How Prism+ is building Singapore’s answer to Xiaomi and Samsung

SINGAPORE – Home-grown consumer appliances and electronics brand Prism+ has not even completed its first decade, but it has already imprinted itself on the Singapore consciousness.

Whether you are a loyal fan or vocal critic, you have at least heard of the company – and perhaps even own one of its products, which comprise a variety of home appliances, from air-conditioners to automated laundry racks. 

Prism+, which marked its ninth anniversary in April, has detractors and sceptics aplenty. A quick search online surfaces a multitude of strong opinions, many dismissing it as trading in white label products. 

White label products refer to generic, unbranded goods that are produced by one company and rebranded by another to sell as its own.

This term is sometimes confused with OEM (original equipment manufacturers), which refers to manufacturers that produce components or finished goods for other companies to use or sell. 

As Prism+ founder and executive chairman Jonathan Tan tells The Straits Times: “Manufacturing today, especially in the electronics space, is so specialised at the component level that few, if any, companies are manufacturing every single part themselves.”

For instance, even Apple relies on partner companies for certain components. In 2022, the American tech giant’s chief executive Tim Cook stated that it had partnered Japanese multinational Sony “for over a decade to create the world’s leading camera sensors for the iPhone”. 

Prism+ does use contract manufacturers – but that does not mean it slaps its label on generics from China without any customisation or thought towards meeting local needs, says Tan. “We spend a lot of time and resources developing our products in collaboration with our manufacturing partners.”

The company has a 16-person product development team that spends up to a year developing and testing prototypes for new products, and improved versions of current products.

All of this takes place in a dedicated space at a building next door to its headquarters in Ubi.

The space is also equipped with a 3D printer that allows the team to produce components for its prototypes, such as surface panels for its digital locks.

The making of a Prism+ product

Prism+’s efforts towards product development have recently paid off. Its Prism+ Solaris Pro laundry rack (from $699 for the standard size model), which was launched in 2025, won the Singapore Good Design (SG Mark) Award 2026 in the product design category in July.

The annual awards, launched in 2013 by Design Business Chamber Singapore in partnership with the Japan Institute of Design Promotion, recognise exceptional design quality that impacts businesses and communities in Singapore and beyond.

The automated ceiling-mounted laundry rack does not exist in Western markets, notes Adhiraj Mahajan, associate director for product research and development (R&D) at Prism+. “None of the big international brands have invested resources into developing the product, much less for the local market.”

When the Prism+ team began R&D on its own version in 2024, the current market options had some shortcomings, he adds.

“Existing racks did not have edge-to-edge ventilation grills with 100 per cent fan coverage. Usually, they were placed on either end of the rack, so clothes placed in the middle would not get proper air flow. Also, intelligent features such as ultraviolet sanitisation and voice control were often lacking or required a separate smart home set-up,” notes Mahajan.

When developing the Solaris Pro, the first and most important improvement that his team made was to expand the vents to provide full coverage over the drying surface.

“We also worked with our fan manufacturer to come up with the fastest fans that would still give us the form factor we wanted,” says Mahajan.

Offline voice control is probably Solaris Pro’s most interesting feature, as it does not require an Internet connection or even a Bluetooth connection to a smart device.

“You can use preloaded common commands and phrases to control the rack – ‘Hey Prism, go up.’ ‘Hey Prism, come down’,” explains Mahajan. 

“So anyone can operate it without too much of a learning curve – from elderly grandparents to domestic helpers.”

The product team is continuing to explore ways to improve the design, says Tan. 

“Right now, there is no real way for consumers to clean these racks internally – not just for our product, but also across the whole market. It’s a pain point, given how prone Singapore homes are to dust. So we’re exploring ways to make this product easier to maintain,” he says.

Direct to consumer

More than any big-picture plan, it is this idea of fulfilling an existing market gap which drives Tan. Accordingly, in March 2026, he handed over the role of chief executive of Prism+ to his successor Jonathan Wong, so he could spend more time focusing on product strategy and growth. 

“We always have three main considerations: market size, how relevant the category is for Singaporeans, and – most importantly – how much we can differentiate ourselves. Is there a gap we can fill? Is there something we can do meaningfully and better? Ideally something that’s genuinely game-changing,” says Tan. 

Those same considerations are what led him and his two business partners – who have since exited the business – to start Prism+ in 2017, with an initial offering of three gaming monitors.

The monitors were competitively priced and sold directly to consumers. 

“Back then, D2C (direct-to-consumer) was not a widely-recognised term, and the big brands were just not as accessible as they are today. Their local websites did not have their own e-commerce platforms, nor did they have a presence on platforms like Shopee and Lazada,” says Tan.

Prism+’s success in monitors led them to branch out to televisions – coincidentally, right as the Covid-19 pandemic throttled physical retail stores.

Its next move into air-conditioners was arguably less obvious from the outsider perspective. But personal experience led Tan and his team to realise it was another product category in Singapore that could do with a shake-up.

