Hitting the big time: How this Singaporean came to design for luxury furniture brands B&B Italia and Herman Miller

GABRIEL Tan startles you by saying he never felt he could be good at anything.

At least, that was the case until he met a French professor at the National University of Singapore, who nurtured his interest in furniture design. In fact, the design-loving Tan thought he wouldn’t even make the cut for the university’s then-new industrial design programme, as he couldn’t finish the entry test.

But with encouragement, the young undergraduate went on to clinch several international design awards. In his final year, he formed a furniture design collective named Outofstock with three friends from Singapore, Argentina and Barcelona, whom he met at a design workshop in Stockholm.