April 5, 2009
BYSI
Say yes to success
In a striped Tommy Hilfiger long-sleeved shirt, dark denim jeans and with gelled, spiky hair, Mr Tan Yew Kiat looks every inch the well-groomed towkay (boss).
He is the hip-looking founder of local women's fashion label bYSI, pronounced By See.
His glass-walled office on the fourth floor of his five-storey bYSI factory building in Kaki Bukit is a picture of minimalistic black-and-white chic.
It is where he runs his growing fashion empire of 13 local stores and another 17 in countries including Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.
His clothes target the working woman, with prices ranging from $23 for a blouse to slightly over $100 for a dress.
They are a hit, going by annual sales figures that went well over the $10-million mark in the last financial year. That is a 10 per cent year-on-year growth.
But it has not been all smooth sailing for this 32-year-old, who set up his business when he was 20.
The Sars outbreak in 2003 was his lowest career point, when business tumbled by nearly 60 per cent.
'I was so afraid I would not be able to pay my staff,' says Mr Tan, who eventually made a comeback when sales picked up later.
The only child of a banker father and a merchandiser mother who specialised in Italian fashion, he learnt about the fashion business from a young age.
When he was 15, he helped his mother distribute her garments to retail stores around the island. From there, he picked up skills such as marketing and merchandising.
He later dropped out of school after disappointing O-level exam scores of more than 20 points got him rejected by junior colleges and polytechnics.
'I could not focus on my studies and I was inspired by other people doing business,' he said.
At 20, he struck out on his own and invested $60,000, half of which was borrowed from his mother, into his first shop in a Tiong Bahru shopping mall.
Another $30,000 on credit went towards supplies from Hong Kong garment suppliers.
He started his collection by bringing in clothes from Hong Kong, but later created his own designs.
He has a team of five designers, all from local design schools. The clothes are manufactured in China.
His unusual and almost unpronounceable brand name, bYSI, has Italian influences due to his time helping his mother with her fashion business, he explains.
The second syllable 'si' means 'yes' in Italian and is supposed to encourage a 'say 'yes'' service attitude among his staff.
'It is important to know how to make customers happy to keep them coming back,' says Mr Tan, whose wife Susan Hon, 34, works as a human resource and operations manager in his company.
The couple met during his garment delivery days when he was a teenager and they have four daughters aged between nine months and 11 years.
Sales may be in double-digit millions, but Mr Tan emphasises the virtues of prudence and saving money.
He says: 'I teach my daughters to spend within their means. It's not easy to make money.'
Go-Getters
You're proud to be Singaporean, but now there is a new way to show it loud and proud.
It's the 'Get Singapore' campaign launched just over a week ago to encourage shoppers to buy home- grown retail brands.
Locally designed products such as clothes and toys are in malls all over the island, but to many consumers, they are hidden gems amid higher-profile overseas labels.
Enterprise development agency Spring Singapore aims to change that by marketing the products through this collective campaign. Thirty-seven brands have signed up for it.
But just who are these local heroes? LifeStyle shines the spotlight on three who have made their mark here and abroad.
ACTION CITY
Real dough from fake
The Breadou's line of stress squeezies and wrist supports has brought success for Mr Tan Tong Hong.
As teenage boys, Mr Tan Tong Hong and Mr David Chong loved Star Wars figurines.
But when it came to making money from such toys, Darth Vader and company were light years from Planet Profit.
That is what Mr Tan and Mr Chong, who went on to found toy store chain Action City, discovered when they first tried to turn their hobby into a business.
They started selling their favourite Star Wars toys at a simple stall at a weekend flea market at Clarke Quay in 1998.
But when they aimed bigger, pumping in more than $20,000 to open their first Action City store at The Heeren in 2000, the toys did not sell and the business faced bankruptcy.
Undeterred, the business partners showed more savvy than even Luke Skywalker by quickly switching to selling brightly coloured Japanese toys based on anime characters.
That first range of cutesy toys pulled in nearly $700 worth in daily sales, seven times more than when they sold their Star Wars and 12-inch military figures.
In 2007, they found success by designing in-house plush toy massagers and later Breadou, a line of stress squeezies and wrist supports in the shape of bread items.
Now, they have moved that original flagship store to Plaza Singapura. And the business has expanded to include eight other outlets here and four more in Malaysia.
The entrepreneurs have posted 15 per cent year-on-year growth in sales figures. Mr Tan declined to give details on his annual sales figures.
