Local lifestyle brands keep the faith in retail by pushing ahead with new store openings

COVID-19 might be wrecking havoc with businesses, but three home-grown artisan brands have pushed ahead with expansion plans and opened new retail outlets.

Bynd Artisan introduced a new retail-cum-F&B concept with Sunday Folks at Ion Orchard in August; By Invite Only welcomed its new spaces at Bugis Junction and Ion Orchard within the span of a week in September; while The Paper Bunny (TPB) is set to debut its retail store at Takashimaya this weekend.

For By Invite Only founder and CEO Trixie Khong, timing and luck both played a part in the opening of the Ion Orchard outlet.

She had been in talks with the mall since last year but the spaces that were offered were often bigger than what she was looking for.

But the local jewellery brand found just the perfect spot when Bynd Artisan's lease at the basement of Ion Orchard expired.

"It can be very hard to find a good central, but small space, in a big prime mall, so sometimes we have to be a bit patient and wait," said Ms Khong, whose brand designs and makes jewellery for people with sensitive skin.

Likewise for Bynd Artisan, its tenancy at Ion Orchard expired just as another of the mall's tenant, Haagen-Dazs, was vacating its unit on the upper floors.

The bookbinding-craft specialist found the tenant mix on the higher levels to be more in line with its premium brand positioning, but in order to secure the unit, Bynd Artisan had to find an F&B partner.

Enter Sunday Folks, which it had previously collaborated with on pop-ups, and The Bynd Artisan + Sunday Folks Experience store was born.

Both brands share a common handcrafting ethos and the partnership was not only a very natural one, but it also allowed Bynd Artisan to introduce a brand new lifestyle concept for its third store - one where customers can enjoy handcrafted desserts and coffee while shopping for handmade notebooks and leather accessories.

For The Paper Bunny, there was never a rush for it to go from online to bricks and mortar, even as it experimented with various retail concepts over the last eight years of building its digital presence.

"We've had many offers to open up physical doors in various malls, we felt it was important to only say yes when we find the right place," shared TPB's co-founder and creative director, Jaime Lee.

As the lifestyle products retailer's customer base and product range grew, she added it became more and more apparent that TPB's customers wanted to "fully experience the brand, touch and feel our offerings, and pick up the pieces they wanted with the certainty that they would be able to get them all in one place".

Incidentally, the space which The Paper Bunny Everyday Store is set to take over was also previously occupied by Bynd Artisan up until it gave it up recently.

Retail apocalypse or not, all three brands The Business Times spoke to noted the importance of building an omnichannel platform and retail being an equally important component even as online shopping continues to gain popularity by the day.

"We have found that if we were to engage with a customer in a bricks-and-mortar store, the return rate is much higher because a closer relationship is being forged," said Bynd Artisan's co-founder Winnie Chan. "When you shop online, it's convenient but you are just interacting with your phone or your device - it's less personal."

She added that some of its customers even travel to stores that are further away from where they live just because they have built a relationship with the particular outlet's staff: "As human beings, we crave that personal touch."

Ms Khong noted By Invite Only's customers don't just shop on one channel: "You kind of have to be everywhere (because) on weekends when people are out shopping, we do see that online sales do go down... The challenge is to be consistent - you don't want to go online and give a different service at the store and vice versa."

"Physical experiences are something that can never be fully replicated in the digital space," observed Ms Lee.

Ms Khong went as far as to say that this is the time for small businesses to step up and give retail a try - even as a pop-up concept for a start - because the festive shopping season is just around the corner.

Mall operators are also on the lookout for new tenants to take over vacated units and the key is to negotiate with the landlords, she added. "You'd never know if you don't ask so it's okay to be very honest with what your budget is... When the economy bounces back, it (might get harder) as the bigger brands with more budget are going to be coming back in."