ORIGINALLY a brand associated with affordable computer monitors, Prism+ has since become a household name in the most literal sense.
It is now on televisions, air-conditioners, refrigerators and other household goods, and the company behind it, Prism Tech, now has a product line-up that has expanded to eight categories.
Prism Tech plans on adding even more appliances that are compatible with its smart-home mobile application, said its managing director Jonathan Tan.
Launched in 2022, the application called Prism+ Connect allows remote control of home air-conditioning; for instance, it enables a user to turn the unit on before arriving home, and to track its use and the temperature of the room.
The app, which has over 10,000 monthly active users in Singapore, may have been the country’s first smart app for air-conditioners, added Tan.
“We always try to find some kind of gap so we can introduce some material benefit (to our customers), and try to capture market share during that window.”
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Capitalising on market gaps has been Prism Tech’s strategy from the start.
In 2017, high-spec computer monitors meant for video games were “up and coming”, and fetched higher prices than regular screens, said Tan. “We saw that there was a huge opportunity to give consumers this similar quality at much lower or affordable prices.”
That year, Tan and two partners put together around S$300,000 and started the Prism+ brand, offering three monitor options through their own online store.
By selling directly to customers and relying on digital marketing, instead of going through third-party sellers, the company could offer customers “huge savings”, said Tan.
Prism Tech has since expanded to Malaysia, the Philippines and Australia, with a staff strength of over 500, 300 of whom are in Singapore.
The company’s growth spiked particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, when physical store closures during the “circuit breaker” boosted e-commerce. It scaled up quickly during that time, with its monthly revenue in 2020 growing eight times to around S$8 million by the year end, said Tan.
Focus on service
Tan believes that end-to-end customer service – mostly handled in-house – is the brand’s key selling point.
In Singapore alone, a third of its workforce are customer service agents monitoring various enquiry channels, from phone lines to a 24-hour live chat.
Tan estimates that Prism Tech invested some S$200,000 into hiring and training customer service agents in 2020, when the circuit breaker resulted in more people buying electronics online.
Service was a pain point for many customers, he noted.
“For larger brands, you may not be able to get a response after 10 to 20 days on certain channels, such as Facebook,” he said. “Many did not have live chat on their website, or you had to wait on the phone...
“We made it a point to put money behind 24/7 customer service,” he said.
Prism Tech handles its own deliveries with a fleet of 100 vehicles. More expensive products such as ceiling fans and air-conditioners have dedicated after-sales teams to troubleshoot problems. And for customers’ convenience, the company offers next-day exchange for products such as monitors.
Going local
To stand out in a competitive electronics scene filled with multinational corporations, Prism Tech has homed in on local needs.
For instance, it collaborated with local streaming services, such as meWatch, to offer them on its television sets. These services may not be available on television sets made by foreign companies, as such sets are sold in markets where the streaming services do not have the rights to certain shows.
The presence of domestic streaming services in Prism Tech’s products, said Tan, is a localisation effort that could be attractive to Singapore consumers.
Another local touch is the company’s approach to smart locks, noted chief of staff Ian Loo. These are designed for Housing and Development Board apartments, which often have both a door and a separate gate.
In Prism Tech’s smart home app, the door and gate locks are easily controlled together or separately. Loo said: “For example, if you want to keep the gate locked, you press another button to unlock only the inside door, so that you can still meet a postman or a delivery driver. I wouldn’t call it an innovation, but it’s definitely a design detail that I think is relevant in the local context.”
Getting physical
When Singapore emerged from the pandemic, the company still planned for further growth – except that it found that it had “saturated” the online space, said Tan.
“Everyone who uses social media or some kind of online medium has heard of us... so we wanted to try to push further, to see if we could reach others who have not heard of Prism,” he said.
Instead of putting its products on megastore shelves, it opened its own offline shops. Tan added: “We try to find alternative ways to scale, as we’ve been sticking to our direct-to-consumer philosophy, which is not to distribute.”
The offline shops serve dual purposes – branding and reminding customers of the experience of purchasing from Prism Tech, he said.
The group has around eight physical stores each in Singapore and Malaysia now, with a ninth slated to open in Malaysia, as e-commerce penetration there is lower, said Tan.
Prism Tech also serves the Philippine and Australian markets through e-commerce – and hopes to reach other markets, tapping resources such as Enterprise Singapore’s Scale-Up programme to do so.
Even as it expands, the company continues to invest in customer service, as direct-to-consumer reach and post-sales services are what make Prism Tech attractive, said Tan.
Although several companies have caught up to Prism Tech’s speed of replying to queries, “there are still a lot of areas where we stand out”, said Tan.
“The customer experience with us is more truthful... as we still control the end-to-end customer experience,” he added.
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