With quirky, collectible toys that range from imported figurines from Japan and Hong Kong to massagers and stress balls, their playthings appeal to the teenage crowd and young executives. This age group makes up 80 per cent of the clientele.
Prices are also kept affordable.
'We want our toys to help people destress and bring back childhood memories and rediscover the joy of play,' said Mr Tan, 38, who trained in fashion design at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.
Even before opening his toy business, he was no stranger to the retail world, though.
After graduation, he joined an apparel company as a merchandiser.
Later, he worked as a designer and merchandiser for his late uncle, who owned local brand Hilly leather handbags that were all the rage during the 1980s.
Mr Tan quit in 1999 to concentrate full time on his Star Wars collectibles flea market business.
Until then, he had been helping out on weekends. His partner, 37-year-old Mr Chong, whom LifeStyle could not interview as he was away on business in Hong Kong, joined the business that year to work with Mr Tan at their flea market stall.
The two had met about a decade previously through mutual friends and bonded through their love of toys.
These days, instead of sourcing for toys overseas like they did initially, the pair brainstorm ideas with an in-house designer to come up with their own line of massage gadgets and stress-relieving toys.
Breadou shapes are among the chain's most popular and fast-selling products.
These in-house designs are the future of the company.
There are plans to distribute Breadou to shops in Australia, Taiwan and the United States. They can already be found in Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Mr Tan's toy stores may be raking in the dough, but the businessman, a Normal academic student who initially failed his PSLE, insists on staying humble and thrifty.
He lives in a four-room HDB flat in Queenstown with his 33-year-old wife, Madam Lee Sze Wei, and drives a Honda Airwave. They have no children.
As for his Star Wars collection, he has sold them off. A lone Ultraman figurine, which he bought in 2003, is all that is left of his toy fanatic heyday.
He chuckled: 'He's my favourite hero and my first toy.'
Tick tock Toh
Fifteen years ago, Singapore entrepreneur Andy Toh headed to Brunei with the aim of testing the demand for his watches.
Mr Toh, now 47, had just $6,000 in his pocket and 3,000 self-branded watches bought on credit from a supplier - plus the determination to make his first retail venture a success.
He set up a sales counter in the nowdefunct Japanese department store Yaohan in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei's capital, with a staff of four Singaporeans.
And he gave it a catchy name, 25 Hours.
The risky venture paid off. Sales were phenomenal. Within six months, Mr Toh had sold 10,000 watches for between $50 and $150.
He made a $500,000 net profit, with total sales figures grossing more than a million dollars.
On why he opted to go to Brunei, Mr Toh says: 'There were fewer barriers of entry for business in Brunei compared to the Singapore market at the time.'
He also notes: 'We were considered an imported and quality brand there because we were from Singapore.'
With pockets filled with cash, he returned home the following year, in 1995, and immediately opened three stores at Grand Plaza Hotel, Ang Mo Kio Central and Liang Court.
Business soon took off. His affordable European-styled watches, priced from $28, were a hit with those above 30.
Sales figures for each store were nearly $100,000 a month. Today, sales per store still remain similar, except he now has 14 retail outlets.
His watches are also distributed in 20 countries around the world, including those in Asia and the Middle East.
Mr Toh, who started out as a water heater salesman and a distributor for Swiss-made timepieces and French perfume, now has a staff of 70. His wife Kathryn Ong, 47, also helps out as a product merchandiser in the company. They have no children.
His watch business, though seemingly smooth sailing, now faces a challenge.
He wants to attract the younger generation below 30 as well.
His line of Hong Kong-manufactured watches, though still influenced by the latest European designs, are now more colourful with large faces that are in vogue.
Affordable pricing is still a priority. His watches start from $69 for a basic watch and go up to $1,788 for a diamond watch.
As for his savvy business ideas, these were not picked up from a marketing course in university.
A bright, hardworking student from Raffles Institution, he chose to work part-time, clocking in hours at a Japanese electrical cable company all through school.
He earned $1,000 a month and used the money to fund his electric guitar and band-playing hobbies.
To appease his parents, Mr Toh, who has five siblings, enrolled in an electronic engineering diploma course in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
He says: 'I didn't want to study, I wanted to earn income. I wanted to be a businessman.'
He got his wish in that turning point year of 1994 when he chanced on the generous watch supplier he found in the Yellow Pages phone book.
As for the additional hour in his brand name, 25 Hours, he says: 'It is meant to represent those special, extraordinary moments in life.'
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