Written by: David Daniels, Photos by: Alex Maier

Bio

One of the fastest growing denim lines in the world is named after the Bible verse John 3:16. 3sixteen, a men’s clothing brand founded in 2003 and co-owned by Andrew Chen and Johan Lam, specializes in jeans. The 3sixteen headquarters, along with Chen’s home, lie in New York City. Its denim is cut and sown in San Francisco, where Lam lives a several-hour drive from Los Angeles.

3sixteen, which dons the motto “the last shall be first,” is sold in nearly 100 stores across the globe. Chen and Lam also co-own two of their own shops in NYC and LA with denim retailer Self Edge. In addition to denim, 3sixteen produces clothing from hats to boots and items in between, all of which are intentionally selected to complement its jeans. Its quality has attracted coverage from Instagram, Visual Supply Co and Hypebeast.

3sixteen: Unashamed no matter the cost

For Andrew Chen and Johan Lam, it was friendship at first sight of their shirts. 

In 2003, they both served as groomsmen when Chen’s best friend from college married Lam’s sister. During preparation for the wedding, Chen and Lam took notice of what each other was wearing — graphic streetwear T-shirts so rare that likely no more than five shops in the nation stocked them. 

They bonded over their shared interest in fashion, so when Chen started a graphic T-shirt company months later called 3sixteen, he called Lam.

“Our intention for the brand was to provide excellent work and a positive representation of faith in arts,” Chen said. “We felt like there were not many good examples of that at the time. If you grew up in the church, everybody’s had their share of corny Christian T-shirts, and if you don’t have them, you’ve definitely seen them.”

Chen had graduated from the University of Chicago in 2000, and he proceeded to work in New York as an information technology consultant — a job for which he lacked passion. In the beginning, both men worked at 3sixteen part-time. Lam balanced promoting the brand with studies that he had just begun at the University of Southern California. 

Neither of them knew anything about garment production, but over the next several years, they soaked in as much knowledge as they could from experts who were willing to help, like Kiya Babzani of Self Edge. They soaked in enough knowledge that Lam decided to decline multiple post-graduation job offers in 2006 to help run 3sixteen full-time. Chen quit his IT job a year later to do the same. 

This leap of faith required Lam to live on a $10-a-day food budget coming out of college.

“I always was of the mindset that if you’re going to be broke to invest in your future, do it when you’re young,” he said.

His sacrifice paid off. By 2008, 3sixteen had launched a full collection that included everything from ties to eyewear.

However, after two and a half years, they found that consumers were purchasing one item significantly more than others — jeans. This, as well as jeans’ year-round wearability (compared to the new collection they had been designing every six months), motivated them to consider change. In order to put all of their time, money and resources into fulfilling the potential of their top product, Chen and Lam scrapped everything else in their catalog. 

This sacrifice paid off, too. 

Each detail of 3sixteen jeans down to the buttons is the result of a calculated decision based entirely on quality. This is half of the reason why 3sixteen’s jeans range from $220-270. The other half is because Chen and Lam’s Christian faith dictates their business values.

“There’s no way to buy a jean at retail at $40 and have it be ethically produced,” Chen, 35, said.

“The numbers don’t add up from a business standpoint that you can make a jean for $30 and people are living a decent life making it,” Babzani said. “It’s not possible.”

Babzani said sweat shops are “extremely common” in the clothing industry. 3sixteen’s jeans cost more than most because they use a denim factory in Japan that actually pays living wages and is a safe working environment. 

“For us, it’s obviously an important thing to know who is manufacturing our product, know where even the components of our product are coming from, make sure that it’s ethical and be transparent about those things,” Lam said. “I think that’s part of the reason people are drawn to our product.”3sixteen’s jeans are not fixed at costs over $200 to paint a picture of prestige. In fact, their margins are also so low that they have a no-sale policy. The price is simply based off of how much the jeans cost to make.

As a result of Chen and Johan’s dedication to excellence, 3sixteen has been recognized for its denim over the years. 

“What’s best about our jeans to me is the fact that they look better the more that you wear them,” Chen said. “All of our jeans are raw, unwashed and unprocessed. Most jeans on the market that you’d see are soft, and they’ve been stonewashed or distressed — maybe there’s some decorative holes that have been put into them.”

“We believe in making jeans that are completely unprocessed so that they last longer and, any wear on the jeans, you did it yourself. It’s two-fold: You get a jean that lasts longer because it hasn’t been pre-damaged, and you get a jean that looks a lot better. There are very few products out on the market that look better the more that you use them.”

While they express their Christian faith through 3sixteen, Chen admitted that nothing about their products is inherently evangelical. However, they still have been able to evangelize through their brand name, as well as their platform. 

“Our intention was never to make a Christian product,” Lam, 29, said. “It was more to be open and honest about what we believed in and, at the same time, to make a really good product. … And it was always important for us that it existed in a secular context, that it was good enough in and of itself that it could be sold at any type of store — not just a Christian store.”

“Along the way, I think the biggest impact that I’ve been able to have is on young people who are growing up, who want to do something interesting and creative with their lives, but also have a heart for ministry, but they don’t necessarily feel called to go to seminary to become a pastor or a minister. I think there’s something to be said about earning the right to be heard — doing something that is of really high quality that attracts the attention of people and allows you to have a voice with them.” 

3sixteen began to add other products to its catalog again following about a year and a half of denim-only sales. After over a decade of existence, Chen and Lam still are frequently asked about the meaning of their brand name. They may have not always possessed a major platform, but the 3sixteen logo has been creating opportunities for them to share their faith from Day 1. 

“We want what we stand for and who we believe in to come out very clearly when the opportunity presents itself,” Chen said, “and it presents itself more often than you would think.”

Not every opportunity is necessarily positive. Years ago at a trade show, a buyer approached 3sixteen’s booth to inquire about the brand. After learning that a Bible verse inspired its name, she declined to carry the line because they were Christian. 

Of course, 3sixteen’s business partner Babzani, who is not a Christian, made the same claim. He had no idea that “3sixteen” referenced a famous Bible verse. 

“If you emailed me and said, ‘I have a Christian clothing line called 3sixteen, which is a reference to… so forth,'” Babzani said, “I would’ve deleted your email because I was in that state of mind that I don’t want to carry a Christian clothing line.” 

But by the time that Babzani, born into Islam, learned the origin of 3sixteen, he had built a friendship with Lam that made the faith-based name irrelevant to him and, eventually, interested him in Christianity.

“Over the last 11 years, I’ve learned a lot about the Christian faith,” he said. “Andrew’s given me books, and I even, believe it or not, went to church with Johan and his mother once or twice, which if you told me I went to church with someone 10 years ago, I’d say, ‘Why would I go?'”

Babzani has since partnered with Chen and Lam to launch stores in New York City and Los Angeles. 3sixteen has grown larger than the co-owners had ever imagined.

Chen and Lam were not sure if the faith-explicit name of 3sixteen would hold the brand back. If it did, though, they would not care.

But it has not.

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