“We had air-conditioners from a big-name brand installed in our own office. But these weren’t cooling properly, so we escalated the issue to the retailer, which then escalated it to the brand. The brand sent someone, who said it was an installation issue. So then the installer had to be called back. But even after that, the unit still didn’t work properly, and no one would take ownership of the problem,” says Tan.

So, when launching its air-conditioners, Prism+ set out to provide a one-stop shop. Today, customers who buy air-conditioners from the brand enjoy a 10-year warranty provided by Prism+ – so long as they opt in to have quarterly servicing of their units, also arranged by Prism+.

Cutting friction 

As with the brand’s foray into televisions and monitors, Prism+’s main intent with air-conditioners was to cut friction for end-users in Singapore. 

And that is something that takes different forms at the company, according to Tan and his team. Offline voice control on its automated laundry racks is one approach. Yet another is an upcoming feature called ClimateSync, which involves Prism+’s smart air-conditioners as well as smart ceiling fans, which began retailing in 2022. 

ClimateSync, which is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2026, will live on the free Prism+ Connect smart home app. With a single touch, it will allow users to set their preferred “feels like” temperature across both their smart air-conditioner and smart ceiling fan.

These will then work concurrently to replicate the comfort of a cooler room. So, rather than dropping the air-conditioning temperature by 2 deg C, the system might push it down by 1 deg C, and the ceiling fan might kick into a stronger and faster ventilation mode to better circulate the cool air emitted by the air-conditioner. 

“This eliminates the need to juggle two separate devices or guesswork on settings,” says Wong.

“It’s a feature we are uniquely positioned to offer because right now, no other brand in Singapore sells both ceiling fans and air-conditioners under one ecosystem. For households, the upside is twofold: lower energy consumption and lower electricity bills at a time when both matter to Singaporean families,” he points out.  

It is a small but practical example of Prism+’s focus on micro-innovations that are built specifically for people in Singapore, he adds. 

Arguably, the brand’s growth in the last nine years speaks to its success with this strategy. It now offers products in more than 14 categories – including fridges and even doors and gates – and has not retired any of the product categories it has ventured into. 

Prism+ says it could fully furnish a home with these essentials for less than $10,000. However, it is careful to say it does not compete purely on price, but rather on price to performance: providing higher value and output for a given cost amount.

Take, for instance, Prism+’s EvoSonic Pro handheld vacuum.

“We sell it for between $92 and $136, depending on the model. Meanwhile, vacuums in this class cost anywhere between $77 and $799. So we are competitive with the cheapest models, while offering higher specifications, such as a stronger motor,” says Wong.

It says it has a presence in more than 800,000 Singapore households, with an increasing number of these households buying more Prism+ products after the first investment. The brand reports that 30 per cent of customers now walk out of its retail stores with more than one type of product for their home, compared with just 3 per cent in 2025.

These eight branches, which opened between 2022 and 2024, are undergoing a staggered revamp to reflect the brand’s growing product range. The Suntec City outlet was relaunched in March, and the Northpoint City space in June. 

“As we’ve expanded into new product categories, we’ve been trying to showcase those products in-store, but the physical layouts weren’t designed for a broad range,” says Wong.

This, in turn, created some confusion and misunderstanding among customers about what Prism+’s offerings are. Some people still think it deals primarily in monitors and televisions. Yet, in the last two years, Prism+ has launched washing machines, vacuums and drying racks.

The two relaunched stores are larger, says Tan. Besides allowing customers to better experience the full range of products, the brand’s retail staff can now do proper “live consultations” with customers as well. 

It is a bit like Apple’s Genius Bar, but for fitting out your home, he suggests. The idea is for customers to decide their full home set-up in 30 minutes, and that includes time for demonstrations of products. 

The relaunch is showing early signs of success, with the Suntec City branch surfacing a 71 per cent uptick in 2026 sales as at June, compared with the whole of 2025. 

Looking ahead 

As Prism+ approaches its first decade, what is the goal for the next 10 years and beyond?

To be Singapore’s answer to home goods giants Xiaomi and Samsung? Or a go-to destination for white goods that can handle all the domestic functions of your home for as little as $10,000? 

“The ambition, yes, but our approach is completely different,” says Wong.

“The global brands build for the world, and Singapore gets what’s left. We start from the opposite end, by looking at and designing for lifestyle needs in Singapore. For instance, by optimising our digital locks for HDB gates as well as doors.” 

He adds: “Our goal is to be present in every Singaporean household, across as many touchpoints as possible. And we don’t stop at the sale. We install it, we service it, we provide warranty for it ourselves.”

End-to-end customer service and genuine innovation will continue to be driving forces, Tan agrees. 

“For better or worse, if we don’t innovate, then we’re going to get outcompeted. In certain categories, when we manage to launch a really useful feature, it is inevitable that those features get copied. So it’s up to us to have something up our sleeve, or think about what’s next.”

He adds: “For instance, we’re looking into offline voice control for ceiling fans, similar to what we’ve put in place for laundry racks. Our goal is for that to be a market-first when we launch the next iteration of that product.”