SINGAPORE: As the COVID-19 rules in Singapore were progressively eased this year, Ms Melody Ann Gibson decided to resume one of her favourite pastimes which she had to put on hold for more than two years: In-store shopping.
But now that life has resumed some sense of normalcy, as Singapore tries to live with the virus, Ms Gibson finds herself heading out to the malls a little earlier when she makes an appointment to meet her friends.“There's definitely this desire to just get myself out there,” said Ms Gibson, who estimates that she goes window shopping about three to four times a week now.
“One thing I don’t like about shopping in Singapore is that … there are only a very limited number of different around. So if a person buys an item, you will definitely see 10 others on the street having the same thing,” she said. Fashion label Ginlee Studio has seen its revenue increase by around 20 per cent since the label launched its pleated bag-making workshop in 2020. The intention to allow customers like Ms Gibson to learn the fundamentals of pleating a bag and reconnect the user to their products was partly the reason why Ms Gin Lee, co-founder of the eponymously named label, launched the Make In Shop Experience programme in October 2020.
Some ideas included having cafes within the store, however, Ms Lee and her partner, Mr Tamir Niv, decided to focus on the experience that their brand has strength in.And with e-commerce continuing its upward trajectory, retail experts — and consumers alike — said it would be necessary for brick-and-mortar shops to offer something unique to entice customers to make purchases with them.
The competition that physical stores face from e-commerce has been well-documented, with real estate agency JLL saying in its latest property market outlook report for Singapore that the proportion of online retail sales, excluding motor vehicles, rose from an average of 6.8 per cent in 2019, to an average of 15.9 per cent last year.
“This has evolved into what we call ‘experiential retail’ — an immersive experience across channels, both in-store and online.” Ms Gauri Talathi-Lamb, the chief executive officer of du Boulay Contracts, a commercial refurbishment contractor under the MBH Group, suggested another factor behind the demand for experiential retail.