The label reads Clubmarc Company New York, but it does not have a store in the Big Apple, or anywhere else in the United States, for that matter.

In fact, its founder and chief executive officer, Marc Defang, 36, has been making his base here. The China-born designer, who holds both Chinese and American citizenship, is also a Singapore permanent resident.

His label made retail history last month when it launched an unprecedented year-long sale in which prices for everything, including new stocks, will be slashed by half till Feb 2 next year.

'We wanted to take the opportunity of this marathon to create public awareness so that people can get to know Clubmarc's designs and quality,' he said in an interview at the Clubmarc outlet in VivoCity.

The label, which opened its first outlet here at Parkway Parade in December 2005, has six stores here. It specialises in women's careerwear priced from $10 for a tank top to $239 for a dress.

Defang said it can sustain the year-long sale as it brings in its clothes directly from Clubmarc's own factory in Shenzhen, which cuts costs as this does away with the middlemen.

Ultimately, the aim is to 'to attract the girls to our clothes and have them coming back every two weeks when there are new arrivals'.

His business, he added, is modelled after the fast-fashion concept of retailers like Zara and H&M, which bring in new designs as often as twice a month and in limited quantity to ensure that there is little, if any, unsold stock.

He may have found a winning formula. From $1 million in 2006, Clubmarc's turnover tripled to $3 million last year, he said.

One of his employees had offered to set up the interview after our report on the year-long sale.

He was accompanied by his Singaporean wife and Clubmarc's retail director, Valerie Fang, 34, who noted that this was a rare event.

He had turned down various requests for interviews previously because he is 'media shy', she said.

The couple have two boys, aged seven and three. In 1999, they moved to Singapore from Chicago, where Defang was working as a designer at underwear retailer Jockey.

He also cited working stints for various designers in New York, including Anna Sui, Ann Taylor and Isaac Mizrahi.

Their first home in Singapore was a Housing Board flat in Punggol.

The family moved into a house worth 'a few million dollars' in the Thomson Road area just before Chinese New Year, Defang revealed.

Born Fang Jian Xin in Zhejiang, China, he moved to New York at age nine.

When he was a teenager, his father changed the family name from Fang to Defang. De, which means 'from', is used in French, Spanish and Portuguese names to indicate a person's place of origin.

Defang studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and fashion marketing at Berkeley College. In the company press releases and on its website, Clubmarc is said to have been 'established in 1999 in New York, USA'.

But a check with the Corporation and Business Entity Database at the New York Department of State showed that Clubmarc was registered only on April 20, 2006, under the full name, Clubmarc & Company Inc.

In Singapore, Clubmarc & Company was incorporated on Aug 1, 2005.

There is, however, a company called Marc Defang Stories And Stores, which was registered on Dec 16, 1999, according to BizFile, the business registry of the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority here.

A check of the New York registry showed no records of Marc Defang Stories And Stores.

Asked about this inconsistency, Defang clarified that Marc Defang Stories And Stores was initially registered here with the plan that it would be the holding company for Clubmarc. It is now defunct.

As to why the company touts itself as being founded in New York, he said: 'I am from New York, the idea for Clubmarc began in New York.

'My wife and I initially came up with the name and the concept for the shop while we were in the US in 1999.' However, it was not till 2005 that the first store at Parkway Parade opened.

In between, he ran various apparel manufacturing businesses, including a year-long stint as the chief executive of BJ Apparel Global, a subsidiary of Ban Joo, a public listed textile manufacturer.

Urban also traced the address of Clubmarc's New York headquarters, listed on its website as 326 Madison Street, to an apartment block in the outskirts of Chinatown in Manhattan. When asked, Defang said matter of factly: 'It's my loft which houses four designers and my finance department.'

As he is 'scaling back' his operations in New York, he said he has downsized his set-up there to just the apartment.

'I am in the middle of planning to make Singapore my global headquarters.'

He plans to open retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai by next year.

Most of the time, people here 'ignore our local brands because we do not have one true brand that can compete at the international level', he said.

While he hopes to change that by creating a local fast-fashion brand that Singaporeans can be proud of, he said the Clubmarc Company New York logo would stay as consumers are 'very used to the logo, and it will take some time to reposition... ourselves'.

Still, he said it is only a matter of time before he looks into removing 'New York' from the name.

Asked if the confusion over Clubmarc's origins might hurt his company's image, he said evenly: 'There is no such thing as saying that a New Yorker cannot be living in Singapore and making the place home.

'There is also no such thing as saying that a New York company should be as big as the usual American brands that own thousands of stores.'

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times on Mar 13, 2008.