home 쐽 THE STRAITS TIMES MONDAY, JUNE 22 2009 PAGE B2

Online grocers doing brisk business

Shoppers cite freshness
of supplies, lower prices,
range and convenience
BY TAN WEIZHEN
HOME chefs are looking to cyberspace
for exotic ingredients not found in super-
markets.
Those who want everyday food and
items at lower prices and desire conven-
ience are also going online – as are those
who just want to stay away from crowds
to avoid getting the H1N1 flu.
A check by The Straits Times turned
up at least 13 online gourmet food and gro-
cery stores, all doing decent business.
One boutique online-only gourmet
store, Green Grocer, gets about 300 or-
ders a month – three times more than
two years ago – for its range of exotic
meats such as quail.
Another store, The Butcher, has en-
joyed 20 per cent growth every year.
Online grocery stores hawking any-
thing from drinks to canned food and toi-
letries have had at least a 30 per cent
jump in sales month on month.
These include Yumtrade.com, myon-
linegroceries.com and Online Grocery.
Established bricks-and-mortar super-
market chains have also seen healthy in-
creases in the number of customers who
buy from them online: NTUC FairPrice
had an 80 per cent increase last year from
the year before; Cold Storage has been
clocking a “double digit” increase every
year.
New online businesses are joining the
fold: The Fishmonger, which opened its
online shop in February, delivers seafood
like Bluenose fillets, Australian lobsters
and Tasmanian blue mussels and scallops
to homes straight from its factory.
So does Green Grocer. Customers say
they are enjoying unrivalled freshness in
the food from such stores.
Green Grocer customer Rowene Law,
32, said: “By the time meat reaches the
shelves at supermarkets, it is not as fresh.
But when I order online, it comes straight
from the wholesale supplier.”
For Ms Law, who works in marketing,
other perks are that she can get foods not
found in supermarkets; the prawns, cod-
fish and Hokkaido scallops also cost
slightly less than at the supermarket.
Housewife Anna Low, 38, is also a fan
of ordering straight from the supplier.
She gets her heavy sacks of rice from See
Hoy Chan’s online store, which is fuss
free and cheaper, she said.
People are going for everyday grocer-
ies and toiletries to enjoy savings in bulk,
which some online stores offer. Yum-
trade for example, gives bulk discounts of
between 3 and 12 per cent, and even a 1
per cent “green rebate” as it does not use
plastic bags. Deliveries arrive in boxes,
which are unloaded and brought back to
the store for re-use.
Online grocery shopping is popular
among expatriate housewives, who find
shopping for routine items a chore, said
Ms Sally Tan, manager of Yumtrade.com.
Deliveries are also made to those
home-bound by circumstance – the bed-
ridden, the elderly, the pregnant and
those in confinement, for instance.
Yumtrade even has a core of overseas
customers who like Khong Guan biscuits
and Lipton tea.
Ms Amanda Phan, public relations
manager of Green Grocer, credits televi-
sion’s celebrity chefs for raising people’s
awareness of and appreciation for quality
food.
Stores like FairPrice have noticed that
their online sales tend to spike when
there is threat of spread of disease, such
as during Sars, bird flu and now, the
H1N1 flu. This could be because some cus-
tomers prefer to stay home as a precau-
tionary measure, said Mr Gerry Lee, Fair-
Price’s deputy managing director for
group business.
Converts like Mrs Low are not looking
back. “I have three small children – two
of them twins – and a husband who hates
to shop. I don’t really have a choice.”
For a $5 delivery charge, she can make
the irksome task of shopping go away.
tanwz@sph.com.sg

TheSearchEngine’s Mr Ling (centre) and members Melvin Ang (left) and Samuel Chan help customers locate items for a fee. Mr Lim (above right) offers
his ResidentButler service to Maplewoods residents who need help getting contractors for household jobs. ST PHOTOS: NURIA LING, BRYAN VAN DER BEEK

