How did a third-generation family business owner transform a supposed sunset industry enterprise? Ans: By pivoting on honest feedback from would-be future customers
About 10 years ago, Winnie Chan brought home some designs she had done for her family-owned book-binding and stationary business, seeking feedback from her then-teenage children. Their response: “Mom, why don’t you sell the business? Nobody buys these things anymore.”
“That took me aback,” says Chan, who at that point was running her family book-binding business which her grandfather started in 1945. “I wondered, ‘Would I have customers in the future? How am I going to stay relevant in the digital world?’ That was how our journey towards Bynd Artisan started.”
Pivot 1: Staying relevant
That journey spanned over three years before Chan and husband James Quan thrust the words ‘Bynd Artisan’ into mainstream consciousness with a 100 sq foot corner at a local department store in Singapore’s Orchard Road shopping belt. Since then, the leather crafting company has won the 2016 President’s Design Award for Design of the Year and was the 2017 winner of the Best Shopping Experience at the Singapore Tourism Awards. In Nov 2020, they were amongst the pioneer 48 Singaporean brands to be awarded the brand mark “Made With Passion” by the Singapore Brand Office, an initiative started by the Singapore Tourism Board and Enterprise Singapore.
At the source of it all was a crucial pivot stemming from “why don’t you sell the business?”
“Pivoting is a painful process,” elaborates Chan, who helms the company as CEO. “It takes a lot of courage because you are acknowledging that something is wrong. It could be your product, supply chain, or your target audience.
“One of the challenges was that the stationary and bookbinding industries were considered sunset industries. What we have done is to present the same products but in a different format that allowed the customer to have an experience when they enter our atelier.”
For many who have visited any of Bynd Artisan’s four ateliers in Singapore, that experience is highlighted by the visual of elderly craftsmen working on personalising items in full view of passers-by, not unlike sushi counters in restaurants. While Quan explains that it is part of what he terms ‘Total Design’ encompassing ‘Space’, ‘Experience’, ‘People’, ‘Product’ and ‘Collaborations’, the decision to feature the craftsmen was a deliberate one.
“It was not an afterthought, I have to admit,” explains Quan, who is Chairman at Bynd Artisan. “We were also being practical. Winnie’s family business had moved production to Malaysia and there was this group of elderly workers who did not want to move there and retire. So we thought, ‘Why not we transform them into retail sales ambassadors?’”
“We design the space in a way that our elderly craftsmen had stools to sit on while they’re doing crafting,” Chan adds. “The craftsmen are not there to intimidate the customer. In some stores, you might feel pressured to buy something if the storeowner is staring at you when you walk in.
“In our stores, we are trying to draw in the customer to come closer to take a look at we are doing, to be curious. That gives us the opportunity to share more about what we are doing, about our craftsmanship and, along the way, the product.”
Pivot 2: COVID-19 and the future of department stores
That Bynd Artisan should grow as it has in six years speaks volumes to the vision and work put in by the founders, who paid compliments to the elderly craftsmen’s upskilling effort in learning not just point-of-sale (POS) and payment procedures but also overcoming language barriers.
But in the words of Chan: “We had three years to deal with the first pivot. For COVID, we had three days.”
“When the circuit breaker was announced, we kicked into action,” the CEO recounts, referring to the two-month period in Singapore from April to June where only essential services such as supermarkets were allowed to operate. “We had to make use of whatever raw materials we had from our workshops.
“We came up with take-home kits of leather, rulers, cutters, rivets, all the raw materials and even self-addressed envelopes so that our craftsmen who are working in retail – they can’t work from home with a computer – can continue to work from home. When they were done crafting an item, they put it into the self-addressed envelope and mailed it back to our warehouse which fulfilled our web store orders.”
That adjustment, along with its free five-business-day local delivery service, ensured some form of revenue stream when old-school physical retail was rendered impossible. When seen in that light, it was perhaps inevitable, if ultimately unfortunate, that 162-year-old department store Robinsons would announce in October the closing of its last two outlets in Singapore.
For Quan, who expressed gratitude for that first 100 sq ft corner that provided the springboard for mainstream success, it was also a cautionary tale of not keeping up with times.
“I was manning that 100 sq ft store myself and Winnie sent me food and drink occasionally,” Quan recalls of the early days. “Why did we leave the spot? A lot of reasons. I couldn’t control a lot of things such as the music I wanted to play, or the furniture. If you ask me now, six years later, whether is there a need for departmental stores [such as Robinsons], I would say, ‘Yes! But they have to change.’
“Maybe department stores have to be more brand-prominent. We all know that e-commerce is how businesses are run now. If department stores have generic brands, they would become showrooms. They become testing rooms for people to try on shoes, for example, and they would go home and buy those same shoes from the hundreds of resellers online. These resellers will likely sell them to you at a cheaper price and they’ll have more options.”
Even as the Bynd Artisan brand goes from strength to strength, Quan is not taking anything for granted.
“When we started we were not sure customers would support a local brand doing leather and paper. I had that fear. It’s only through the last six years that I have seen the support from the customers, be it on the retail front or the corporate sector, they embrace the brand.
“The challenge was to get to this point. We’ve not completely accomplished it yet. It’s tough but it’s doable, it’s a work in progress and it takes a lot of effort.”
Winnie Chan and James Quan are co-founders of Bynd Artisan, the featured company at the SMU-X Community of Practice (COP) webinar, “Retailing in a COVID-19 World: Adapt, survive and grow” that was held on 30 October 2020. SMU’s Retail Centre of Excellence is the knowledge partner for COP.
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Last updated on 30 Nov 2020 .
