SINGAPORE – Every weekend, Bugis Street Art Lane in Victoria Street is brimming with vintage goods vendors selling items like retro digital cameras and unique Y2K fashion pieces. There may even be a musician or two serenading audiences at an outdoor open mic.

Scurrying from booth to booth is 21-year-old Portia Gabrielle Karl, ensuring that everything is running smoothly for the more than 40 vintage goods vendors there.

Ms Karl is one of the co-founders of the Resurrack Vintage Market, as well as a graduating Temasek Polytechnic (TP) business student. She and her business partner and fellow TP business student, Isaac Loh, 21, came up with the vintage goods flea market in 2024.

Resurrack Vintage Market operates on weekends from 3pm to 9pm, attracts up to 500 attendees weekly, and has more than 16,000 followers on Instagram.

Ms Karl is also the valedictorian of TP’s 2025 business cohort and the recipient of the Pan-Pacific Award for All-Round Excellence. The award commends and acknowledges polytechnic graduates who excel in their studies and have made outstanding contributions in their co-curricular activities.

She is one of nearly 5,700 students across 37 full-time and 49 part-time diploma courses graduating from the polytechnic from May 2 to May 13.

Ms Karl found her success, both inside and outside the classroom, to be surprising, particularly given her struggles with academic studies during her primary and secondary education.

“I felt like I couldn’t keep up with everyone else. It was very demoralising and affected my confidence,” she remarked.

However, Ms Karl found her groove in the hands-on learning environment of polytechnic. “The way we learn is different. Projects allow me to be more flexible and creative, and I enjoy the collaborative aspect of group work,” she said.

It was at TP that she met her business partner, Mr Loh, through shared classes in their first year in poly.

She found his entrepreneurial spirit “infectious” and counts him as one of her main inspirations.

Mr Loh was running an online business selling vintage goods online when the two met in their first year of polytechnic. In July 2023, he approached her with a proposal to become his business partner as he sought opportunities to grow his business.

In October 2023, the pair opened a physical store, Resurrack, as a one-stop shop for different types of vintage goods at the now-defunct Peace Centre shopping mall in Sophia Road. The shop was open f...