Made in Singapore

Business Times - 11 Jul 2009

Cold calls, hard work and steely persistence turned a plucky entrepreneur into Singapore's own fashion retail maestro. Frank Benjamin shares his story. By Arthur Sim

IT is not often one comes face to face with history. But in Frank Benjamin, one gets quite close to the authentic experience of what it was like to be a young businessman in Singapore at a time when a new car might cost as little as $5,000 and locals were barred from European clubs.

The start of Mr Benjamin's success story starts sometime after the second world war when talk of independence from British rule started to gain momentum. 'I really wanted independence because I felt we were treated like second class citizens,' he remembers.

His first spark of initiative came after graduating from St Andrew's School in the early 1950s. Together with friends, he started a social club for members of the Jewish community - then still about 1,000 strong - and charged $1 a month subscription. David Marshall, Singapore's first prime minister was the club's honorary legal advisor.

But opportunities for a young man armed with just a Senior Cambridge Certificate were otherwise quite limited. Most went on to become teachers or clerks. Mr Benjamin joined his uncle's optometrist shop for a short stint before working for the American trading company, Getz Bros.

Although he did well as a salesman at Getz, he left after about two years. 'I decided I wanted to do my own thing,' he said.

Like many others in his day, Mr Benjamin got involved with the struggle for independence, even helping David Marshall to campaign at one point. However, it was on quite a different front that he eventually won.

'I could see that during that time, all the European and Englishmen in big companies had their own people set up. It meant that we were excluded,' he says.

So rather than work for one of the 'colonial setups', he decided he would set up his own company, registering a sole proprietorship, F J Benjamin, in 1959 at the age of 24.

Like many entrepreneurs of that era, he did not really have a business plan though. 'What I did was the only thing I could. This was to write to principals (of companies) and tell them I am an agent in Singapore - and you know, in those days nobody checked.' He would then get samples from these principals sent to him and he would get orders from retailers. In return, he earned a commission.

The ensuing decade saw him hawking anything - paper and pulp, cameras, pots and pans, anything.

It was not always easy going. Occasionally he would need to borrow money just to pay the rent. But having established his independence, with the help of his teacher-wife Mavis (who was also the bread winner for many years), he was not going to let it go.

But it was when he started to focus on fashion that things began to happen. Interestingly, Mr Benjamin is not particularly inclined towards fashion himself. Stopping short of 'always going out in a tie' and being 'clean', fashion was just another product, like the tetra packs of milk that he brought in to sell.

So when an Amco jeans representative from Australia came to his office in 1969 with samples of 'fashion jeans', Mr Benjamin was not interested. For starters, Levi's, Lee and Wrangler brands were already available in Singapore. Indeed, it was only as an afterthought - feeling he had been too brusque with the representative - that he agreed to distribute Amco in South-east Asia. It must pay to be nice because Amco became a huge hit for FJ Benjamin with a turnover of about $100,000 every quarter.

Emboldened, he began to look for more fashion brands the only way he knew how - cold calls.

Spotting a nice tie on one of his brothers, he turned it over and got the address off the label. Later, he called the head office in Switzerland. And by being at the right place at the right time, this led to FJ Benjamin opening the Lanvin boutique at the Hyatt hotel in Scotts Road in 1975, possibly the first luxury fashion boutique in Singapore.

Lanvin did well and Mr Benjamin realised that Asians were developing a taste for high fashion. He wanted another brand and set his sights on Gucci.

'Gucci was really big in those days. I wrote to them, but they said 'No'. I kept on writing for three years,' Mr Benjamin recalls of his persistence.

'Then one day, I saw a neon sign in Chinatown that read 'Gucci selling here',' he says. In reality, the shop probably just had one or two Gucci products that it had brought in on its own and were just trying to milk the brand. So Mr Benjamin took some photos of the sign, and sent them t to Gucci. 'I said if you don't start a shop in Singapore, your brand will be vulgarised.'

Almost immediately, Gucci sent one of its directors to Singapore to see how fast FJ Benjamin could open a shop.

Other brands like Hungtingworld, Coach, and Fendi followed.

Then in 1991, Mr Benjamin's brother Nash, who joined the company in 1966 at a starting salary of $150 a month, discovered Guess jeans.

Again, Mr Benjamin was not very keen. By this time, FJ Benjamin had given up Amco after a failed partnership. Jordache, another jeans brand it brought in, failed too. But Nash Benjamin had come back from Los Angeles raving about Guess and Mr Benjamin did not have the heart to say no. He told his younger brother: 'Nash - small shop, try. If no good, we close. If good, we keep.' When Guess opened in a small 600 sq ft outlet at Wisma Atria, shoppers actually queued to get in.

By the early 1990s FJ Benjamin was growing by 20-25 per cent per year. It was expanding all over Asia. 'We felt at the time we needed to have funding so we decided to go public,' adds Mr Benjamin.

FJ Benjamin was publicly listed in 1996 - just months before the Asian financial crisis.

Beset by its first major crisis, Mr Benjamin remembers the recession years as being 'the perfect storm for us'.

'It was not just the recession, it was also the currency devaluation in all the markets we were in. In between, the Gucci and Fendi brands were bought over by big conglomerates who wanted to do their own business. Everything happened at the same time.'

Post-1997 was a period of consolidation for FJ Benjamin with a failed attempt to merge with Royal Sporting House. A capital injection from investor Peter Lim saw the company through the recession.

It must have also seemed like bitter irony at the time that it was an act of corporate imperialism that struck such a blow to the company. 'After the recession, we told ourselves to develop other business,' Mr Benjamin said.

Apart from moving into lifestyle brands like Gap and Banana Republic, FJ Benjamin created its own in-house brand - Raoul. 'There is always a risk that principals will decide to do their own business, so we decided to develop our own brands,' he explained.

The fortunes of FJ Benjamin have risen and fallen with the times. It still has Guess, Celine, Gap and Banana Republic. Gap was another brand that FJ Benjamin had always had its eye on. Yet, Mr Benjamin concedes that sales, 'could be better'.

It is hard to say how well Raoul will do too. Plans to expand in the US were scuttled by the current global recession. And in the fashion world today, as Mr Benjamin knows, there is no shortage of brands.

But while brands come and go, FJ Benjamin has become that very special thing - a bona fide Singapore heritage brand. And one gets the feeling that as long as Frank Benjamin is around, the company will keep on making history.

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FRANK J BENJAMIN

Executive chairman, FJ Benjamin

• 1934 Born in Singapore
• Education: St Andrews School, Senior Cambridge certificate
• 1959 Incorporated FJ Benjamin
• 1975 Opened Lanvin at the Grand Hyatt
• 1979 Franchise partner of Gucci
• 1992 Franchise partner of Guess?
• 1996 Public listing of FJ Benjamin Holdings Ltd on Singapore Exchange
• 1996 Frank Benjamin awarded Tourism Entrepreneur of the Year by the Singapore Tourism Board
• 1996 FJ Benjamin Holdings Ltd awarded Business Times Enterprise Award
• 1999 Franchise partner of Manchester United. Theater of Dreams opens in Singapore
• 2002 Raoul launched in Singapore
• 2002 FJ Benjamin is recognised by KPMG and Oxford University as the top Singapore retailer for brand value creation
• 2005 FJ Benjamin conferred "Heritage Brand" at the Singapore Brand Awards
• 2006 Gap in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia - first Gap franchise partner in the World, first stores in Asia (outside Japan)
• 2009 FJ Benjamin celebrates 50th anniversary