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.