured out the formula before there was one: stay affordable, look premium, and read the room better than anyone else. BENCH didn’t just take over the Philippines. We made room for it in our closets, our malls, our language, and our identity.
Try naming another local brand that did the same.
Go ahead. We’ll wait.
