Skateboards First, Studio Later: The Quiet Origins of Ouval Research

Ouval Research — known on some of its labels simply as Sch. — started in 1997 the way a lot of the most durable streetwear brands start: as a fix for a gap nobody with money was bothering to fill. M. Rizki Yanuar, Firman, and Arif Maskom were active in Bandung's skateboard community at a time when skate-specific apparel was, by most accounts, close to nonexistent in the city.

So they made their own. Graphic tees, hoodies, jackets, pants, and accessories built around the bold, illustrative graphic language that skate culture had already normalized internationally, but that hadn't yet found a local manufacturer willing to bet on it.

The brand's founding story rarely gets separated from the wider 'distro boom' narrative that swallowed Bandung in the 2000s, but Ouval Research's origin predates most of that wave by several years, and it wasn't a fashion-first bet — it was a community solving its own supply problem. That distinction is part of why it's still standing while most of the labels that followed it into the distro rush didn't make it past a few seasons.