FJ Benjamin returns to luxury with new lifestyle concept

IT WAS during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic that Douglas Benjamin found himself wondering what FJ Benjamin (FJB), the company he now heads, was going to do next.

“What do we need to do that will change the face of retailing a little bit in Singapore?” the group chief executive officer pondered, at a time when the Catalist-listed retailer found all its shops throughout Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia closed.

Prompted by his 23-year-old daughter to “do something different”, he mulled over Singapore’s one-dimensional shopping experience and decided he was going to give it a go.

It had to be high-end, experiential and in the Orchard shopping belt.

And so, Avenue on 3 was born on Apr 17 – marking FJB’s return to the luxury market.

The open-concept, multi-label retail and lifestyle store is spread across 8,000 square feet (sq ft) on the third level of Paragon Shopping Centre and overlooks the mall’s atrium.

Its key focus is on shoes, because the ladies’ shoe section is usually the most crowded in any department or speciality store – with designer footwear, in particular, being one of the strongest revenue-generating segments in fashion, Benjamin notes.

Plus, shoes are “the superhero asset”.

“You can have a great handbag and great clothes, but if you don’t finish the outfit with the perfect pair of shoes, then you know it’s not complete,” he says.

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The store carries footwear for all occasions, from stilettos, pumps and casual flats to sandals, mules and sports shoes. Brands include Aquazzura, Gianvito Rossi, Alaia, Rene Caovilla, Loewe, Giuseppe Zanotti and Sergio Rossi.

Accessories such as Linda Farrow eyewear, Valextra, Tom Ford and Lanvin handbags and Oscar de la Renta jewellery are also available.

In addition, Avenue on 3 houses a 40-seat cafe, a bar that serves coffee during the day and champagne and caviar from late afternoon, and artisanal Lebanese chocolatier Patchi. Patchi, a newcomer to Singapore, was picked because its individually wrapped chocolates “look like jewellery”, and can be beautifully presented on silver and gold metal trays as gifts.

There is a separate boutique space housing top-of-the-line luxury skincare products Dr Barbara Sturm and MZ Skin, as well as suites for facials, blowouts, massages and manicures.

Finally, a 1,000 sq ft modular space has been set aside for collaborations with lifestyle businesses that Benjamin wants to work and have fun with. It currently hosts a pop-up store by Italian label Bottega Veneta.

“It doesn’t always have to be fashion,” he emphasises. “We’re talking to a very high-end car company about launching one of their models, and an art gallery wants to do an exhibition.”

Avenue on 3’s open layout, with a corridor that connects its different elements, means there are “no doors, no window displays and none of the usual things you look for in a retail shop”.

“So the windows have to be the shop itself, the things that we display and the things that we do inside,” says Benjamin.

Apart from trying to create something different, there is also a pragmatic motivation behind the new concept store.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to develop Avenue on 3 is because aside from Faure Le Page, we don’t have any more high-end businesses,” explains Benjamin. “And what we saw after Covid is that high-end retail seems to be the most resilient. I was in that middle market of aspirational luxury and I want to widen my reach back into luxury where the roots of FJ Benjamin are.”

Established in 1959, FJB was the first to open a single-brand store in Singapore – Lanvin, back in 1975. It used to be a franchise partner of luxury brands such as Gucci and Fendi, and currently manages over 20 fashion brands across 144 stores in South-east Asia, including Marc Jacobs and Pretty Ballerinas.

“I’m looking at what we can do that is scalable and sustainable,” says Benjamin.

“In future, there could be different iterations of Avenue on 3; we could do Avenue on 3 for ready-to-wear or for the home.”

But for now, with this new concept, he hopes to move the needle on Singapore’s shopping scene, which he says overseas visitors repeatedly cite as boring.

“I want this place to go back to the basics of retailing, which is knowing your customer and giving the best service that you can, while having an integrated experience where people can do different things and enjoy it as one experience.”