Two local brands named winners of retail challenge offering free rent, financial support

SINGAPORE – Two local brands have been picked to get rent-free access to prime retail space of up to 371 sq m for one year, alongside up to $300,000 in support to kit out their stores with innovative technologies.

Children’s apparel brand Maison Q and pop culture toy group Mighty Jaxx were on Feb 2 announced as the winners of the

inaugural Retail Maverick Challenge

, a competition to rejuvenate Singapore’s mall scene through innovative store concepts.

The contest, which ran from June to August 2025, drew interest from more than 200 local retailers in diverse industries and threw up a number of bold and inventive retail concepts, organisers Enterprise Singapore and asset management group CapitaLand Investment (CLI) said in a joint statement.

Maison Q, for instance, is known for its bespoke reversible bar concept – a service where customers can mix and match fabrics, prints and silhouettes to create one-of-a-kind, reversible clothing items to be delivered in eight to 10 weeks.

The concept was previously available only at pop-up retail events, but will become a permanent fixture at the brand’s first physical store when it opens at Raffles City Singapore in the third quarter of 2026.

The brand’s founder, former magazine editor Suhana Ab, 45, said she had thought of opening at a physical location, but had been held back when she thought about attendant overhead costs such as rent, electricity and manpower.

Started in 2015, Maison Q currently operates a webstore. Its products are also carried by retailers such as Motherswork.

“With our 10-year anniversary, we wanted to do something big (and) this gave us the opportunity,” she said. “I mean, I have no more excuses.”

With the retail location, Ms Ab said customers can soon customise teddy bears and T-shirts using the brand’s original prints, and these can be delivered within an hour.

She also intends to expand Maison Q’s product and service offerings, such as providing more apparel options for adult men and women, and explore the possibility of holding workshops and other customer experiences in-store.

Meanwhile, Mighty Jaxx – known for its licensed toys and original artist collaborations with properties such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Street Fighter and Hello Kitty – will open its first physical store at Bugis Junction in the fourth quarter of 2026.

The brand said it intends for the store to be “phygital”, using self-service payment kiosks and immersive large format displays that provide personalised, interactive content to give customers “a curated and technology-enabled retail journey”.

Brand founder Jackson Aw, 36, said the one-year rental fee waiver and monetary support by EnterpriseSG will help to defray initial costs, and allow his team to focus on presenting the retail space more creatively.

Mr Aw said opening a physical retail space had always been on the cards for Mighty Jaxx, but this had not been actualised until now as the brand had been focused on overseas partnerships. Its collectibles are carried at retailers such as Hot Topic in the United States and Hamley’s in the United Kingdom.

“For many brands, a true representation of their products and identity would always be from physical retail,” said Mr Aw, who hopes the Bugis store will pave the way for Mighty Jaxx’s global expansion into bricks-and-mortar retail.

CLI’s managing director for retail management and commercial management in Singapore, Ms Tan Mui Neo, said the competition spotlighted many bold concepts to reimagine the retail experience, and that the asset manager is keen to work with applicants to further explore how to bring these ideas to fruition.

Besides a one-year rental waiver, the two brands will receive up to 50 per cent support from EnterpriseSG for hardware, software, manpower and marketing-related costs, capped at $300,000.

EnterpriseSG said the positive response to the competition reflected the industry’s drive to elevate the retail landscape in Singapore.

Asked whether the competition will return in 2026, EnterpriseSG’s director for retail, Ms Cindy Ngiam, said the statutory board’s collaboration with firms such as CLI is part of its “ongoing efforts to embed innovation and new capabilities for the retail industry”.

“These partnerships create opportunities for retailers to test, refine and deploy new concepts and solutions, supporting capability development, market innovation and longer-term commercial outcomes,” she said.