How One British Entrepreneur Paved (And Plastered) His Way to Success

Plastered 8 makes iconic Beijing lifestyle-inspired graphic T-shirts that are now so much a part of the city culture that you can’t visit Beijing and not bring back a Plastered 8 shirt as a souvenir. Since their little shop in Nanlougu Xiang opened back in 2005 they’ve gone from creating only T-shirts to shipping all types of apparel, lifestyle products, artworks globally, and have created in murals in restaurants and hotels around the world. All of this came from the mind of Johnson-Hill, an optimist from Guildford, UK who first came to China in 1992 as a backpacker with no money to his name or much of a plan.

Looking at him today you’d never think that Johnson-Hill, a TV personality, public speaker, artist, and businessman grew up thinking he wasn’t talented in art and (to this day) considers himself an introvert. He’s the epitome of a self-made success story.

Johnson-Hill left home at the age of 17 and has been supporting himself ever since. He backpacked from country to country, making his living doing odd jobs until fate brought him to China. He fondly looks back on his first year in Beijing. He was living with a Chinese family and only had one friend in the city. When his parents came out to visit, his mom felt so bad that she gave him a EUR 500 note, for the first time. With that money in his pocket, Johnson-Hill recalls feeling so incredibly rich that he went to Lido and treated himself to a whole pizza to splurge. He would have brought his one and only friend along, but it was still just EUR 500, and that money needed to last.

Johnson-Hill didn’t make his name using family connections or money. This adventurer, and now dad to four beautiful daughters, paved the way for himself. “I like the feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next. I think that’s why I became an entrepreneur. I wasn’t the kid who was sold. I hated doing sales, so I wasn’t an entrepreneur in that respect. I was an entrepreneur in the sense that I’m willing to take risks. I didn’t want to focus on making sales. That was embarrassing! Eventually, I worked out that I like to create things.”

Plastered 8 started in that spirit. Johnson-Hill rented a storefront on Nanlougu Xiang way before he knew what he wanted to do with it. “The idea for Plastered 8 started when I saw a foreigner wearing one of those “I climbed the Great Wall” shirts.” It was a shit T-shirt and I thought I could do better than that, so I went home and downloaded a picture of a woman in a bikini and plastered it on top which became my very first design.” The direction for the Plastered 8 that we know and love today also came by chance. For his wife’s birthday, Johnson-Hill took an old Beijing subway ticket and had it blown up and framed it. He later put the same subway ticket design on a T-shirt and that became an instant hit at the Plastered 8. He had found his niche. “The woman in a bikini surfing the Great Wall was too out there. People didn’t get it. But they loved the subway ticket. It was that iconic meaningful Beijing nostalgia that people wanted” he tells beijingkids.

Today, this proud dad of four inspires not only his daughters but kids all over to take charge and find that missing niche in whatever they love, radiating positivity everywhere he goes and sparking up their entrepreneurial spirit. As someone who started from nothing, Johnson-Hill encourages others to pursue their passion and dreams. As someone who’s doesn’t believe in helicopter parenting and forcing their kids to follow a detailed life plan, Johnson-Hill says that he “just wants them to be brave and to bring ideas to life.”

READ: Three Cute Beijing Couples Share The Story of How They Met 

This article was originally published in our sister magazine beijingkids.

Images: courtesy of Dominic Johnson-Hill, Thesun.co.uk