Bangkok Snow Removal – From an initial challenge to becoming a niche business
It can be quite interesting how seemingly silly ideas get bantered around, then with a bit of peer pressure, luck and with years of perseverance come to fruition.
Sitting with a group of friends, talking over dinner and a couple of bottles of wine, Tim Cornwall and his friends started brainstorming business ideas nobody would copy in Bangkok.
Tim, originally from Ottawa, Canada, a city that see its fair share of snow, mentioned ‘snow removal’ and with everyone agreeing it was certainly something nobody would copy in the tropics, the idea was born; but the question was, what would it do?
Having seen a photo-shopped picture of the British Club covered in snow and as someone who regularly sends postcards and Christmas cards, Tim decided to create his own cards; but how to start?
The first bit of luck was finding a very talented graphic artist to create his logos. A friend called a very talented graphic artist on Tim’s behalf and told her, “My friend needs a logo for Bangkok Snow Removal.”
She said she was too busy to help but the next day she called and begged Tim to accept the design as she could not stop working on it and needed to get back to her real job. Logo done; but now how to get pictures?
Lynn, Tim’s Office Manager at the time, found a young Thai artist selling hand-painted postcards at Mo Chit BTS Station and asked him to paint the first series which included different scenes from the original BTS stations and famous landmarks around Bangkok with and without snow.
When he went to Graduate School about eight years ago, a new artist, Caroline Sellier began creating the artwork.
With Caroline, the company went through a number of styles, naïve and then a TinTin phase, bright colours and simple artwork, but more and more, Tim and Caroline decided they wanted typical street scenes from a Bangkok that is rapidly vanishing.
The first truly popular picture she completed shows motorcycle taxi drivers hovered around a fire.
From there she started to paint other scenes from around the city with the six most popular now in the greeting card set – Chinatown, a Songthaew, a Pedestrian Crossover, a Green Bus, the Indian Temple on Silom and finally, a Chaophraya River Pier.
Filled with colour and including different minute details each scene truly captures what Bangkok would be like if it had a snowy day.
Bangkok Snow Removal continues to expand its portfolio with most picture now in their website’s gallery collection.
In addition to its current product line, Bangkok Snow Removal also takes on individual or corporate clients and has produced calendars, cards, large prints and restaurant decorations with pictures from their growing collection or commissioned for a specific project.
A new project that has been put on hold for a while is a picture book titled Little Lek’s Snow Day in Bangkok but it is still not clear whether it should truly be children’s book or perhaps take a more tongue-in-cheek approach with adult readers in mind.
For this year, Bangkok Snow Removal is offering an 18-month, 2021-22 desk calendar, greeting cards and postcards.
For anyone interested in seeing the pictures or learning about how to order, please visit bangkoksnowremoval.com or write to Tim Cornwall via tim@bangkoksnowremoval.com
