In a dramatic twist to the usual tale of creative threatening to quit and never actually doing so, Omar Marks decided he’d had enough of trying to convince other people on how build a brand and left to build one himself.      

We meet him for a chicken-rice meal at a street side joint and he tells us about his journey in between bites.

“To be honest, we had no clue what we were doing when we quit,” he says with a smile, "We were just over advertising."

The first idea his partner and he had was ‘Bubble Tea.’ It was all the rage in Singapore so they figured why not sell it in… wait for it… India. They even researched the idea for a couple of months.

“Oh yeah, that was a waste of time and money,” Omar says, shaking his head and laughing.

With the bubble tea bubble burst, they turned to Do-it-yourself sushi, and decided to open an outlet in Singapore.

“I’d just had a kid back in India and here I was, in Singapore, staying in a room, and trying to work out how to run a sushi restaurant,” he says.

To make matters worse, his partner and he had a falling out and Omar had to buy the business off him.

“The staff were hired by him, they didn’t know me so naturally they weren’t too happy to work for me,” he tells us.

Omar somehow managed to convince them to give him a shot. He buckled down and slowly built the brand in his own way.

Seven years on, Maki-San is one of Singapore’s most loved brands, with a fiercely loyal following and a frankly ridiculous seventeen bloody outlets across the country. This is Singapore we're talking about. If you threw a Nigiri in any direction, you'd hit a Maki-San.

They have three new outlets opening in Japan. And others around Asia planned. Their staff are among the happiest in the hospitality business. The shopping malls in every corner of the country are rolling out the red carpet for them. And the news channels and key online influencers are queueing up for a piece of his time.

It’s fair to say the dude’s hit it out of the bloody park. Yet, none of it has gone to his head. Mister Marks is a simple, fun-loving foodie that likes to play football as often as he can and follows Manchester United and his daughter's instructions.

The part we love the most about his journey is this: the agency where Omar worked as a junior copywriter (earlier in his career) ended up investing in Maki-San when they saw it had the potential to become something big. Today, they’re considering shutting the agency and focusing full time on Maki-San. Booyah!