Shopping Lessons from Southeast Asia With @rena_tom

Contributor post by Rena Tom

I got back from a whirlwind trip to Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong this past weekend. It was a family vacation, but I couldn’t help doing a little shopping in between the trips to zoos and swimming pools with my toddler.




I found that in Asia, at least, everyone goes to the mall. Malls are air-conditioned and in a near-equatorial climate, we found ourselves in a mall for at least a few minutes every day. They are very different creatures than the ones I grew up with - opulent and multi-storied, with excellent and lavish food courts, children’s playgrounds, supermarkets and aquatic parks and oh yeah - every luxury brand you can think of.

For the most part, though, that’s not how I shop, and even though I was in the land of the big mall, I was always looking for the smaller retailers on the quiet side streets. They were not easy to find in these megacities, but they were worth the effort.

[Images: Two very different shopping experiences - (below) an outdoor bazaar celebrating Hari Raya Puasa (end of Ramadan) in Singapore, and (top) a Tokidoki sculpture as part of an art and design festival sponsored by a Hong Kong mall.]

What did I learn while shopping as a tourist in other countries? This trip reinforced my beliefs about rallying the community behind you and collaborating with like-minded store owners. In Singapore, you can join other creative business owners through an organization called Creme, which supports local brands and boutiques and holds events to promote and sell. There was a pop-up flea market the week I was there.

Making it easy for shoppers to know if something is locally made is key as well. Definitely talk about where you are located and where you came from in your packaging. I tried to purchase from local designers wherever I went, and having that info on a display card or the packaging itself makes this hunt a lot easier when there are potential language barriers. For example, I picked up this wallet after reading that the designers are Harvard-trained architects but design and produce in Shanghai.

What else did I learn? There is a time and place for large retailers, and I admit to succumbing to the siren call of Muji and Uniqlo. Savvy smaller retailers (with cash behind them) can get a space at the mall too, positioning themselves in front of shoppers with ready money, such as the street fashion brand Sugarman, now with six boutiques in Hong Kong. This may not be the way for every store, but cannot be ignored as a path for those who want to catch a shopper who is looking for unique designs and a little local street cred.

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Rena Tom is a retail strategist for creative business owners. She previously owned Rare Device, a boutique and art gallery with locations in New York and San Francisco that was renowned for its carefully edited collection of design objects, books, housewares and accessories, and for supporting small, innovative designers and artists whose work was not easily found in stores. Rena blogs about personal projects as well as retail trends and small business tips at renatom.net. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and baby boy in an apartment filled with too many laptops, Sprecher root beer, half-finished craft projects and overdue library books.