At age 16, he spent $23 to buy a website domain. 9 years later, his blue-collar business brings in $1.3 million a year

Growing up, Zames Chew thought he wanted to work a white-collar role at a company like Google, but his career took a different turn. Today, the 26-year-old runs the Singapore-based handyman service Repair.sg, alongside his 24-year-old brother and co-founder, Amos Chew.

In 2024, their Singapore-based company Repair.sg brought in 1.7 million Singapore dollars (about $1.3 million), according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

“When I was younger, my dream was always to work in big tech,” said Chew. But one day in early 2016, he discovered a gap in the market.

“Our parents were looking for a service provider to fix something around the house,” said Chew. “I was just looking online, and … there [seemed] to be nowhere to find service providers [online] back in the day. So I was like … let me put together a website and see what happens from there.”

So, at age 16, Chew spent 30 Singapore dollars (about $23) to buy a website domain name, had his father help him register the business, and Repair.sg was born.

Almost a decade later, what started as a blue-collar side hustle by two brothers, now has over 20 employees and is on track to bring in about $2.3 million in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

As kids, the Chew brothers loved being hands-on.

“My brother and I would do everything together. That means building Legos, building PCs, taking things apart,” said Chew. “[We] have always been building projects together, and it has [been] our dream to … work together when we became adults.”

The two were able to realize this dream during their teenage years after starting Repair.sg. The company gained momentum slowly until the last few years when its growth started to soar, said Chew.

For the first three years of the company, the brothers were still in school, so they had to squeeze in work for the business in between classes, or during their evenings.

“What a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a lot of education … [and] licensing behind some of the services that we do, and it goes beyond just taking a screwdriver and hammer [to] things,” he said. So they spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and licenses necessary to run their business.

In addition, before the business scaled, they would take on most jobs themselves such as replacing lights, and fixing furniture. “For the first seven years, up until perhaps even early 2024, [the business] was basically at the brink of death most of the time,” said Chew. “We were young and weren’t very good business owners.”

Chew said that in the early days, he and his brother did anything and everything that people were willing to hire them for, and they would go as far as to set an alarm at 4 a.m. to make sure they could respond to early messages from potential customers.

Throughout this time, there were many hard lessons learned and some jobs they shouldn’t have taken, Chew said in hindsight.

“[Maybe] expectations were completely different, or perhaps they were just really cheap and it was a pain for us, or … they were not very nice people,” he said. “We just took whatever came our way because we kind of believed the societal belief that we were lower than the rest or not as respected, so we were kind of just grateful for whatever we got.”

It wasn’t until 2021 when both brothers decided turn Repair.sg from their hobby into a full-blown business that it began to grow and scale. The two also decided against attending university so they can focus on the business instead.

The Chew brothers are part of a wave of Gen Zers who are choosing blue-collar industries over white-collar ones, or over attending university, in some cases.

While the two enjoy their work, they’ve faced lots of pushback by their parents and strangers alike, said Chew. “Growing up, our parents always [told] us things like: ‘If you don’t study hard, you’re going to end up doing a manual labor job, and it’s going to be awful. Don’t you want to sit in an office with aircon?'” he said.

“[And] when we started speaking [with customers] … they would tell us to our face: ‘You guys are kids. You guys should be studying in school and not doing this kind of work. This is for people that quote, unquote, don’t make it in life,” he said.

Due to the societal stigma around blue collar jobs, Chew says he and his brother tried to keep their business a secret for a while.

“We were always very insecure about what we did, because while we did enjoy it, the negativity did get to us. So we made it a point to not publicize that we were doing this,” he said.

However, he has now recognized that fundamentally, the work they provide creates great value for customers. Additionally, he enjoys the job, and loves that he gets to work with his brother — which was ultimately more important than how others view their vocation.

“I’m optimistic for the future of the space,” he said, adding that in the last few years, he’s seen an uptick in the amount of younger people entering blue-collar industries. In fact, Chew says some of his friends have left their white-collar jobs for blue-collar ones, and “a lot of them are happier than they ever were.”

“I’m happy that I didn’t listen to anyone else and [kept going], because if I were forced to sit in an air conditioned office five days a week, typing away at a computer, I don’t think I would experience the same amount of happiness, fulfillment, joy that I do running this business with my brother today,” said Chew.

Want to level up your AI skills? Sign up for Smarter by CNBC Make It’s new online course, How To Use AI To Communicate Better At Work. Get specific prompts to optimize emails, memos and presentations for tone, context and audience.