Our Story

REMO is an online General Store with a rich offline history and reputation.

REMO People December 1988

REMO began life in Sydney in 1988 as a physical General Store.

REMO General Store in 1995

We traded famously (can we say that?) for 8 years from the corner of Oxford and Crown Streets in Darlinghurst, serving and delighting a global network of CustOMERs in 104 countries; celebrating quality and passion in people and merchandise gathered together from all over the world.

HQ Magazine 1991

From Day One our focus was on high quality functional merchandise that manifested an authentic story.

And here is the logo:

… eerily familiar to some of you we're sure.

We generated a lot of marketplace heat in the early 90s, and grew to be a sizeable local business with a global reputation.

Busy REMO in December 1993

For the curious, here is some recently recovered footage of the General Store from 1993 ... touring through all 3 floors and the back office!

Our catalogues won many awards and were known and revered all over the world. Seriously. REMO Catalogues Selection. J Peterman with the Award Winning 1991 Catalogue.

For a number of administrative reasons, REMO went into hibernation in 1997 (we were living in the US at the time); but then in 2002 we came back online with a transactional version of remogeneralstore.com from a new base back home in Sydney.

REMO Home Page in 2007

We served CustOMERs online for 10 years (operating out of a warehouse in Surry Hills and a couple of different shop fronts in Bondi), but ran out of steam for that version in 2012. Small business is hard. Here's how the website was looking shortly before we put it all on ice.

Screen Shots from REMOGeneralStore.com taken on 30 April 2012

That was a fun ride too. Maybe you were there with us?

REMO | Act III in Bondi

In 2016, after a 4 year trading hiatus, Remo and Melanie finally felt ready for what would become Act III of the REMO General Story: REMO | Act III in Bondi.

REMO Bondi Home

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign we managed to launch a direct-to-customer online service, operated from our home and garage, very near to the beach, in Bondi (no shopfront this time); super local and authentic, but very special; every item hand finished and packed by the founders!

Here's the video that was made to support the Bondi relaunch:

Yes indeed. Mom & Pop are back in the saddle with a simplified mostly REMO brand offer, and you get to deal directly with the founders. And it's a family affair. Our 26 year old daughter Lola (living and working as a design engineer in Rotterdam) is freelancing as our designer, and our 23 year old artist son Roman and his girlfriend Katie help out with production from time to time.

In 2021, for reasons of both quality and sustainability, we decided to repatriate the making of our T Shirts and Stripey Things back to Australia, using 100% organically grown cotton. This was a big decision, and we are very happy with the results. Check out our new organic Australian T Shirts HERE.

Then in early 2022 we made another big decision making all REMO designs available on quality AS Colour 100% cotton T Shirts. This Big Pivot has enabled us to radically expand both the range of garments and the colours upon which our loved portfolio of designs can be ordered e.g. whereas before one could order (say) our Eternity design on either a white or black short sleeve t shirt, it can now be ordered in dozens of colours for men, women, kids and babies … and also on a canvas tote and as a long sleeve T Shirt for the cooler months.

It’s a REMOLUTION!

That's all from us. We hope that you've enjoyed our REMO General Story.

Remo & Melanie Giuffré

Sydney, Australia

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PS: If you're interested in more REMO history (including the twists & turns) browse this flickr slideshow:

And for even more background check out General Thinker, a book that chronicles the history of REMO in the context of the struggles that are inherent in the living the creative life of an entrepreneur.