Eight years on, Singapore entrepreneur seeks first e-commerce success

RIP

For 25 year-old Reuben Lee, entrepreneurship can sometimes be an agonizing expedition.

After being knocked down by his failure at online grocery store Household.sg, he could only watch as former competitor RedMart blazed a trail and became a frontrunner in the race to make online groceries profitable not just in Singapore but in Asia.

But he won’t have it any other way. If there ever was a tinge of bitterness or regret, it wasn’t visible when we met.

In fact, Reuben has bounced back with a third startup, and it’s called ShopAbout.sg, which aims to help retail stores by bringing them online. Within a few months, the company has quickly scaled to a team of 11 after raising a six-digit angel round. It is now seeking to hire even more employees.

He can’t imagine himself doing anything else. His first foray into e-commerce was Zakoola, an online bookstore that was started eight years ago — way ahead of its time.

“As a teen I had no life. While my friends clubbed, I did none of that nonsense. I spent my free time reading about people like Richard Branson and selling iPods that I imported from overseas,” said Reuben, “I thought these entrepreneurs were cool. I want to be like them.”

Last year, he went on a random Silicon Valley trip that gave him a serendipitous encounter with Lawrence Koh, a Singaporean who was on a stopover to summer school in Harvard.

They started out bunking together at a common friend’s house, then went on a trip to Los Angeles. They discussed the idea of bringing brick-and-mortar stores online, and decided to plunge in last October.

At first glance, ShopAbout.sg looks like any traditional e-commerce store: think online shopping ‘malls’ like Amazon and regional counterparts Zalora and Lazada.

But that’s only on first glance. Traditional e-commerce is typically consumer-centric, meaning it derives most of its revenue by catering to the whim of shoppers. ShopAbout.sg, meanwhile, is all about giving brick-and-mortar stores a leg up in a time when they are placed “under siege” by online retailers. To do that, it is providing a comprehensive suite of services to merchants.

So, besides earning between 7.5 percent to 15 percent commission from transactions (similar to Amazon), ShopAbout also charges merchants a monthly subscription fee. In return, the company provides a SaaS platform for couriers and merchants to manage inventory and order fulfilment, as well as marketing, graphic design, and consultancy services.