Memories from the 14th General Election - a Fashion Perspective

MD Textile has been through 3 Malaysian General Election 12 - 14. For us t-shirt suppliers, each general election is an exciting event for us. The main reason being - that there would be many bulk orders coming our way.

For example, the central purchaser from the ruling government will need to buy many props such as banners, posters, umbrellas, water bottles, bamboo sticks, and of course, t-shirts and caps. Most of it back then, was imported from China. Although government cronies will get the lions' share of the orders, there were many spillover orders to be picked. The various candidates of the many constituencies still have to order their share, for their support, and campaign helpers.

We can say the 13th General Election was the most exciting event for us. Simply because, the economy was doing well, and there was a lot of cash circulating in the economy. Rumour has it that a rich Chinese guy (J.Lxw?) was on a splurge and a mission to attack then opposition strongholds of Penang and Melaka. His runners would go to every t-shirt supplier in town, make orders in the tune of 500,000 pcs.

Those days, t-shirt trasaction was buy counted by the container. Each 40 footer container contains 90,000 pcs!

Eventually, stocks of blue t-shirts were snapped up and the whole market was short of the coveted royal blue t-shirts. But this didn't deter the then ruling government from their buying spree. They even clean sweep all our other colours as well. Maybe as a tactic to prevent any other opposition parties from buying as well.

Then came the 14th General Election. T-Shirt suppliers were optimistic that the same scenario will repeat itself. So they increase orders from Bangladesh - the major source of cheap t-shirts, and stocking up. By this time, the whole 1MDB fiasco has exploded, and we know the government's debt has increased to dangerous levels.

Yes, there were still big orders, but not in the magnitude of previous years. Evidently, you could see that the number of banners and flags that used to flood every roadside has decreased by more than half. The 14th General Election was the last spectacular even for suppliers like us. For those not so lucky, they were caught we many unsold stocks.

Luckily for us, we didn't focus on bulk orders. Instead, we focus on the fashion side of it. Yes, the fashion side of a general election! From it, various characters have emerged, mostly from the opposition to challenge the government. Characters like the Ubah Bird and Captain Adil were in high demand.

But for now, their time has passed. And now remains a memory of what exciting times we were in. So here are the collection of t-shirts we printed for all to see. Should you be interested in a reprint, leave a comment or send us an email (sales@mdtextile.com). With our new HD Print technology, it's possible to revive old memories, without burning a hole in your pocket.

The tale of two captains! The names are Captain Adil and Captain Ubah. It was from the time when Captain America was riding high at the box office, we figured we can borrow some of his star power and apply it to the highly sought after mascots. 

Following the success of our captain series, we applied iron man to the ubah bird. We also applied "pahlawan' to the ubah bird. The result is Iron Ubah and Pahlawan Ubah. The ubah bird debut in 1st April 2011. Today is the 8th year aniversarry. It is ubah mascot is actually a Rhinoceros hornbill native of the state of Sarawak.

The water color ubah bird is our first attempt in political fashion design. But what really kicked of was this INI KALI LAH. V1. This is Version 2.0. "Ini Kali Lah" means this is the time. Incidentily they have made a show about a change in the Malaysian government, and called it ini Kali Lah!

These are timeless designs. I'm sure will last another general election, unless the break up.