Is Joo Chiat the next shopping playground?

SINGAPORE – Bamboo blinds, a fabric light feature and an artfully arranged salon wall. Local brand In Good Company’s new digs in Joo Chiat are very nice indeed.

The tasteful fashion label, which in 2025 marked the 10-year anniversary of its first store at Ion Orchard with a runway show at National Gallery Singapore, opened at a three-floor shophouse in late June.

There are clothes, certainly, but also a courtyard with UV-protective shelter, hooks for dog leashes, a cafe serving tea and Japanese wagashi, an attic for future creative events and a battery of lifestyle products – from a transparent, Swedish-branded turntable to ornamental metal pillows by a local steel fabricator. 

At 3,000 sq ft, it is the de facto new fashion flagship of the East Coast district, cementing Joo Chiat’s status as a shopping destination, a development that comes some years after the former Peranakan enclave’s reincarnation as a trendy cafe and dining spot. 

Its coolness has been codified. British media company Time Out named Joo Chiat Road one of the coolest streets in the world in November 2025 and the Singapore government is pushing it as a tourism destination. 

In Good Company is the latest and biggest apparel player to take up keys in the heritage area, but its arrival was preceded by a post-pandemic rush of affluent millennial favourites. Clothing brand rye set up in 2023; Sojao, retailer of organic bedding and pyjamas, in 2021; and designer furniture store Grafunkt in 2024. 

Says co-founder and managing director of In Good Company, Jaclyn Tan: “It’s very encouraging that there are many other local brands here, so it gives something for locals and tourists alike to visit the street for. People come here for the heritage and history but with these new, independent local brands, it has become quite an interesting place to visit.”

These new outfits tend to be yuppie emporiums, usually multi-label and unanimously drawn to the neighbourhood’s character. 

The Joo Chiat factor 

Sharing a postal code with the old patchwork of scuzzy KTV bars and Vietnamese-run eateries makes for a great mix, says Mikael Teh. The owner of design-forward home goods store, the monocot shop, sells everything from Japanese kitchenware to folk dolls and Hello Kitty branded salt. 

He likens the area to hipster neighbourhood St Kilda’s in Melbourne, Australia, where daytime family friendliness gives way to a nightly club scene. 

“All things kind of fuse together, creating a very nice community. Look at Bukit Timah, it’s all rich people. Here, there’s this mixture and we’re intertwined. My neighbour is a Vietnamese beautician who stir-fries food outside,” he says.

A spokesman from rye adds: “There is a strong sense of place here: traces of its coastal past, generations of family-run businesses, old trades and newer creative spaces all coexist within the neighbourhood.”

Their common foil is a mall. This hodgepodge would be impossible in shopping centres where management plans the tenant mix. 

A mall’s strict opening hours and transactional atmosphere are also turn-offs for many who prefer doing more laidback business. In Joo Chiat, stores seldom open before 11am and close after 7pm. 

Matthew Lu, founder of backpack store The Bag Creature, moved to the area from Suntec City in 2019. He jokes: “Over here, I can sometimes say ‘Oh, we are off on a holiday’ and close the store.”

The proliferation of independent businesses, operated by owners, is in sharp contrast to the big international chains common to malls and unconducive to neighbourly feeling.

In Joo Chiat, shopkeepers often address their neighbours by name and recommend each other to customers – a real “kampong” vibe, says In Good Company’s Tan. 

Tough business?

Joo Chiat is easy to romanticise but owners say there are trade-offs to spurning malls. Weekdays are quiet and patchy shelter means rainy days are even leaner, though weekends are comparable to malls. 

Says the rye spokesperson: “There is a noticeable amount of turnover, with businesses regularly arriving, relocating, or closing. It is not necessarily an easy neighbourhood operate in, particularly for an independent brand.”

Lu, of The Bag Creature, adds: “Without marketing or social media presence, it’ll be a bit more difficult.”

But these cons are felt unevenly.

While Joo Chiat’s reputation as a trendy neighbourhood makes for a healthy minimum of traffic, for more coveted brands, shortfall – when compared with a mall – is balanced by intentional clientele, who travel to the east just to shop them. 

Businesses with large online followings are on the front foot. 

Says co-founder of Sojao, Priscilla Tan: “In a mall, you get footfall, but most of it is people walking past you on the way to somewhere else. Here, some people come specifically for us. The rest came for the street, and they’re already in the mood to wander and discover.

“Either way, they walk in wanting to be here.” 

The home goods store has 30,000 Instagram followers. 

Rent, a universal pressure point, also varies in Joo Chiat. 

On the one hand, the monthly outgoing is rising fast as the district settles into “it” status. Tourists are regularly deposited by the bus-load at the colourful Peranakan shophouses in Koon Seng Road, while locals travel from the west for a day out in the neighbourhood. 

According to the monocot shop’s Teh, less than two years ago, a 1,200 sq ft unit went for about $8,000. Now, landlords are asking for nearly $15,000. 

But the heightened rates are still lower than prime spaces in malls and do not account for the leeway tenants enjoy with the mostly private – as opposed to institutional – landlords in negotiations, some say. 

“The relationships are more human,” says Lu. “Unless you meet a weird landlord.”

The dream of a brand universe 

For mature businesses who have already had a taste of mall life, a Joo Chiat relocation is a chance to build what in marketing speak is called a “brand universe”, a space large and permissive enough to be fully representative of the brand’s sensibility. 

Grafunkt, chief occupant of the conserved Art Deco building at 292 Joo Chiat Road, spans three floors and contains a cafe. Each floor has a different personality – the first, Scandinavian with mood lighting; the third, a clean Japanese – and it holds regular activities like workshops, brand exhibitions and an annual weekend market. 

A spokesman says: “Over the years, we’ve had our stores in shopping malls, but we eventually decided to take a different direction and create a space that truly reflects who we are. 

“Having a standalone conservation shophouse gives us the opportunity to build an experience that’s uniquely Grafunkt, rather than being constrained by a typical retail environment.”

In Good Company’s Tan concurs. The brand ran an Ion Orchard flagship for 10 years, slightly larger than at Joo Chiat and with space carved out for popular cafe chain Plain Vanilla. It is currently renovating a smaller unit in the same mall, while maintaining a Tangs store.

These earlier mall spaces have tended to focus almost singularly on the brand’s clothes but at Joo Chiat, it has centred its curated products from other brands on the ground floor.

Sharing space with other creatives is the origin of the brand’s name, to be in literal good company. 

At its new Joo Chiat address, the brand gets the best of both worlds. Interior design touches, like keeping an old pillar from the shophouse in its original, coarse condition, also point to the brand’s language of texture and character. 

“It’s not really this versus that. It’s just that Joo Chiat presents a unique opportunity for us to do a couple of things,” says Tan, who declined to reveal renovation costs. 

As Joo Chiat becomes a total lifestyle destination – ice bath joints included – some residents are in two minds. 

Marketing professional Teo Zhen Qi, 29, confesses to mixed feelings. “I don’t have a car so I love that I can walk to a place people find cool and nice to hang out in. I love to have friends visit me from their side of town and travel here.”

She shops, eats and occasionally works out in the small gyms that have popped up in the neighbourhood but is sad to see old restaurants go. Pockets of old Joo Chiat still exist but are increasingly pushed to the outskirts, she adds. 

It is with resignation and the barest hint of pride that she says: “Joo Chiat’s growth feels like something that cannot be stopped.”