Personal butler or gift shopper at your service

BY ANG YIYING
& YEO SAM JO
A CLUTCH of businesses have set up shop here,
making providing convenience their game.
Some pitch themselves as your personal “gofer”,
offering you a personal service, others tap the Inter-
net or their knowledge base to get you the product
or service you want. Both are essentially middlemen
who count on you being willing to pay for a service.
Take ResidentButler, a modern-day butler based
in Maplewoods, a condominium in Bukit Timah.
The business was set up by real-estate agent
David Lim, 45, about two years ago, when he saw
that his neighbours needed renovations or other
household jobs done but did not have the time to
hunt down contractors.
When ResidentButler gets a call from a neigh-
bour, he taps his pool of contractors to attend to the
task – and becomes the “point person” for it, to the
point where he will send the workmen back to redo
a job done unsatisfactorily.
The result: The home owner is saved the hassle.
Asked about the cost of his service, Mr Lim said:
“It’s not the cheapest, but it’s not the most expen-
sive either.” About 60 units of the 697-unit condo-
minium use his services, he said.
Another business is TheSearchEngine, a website
dedicated to hunting down items for its customers.
What it sells is the knowledge of where to get the
items. Customers pay a $5 sign-up fee, after which
they can put in requests.
The website is run by four people who physically
track down a requested item or something similar,
take a photo of it and send it to the customer.
If the customer wants the item, he pays $15 for the
address of the location to be sent to him. He can also
have the item bought on his behalf and delivered.
The website has had only about 10 customers in the
half year or so it has been in business, said its founder
Willy Ling, 21, who is waiting to enter university.
Will these ideas take off?
ResidentButler customer and Maplewoods resi-
dent Prabha Sreenivas, 42, thinks they will. Her
family calls Mr Lim about once every two months
for household repairs. She said: “It’s a great busi-
ness idea. We don’t really have to look around.”
Polytechnic student Grace Chan, 19, who got a
white floral dress with TheSearchEngine’s help, said:
“I really wanted the dress but couldn’t find it on my
own. If someone else can shop for you, why not?”
Not all middlemen services do well.
Formerly popular food delivery website dabao.sg,
which took orders for well-known hawker fare and
delivered them to customers’ doorstep at extra cost,
folded last year because of high operating costs.
Associate Professor Prem Shamdasani of the Na-
tional University of Singapore Business School said ex-
patriates may be more receptive to paying for conven-
ience, and that Singaporeans tend to be value-seekers.
But a middleman service with a good concept will
have to deal with competition from new players, he not-
ed, since barriers to entry are low. Suppliers may also
offer services directly, which cuts out the middleman.
Prof Shamdasani said the key thing for middle-
men services is to build up trust.
And this is what ResidentButler’s Mr Lim hopes
will sustain his business. He gets himself known to
his neighbours and builds up relationships with them.

could mean MPs getting a chance to quickly clarify a

To get feedback, point they made, or it might even spur some to ask
supplementary questions that, without Twitter feed-
back, might not have occurred to them.
why not Twitter Social media platforms such as Twitter, he said,
could be applied as well to the National Day Rally,
which is broadcast live.

in the House?
BY JEREMY AU YONG
AS MPs already send text messages to one another
in Parliament, it would not be too far a stretch for
them to Twitter as well, suggested Senior Parliamen-
tary Secretary Teo Ser Luck.
He floated the idea yesterday when he referred to
the popular online platform that lets a person broad-
cast to others using SMS messages.
Speaking at a Young PAP forum on new media
and politics, he said the use of Twitter might give
MPs better feedback
Mr Teo, who is chairman of the People’s Action
Party (PAP) youth wing, said: “In Parliament, when
we make our speeches, among the members, we
SMS a lot, share ideas, give each other encourage-
ment.”
Maybe next time, he added, with live broadcast
of the Parliament session, “we can have Twitter plat-
forms where people can put their thoughts and (we)
immediately know how people are feeling and what
they are discussing as well”.
Instant feedback on parliamentary speeches
However, the PAP is still finding its feet in the
realm of new media, Mr Teo said.
“I don’t think, in many ways, we have been using
it effectively and we have not been tested. We have
not gone through an election where we had to use
the platform,” he added.
Yesterday’s meeting, however, showed they were
taking steps to improve.
The 60 or so people at the event were taken
through the different aspects of social media. Two
others followed the goings-on via a webcam; one
was in the United States and the other, in China.
But the emphasis on new media does not mean it
will replace the work they do in the real world,
stressed Mr Teo and his two deputies, MPs Christo-
pher de Souza and Zaqy Mohamad.
Mr de Souza, for instance, said the role of new
media in the US presidential elections might not be
possible to replicate in Singapore.
In the US, new media is often the only way the
presidential hopefuls can reach out directly to vot-
ers spread across the country.
In Singapore, MPs have their own constituencies
where they can build a strong trust-relationship
with residents over the years, he said.
“So it’s about whether we’ve gone to their home,
whether we have helped their children, whether we
have listened to them with sincerity at the
Meet-the-People session,” he added.