The purpose for my visits to Taiwan and it goes in sequence like this; my grandmother/relatives. my old friends, Taiwanese street vendor foods, and business. Some of you already know Van Ness Wu and some of you new fans of Triumvir have seen him on our blog before or seen him on Triumvir’s bio page. To keep it short Van is a good friend that goes back more than a decade. Friendship is a difficult thing to understand and experience. Remembering those days in high school sneaking out at nights and getting fake ID’s to buy beer and party with girls were great, but only great if there were more than one girl (cockblockers). After high school some friends loose contact because more paths in life are given. I went to a university and Van choose to go to Taiwan to make it. We’ve always maintained in contact and in the beginning it was especially hard for him to live in Taiwan because he had to become a celebrity and they don’t teach that in school. He was teaching English at the time to earn a living and sleeping at random couchesfor months. He then auditioned to become a MTV vj and lost the competition. A little while after that he had his chance to go on a talk show and show his dancing skills. And after that he was casted in a TV show that was later to change his life. The TV show was such a success in Asia that it transformed the shows characters into a boy band…and so on to this date he has been in movies, had his own singles, and lately just opened for Kanye West in Shanghai. However he has always maintained true to everyone around him. Without his friendship there would be no be no Triumvir.

Triumvir failed miserably when I printed my first batch of tees in the fall of 2004. Five t-shirt designs, and with my genius mentality to print a Triumvir logo tee…yeah bad idea, who wants to buy a logo tee when no one knows who the hell Triumvir is! I lost my savings of more than $5,000.00 dollars from painting custom sneakers. As I was excepting failure and putting Triumvir behind, Van talked me back into doing another season and lent me some money. And from there, after excepting failure and motivation, Triumvir was able to produce the GS Stormtrooper, Retro Bruce, and I’m Not An Ape tee. And without producing those tees, I wouldn’t have met the people/partners that are here with me today to keep Triumvir running and making more mistakes then ever and learning from them together.

We are not a perfect company and I don’t ever expect ourselves to become one. We are just a bunch of individuals who have always been outcasts among our peers growing up. And Triumvir is the place where us outcasts comes together. At the end of the day we just want to make a name for ourselves before we sleep beneath an empty tombstone with dates that signify nothingness.

Pretending to look busy in front of the camera.

A street sign in L.A where his dad got the idea to name him. My mom named me Brandon because my dad’s name is Bill and it starts with a “B”…Big B and Little B…

inside his messy apartment

I will have a toy of myself one day and it would look something like Saint Seiya with armor all over me and an exclusive girl figure as my companion.

Kevin shaved his beard one day but left his mustache, everyone agreed that he looked like Mario for a few days.

It’s a sample of the White Lion Parka that will never get released, I think we still have a few of them…anyone interested..?

Off to LEFTFOOT we go.

Brandon