For the past several years, the brand SBTG (Sabotage) has been synonymous with high end custom sneakers, graphics and apparel. The man behind SBTG Sabotage is recognized as one of the most sought after underground shoe designers/customizers in the sneaker collector world. His name is Mark Ong, 28 years old. He was born and raised in Singapore. He goes by the moniker SBTG, an abbreviation of Sabotage which was created during the rebel years of his life. Mark Ong, a Temasek Polytechnic (TP) graduate of the Class of 1999, is also responsible for the clothing label Royalefam which is a regal militia highly influenced by urban and war aesthetics. Possessing both vision and technical know-how, Mark painstakingly develops ornamental, but wearable, shoes for consumers who can afford the price-tag that guarantees them a real limited edition pair.
In 2003, Mark came into prominence by winning a shoe customization contest on Niketalk.com. Within the same year, he also produced a range of limited edition shoes for famous sneaker boutiques such as Chapter and Atmos in Japan.
A brief history about Mark: The whole customizing thing came very naturally to Mark when he started skateboarding in the late 80s through the millennium. As he couldn’t afford to buy new sneakers; he had to improvise with many raw materials like leather patches and bicycle tires. All that also led Mark to modify it in an aesthetic sense as well as functional. Back then, he was toying with a lot of Airwalks (namely the Tailslide, Vic through the Velocity series), Chuck Taylors, Visions, Vans (Full Cabs to Half Cabs).
In the 90s, Mark started to develop an interest in Nikes when he picked up a Japanese sneaker magazine. He has had interest in sneakers all along but didn’t know there was such a dedicated collector’s magazine; He joined the movement. He started from looking at peoples’ feet and identifying every model, to visiting every ‘mom n pop’ sneaker shop in every obscure housing neighborhood very frequently in hopes of finding some rare dead stocks or old Jordans. This was way before Nike made any retros. Mark even took it a step further by taking the elevator up to the top floor of his housing complex and literally combed the block down for old sneakers. He even started to recall and track down all his mates in school who had Jordans.
Today, Mark works out of his apartment in Singapore, but his projects are transnational. After winning the Niketalk competition, he made a set of 72 pairs of sneakers for a store in Tokyo. He has since released sets with the Hong Kong toymaker adFunture and a London D.J. called Unkle. For Sneaker Freaker magazine, based in Melbourne, Australia, he contributed a step-by-step customizing guide and executed a custom Nike Dunk co-branded with the sponsor Tiger Beer. His shoes are included in the world-traveling sneaker gallery show Sneaker Pimps (sponsored in part by the Finish Line retail chain), and he is starting an apparel line, Royalefam, with Ambush, a Singapore boutique. Most of Mark’s work is done using Nike Dunks and Air Forces, and the same is true for many other customizers. As explained by Mark, these shoes have the best construction and silhouette for designing.
In 2006, a publication on the 20/20 Vision project by the Design Singapore Council named Mark among “20 of Singapore’s finest talents” in Singapore’s evolving creative landscape. Mark credits his approach to design to his lecturer at TP, master potter Mr. Iskandar Jalil, now retired from teaching. Design, as he has learned, is a process and not simply producing something that looks nice. It is perhaps this passion for the process that has put Mark ahead of his league.
Perhaps surprisingly, Mark hopes for his sneakers to be mass-produced in the future. While being a true limited edition product has been SBTG’s niche, Mark explains that mass production will result in a wider reach and appreciation of the product. For the connoisseur, limited editions of his hand-painted shoes will still be sold.
For further information regarding SBTG, please visit the website http://www.royalefam.com.
