Play it forward, in Weekend magazine

RENTING a place to live, or even doing the most mundane chores such as replenishing your contact lenses or shopping for cooking ingredients, may just be part and parcel of ordinary life. In Friday's Weekend magazine, we spotlight a growing number of forward-thinking entrepreneurs who are disrupting these old-school businesses to invigorate and take them to a higher playing field.

Zenos Schmickrath and Yoan Kamalski, for example, are the Singapore-based founders of Hmlet, which takes the concept of co-working and expands it into co-living. For anyone looking for a place to share with agreeable housemates, Hmlet rents an entire apartment building and then leases the units out to like-minded tenants for as short as three months. It's already a hit with millennials who enjoy the community living concept.

Meanwhile, Javad Namazie and Darryn Tan take the hassle out of repeat visits to the optician to replace disposable contact lenses with a subscription service. In turn, Jack Leow and Ken Koh are future-proofing their respective family spice and soya sauce businesses with new ways of packaging and creating international demand for their artisanal products.

Speaking of family businesses, we speak to Delvyn Wong, second generation CEO of household name Capitol Optical, about how he's planning to keep the business going for the next generation and beyond.

If you're hungry with an appetite for artisanal produce, check out a cheese shop which sources from small makers in Europe; exclusive gins from South Australia; organic produce from Thai farms; and exotic caviar, herring and fruit from former Soviet countries such as Belarus and Uzbekistan.