Singaporean retailer Naiise is on a mission to bring Asian design to the UK
Naiise, a retailer in Singapore, wants to take its mission of championing local design and creativity globally, starting with a pop-up event in London’s Truman Brewery.
Naiise launches pop-up store in London
The brand, a well known feature in the country’s busy shopping areas, first launched to help local creators have a platform for selling their products and reach customers easier.
The pop-up in Shoreditch represents the start of its mission to bring Asian design to London but to also bring its model to the UK, in which it will also help give more attention to European creatives.
Speaking to The Drum, Naiise founder Dennis Tay, says that bringing creativity from each country is important because it can vary so significantly.
“As we venture outwards of Singapore, our focus is to represent as much of the local spirit in each country that we go to respectively. We want to do this because we believe creativity is unique and original from each country. We want to celebrate and champion that to the rest of the world, and to people within that country who have yet to know, or uncover their own creative talents. At the same time, we hope to bring unique products from across the globe, in a smaller proportion, to add an interesting and diverse range of products for our consumers to enjoy,” he says.
The brand has been working with London-based Good Magnetic on a concept which embodies these principles of ‘craft’ and ‘the individual’ which Naiise aims to present. Around the idea of ‘have a Naiise day’ the event includes interactive elements, such as the ‘Stress less Printing Press’ in which customers are encouraged to ‘print’ their own unique Naiise poster in store to take home with them.
“Naiise began in 2013 as a purely online store. In 2014, we were fortunate enough to have been invited as a partner to a pop-up urban farm to make up the retail component. It was also there that we not only started to gain more traction, but we also started to learn more about the benefits of having both the online and offline channels,” he explains.
“For us, pop-ups have always been in our DNA. As a platform, pop ups not only engages our customers, it also allows them to have a better sense of appreciation and understanding towards the products we carry. And not only that, pop ups tend to be more communicative in nature than transactionary, and as a result, allowed for greater collaborative conversations with our brands, designers, makers, artisan. For us, these are important learning points for our company so that we can continue to develop a great platform that can truly further empower these creatives. Shoreditch also became a natural choice in our pop up selection as we felt that it was the right audience in a really vibrant, design and art driven environment,” he adds.
While at the time of speaking to The Drum, the event had not yet taken place, Tay already has more permanent plans for the Singaporean brand in London.
“We hope to be able to work with more local designers, not just to help them reach out to more customers locally, but to also give them a wider global reach through our channels. At the same time, Naiise has also always practiced an omni-channel approach to engaging with our customers. So we’re definitely following the track of wanting to set up a permanent space inside London itself. This way, we know we can give the creatives we work with, more visibility on, and offline,” says Tay.