ABOUT US
We pair urban clothing with kawaii designs that will make you feel young forever - regardless of age. Urban. Kawaii. Forever young.
THE OUCHII GUY
Alvin, aka "The Ouchii Guy" created Ouchii in the third quarter of 2013. As a kid, he was always into the visual arts; often drawing kawaii caricatures of friends, family and his favorite cartoons. This hobby eventually became a lifestyle, continuing long into adulthood.
Today, in addition to growing Ouchii and continuing to draw and design, Alvin is an art educator - sharing his knowledge, experience and love of art with young minds throughout the South Bay.
Ouchii's origin is the amalgamation of many of Alvin's life experiences and passions colliding together - cartoons, film, pop culture and great times with family and friends.
THE BROKEN OCTOPUS
EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON
During Alvin's first year of teaching high school in 2010, he taught a lesson on molding ceramic ocarinas. For his teaching example, he created a ceramic octopus whistle. The non-fired example sat on his desk. Extremely fragile, a student had picked it up and accidentally broke off several of the legs. Instead of trying to repair it, Alvin fired it broken and pieced it back together with a band aid. Three years later, Ouchii was born.
THE
BEGINNINGS
EVERYTHING STARTS SMALL.
The broken octopus sat on Alvin's desk for years until he decided to relocate teaching assignments and was packing the octopus into a box.
Suddenly he envisioned a lifestyle brand complete with apparel and gifts that featured the broken octopus and other kawaii characters with injuries. The key difference: it would appeal equally to men, just as it does women; adults just as much as it would kids.
Being in ludicrous amounts of student debt due to private art college, he figured screen printing a few t-shirts on the weekends with the help of his brother AJ to make some side cash at local events and markets wouldn't hurt.
POP UP TIME!
After creating an entire line of Ouchii characters, Alvin began testing the waters throughout the 4th quarter of 2013 at various events. He noticed there was an extremely positive reaction to his characters and decided to take things more seriously and grow the business while continuing to mentor students by day.
Throughout 2014 he started developing relationships with various Bay Area Malls, continuing to test his products out with audiences.
By 2015, he took his first major step and hired a team of sales associates and launched his first official pop up shop at the Great Mall in Milpitas that would run every day while he would teach.
RETAIL GROWTH
With the Great Mall Pop Up, the Ouchii team had been able to reach a much wider audience, enabling us to grow at a faster pace. The Great Mall Pop Up served as our "flag ship" pop up, while we continued to do temporary pop ups for special engagements and events throughout the Bay Area.
As of the fourth year in business Ouchii has sold over 25,000 products featuring Alvin's characters,!
Ouchii opened it's first brick and mortar flagship boutique in Milpitas, CA in the Spring of 2017. In addition to opening the Ouchii Boutique, Alvin and his Ouchii team are hoping to continue to "pop up" in new areas to expand our reach.
THE NEVER ENDING STORY
After 2 and half years at our brick and mortar, Alvin decided to close the doors of all retail operations in the fall of 2019 and recalibrate. Due to the continuing rise of online shopping and incredible rapid decline of traditional retail shopping, Alvin now has his sights on continued online growth.
It's 2020 - and Ouchii isn't going anywhere!