5 small business owners share highs & lows of running a business in S'pore

Goods delivered but not paid for, orders destroyed while enroute to customers, or simply having to worry about the bottom line on a day-to-day basis.

These are just some of the challenges that small business owners in Singapore face. Besides not being able to enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, for most of these businesses, being a one-man operation can be energy sapping, not to mention it also puts a cap on profits.

And with the current pandemic dealing a harsh blow to many F&B businesses in Singapore, it’s also no surprise that many of them have gone online in a bid to reach out to more customers. But that comes with its own unique set of challenges as well.

We speak to five business owners in Singapore who share with us their thoughts on the challenges and rewards of being an entrepreneur in Singapore.

They are:

• Lufi, in his 30s, baker-owner of online cheesecake purveyor, Paparch
• Melissa Lam, 29, owner of sustainable lifestyle e-store, Bamboo Straw Girl
• Trishnu Kaur, 35, vegan chai purveyor at The Chai Baba
• Cheryl Tan, 30, owner and chief crafter at Beadbadwolf
• Deborah Oh, 39, co-founder of Group Therapy Coffee

Starting out

When Melissa Lam first started making and distributing bamboo straws to friends and family in 2013, she never thought that her “small-scale idea” would one day grow into a business that now stocks more than 100 unique sustainable lifestyle products.

The success of Bamboo Straw Girl can probably be attributed to having the seed of an idea being planted at the right time.

Said the sustainability advocate: “I started posting pictures of bamboo straws on Instagram and it caught the interest and attention of people on the internet, many of whom thought it was a novel idea and wanted to cut down on their plastic straw usage in their kitchen or restaurants.”

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Her first “real sale” was from a smoothie delivery service in the US, and soon, other parts of the world. “I was thrilled that it had garnered interest from people as far away as South Africa,” said Lam, who slowly expanded her product offerings and opened an online shop in 2015.

“At that point, most of my customers were from Europe and the US, but I could feel the change coming locally and that was really a thrilling time. It was in 2018 when the zero-waste movement really picked off here that I incorporated Bamboo Straw Girl as a company on its own and started to grow the business,” said Lam, who counts crystal deodorant and an all-natural dishwashing soap among the shop’s best-selling products.

The road bumps she’s experienced in her journey mostly revolved around trying to draw interest locally in sustainable products. “I would have a mini celebration every time I saw a local address pop up in the order system,” said Lam, who used to manage her accounts manually where “everything was on paper and kept in files”.

“This was obviously not very efficient but was the system that I was used to,” she shared.

Fast forward to today, Lam mails a majority of packages to Singapore addresses. As her business grew, Lam also transitioned to using Financio, a cloud accounting software that helps her monitor any outstanding invoices and bills.

Sustaining a business

Building and retaining a customer base is what many solo-preneurs also struggle with, some more than most.

For cake-maker Lufi and vegan chai-walli (a female tea-maker) Trishnu Kaur, their home businesses may have sprouted up during the pandemic, but they’re no ordinary ‘circuit bakers’ or cooks.

Lufi, who is a professionally-trained chef, always had a soft spot for desserts.

He started Paparch in January 2020 as a side project for his passion — baking. “I also really enjoy making and eating cheesecakes, so Paparch is really a combination of the two things I love,” said Lufi.

So popular are Paparch’s Basque burnt cheesecakes, which go for $60 each, that pre-orders are sold out at least a month in advance. Slots are released ad-hoc via Instagram, with the fastest fingers the first to be rewarded.

Now, Lufi devotes 100 per cent of his time to his baking business, which has since moved into a commercial kitchen to meet the demand.

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In fact, the popularity of his bakes grew so quickly that meeting the demand was the foremost challenge — which was a happy problem, really. From releasing tens of cakes in one day, Lufi is now able to churn out up to 400 cakes for delivery in a day, all by himself.

Keeping an eye on the bottom line is something that Trishnu Kaur is still coming to grips with when it comes to her baby, The Chai Baba, which began brewing in 2020.

“We've been in business for just over a year now. And this was the first month that we’ve made a profit,” shared Trishnu candidly.

This tea business, however, is no side hustle for the vegan, who quit her job as a teacher to plunge into being a full-time chai-walli.

To Trishnu, drinking chai is akin to a spiritual and social experience, and one that she wishes more could taste, first-hand.

Trishnu is happy to note that she has almost replicated the experience in her home-based business. She describes how a trip to collect their ready-made bags of chai would spark off long, deep conversations between herself and her customers.

“Especially in a city environment, like Singapore, to just meet with a stranger and have this impactful interaction that just makes you feel lighter for the rest of your day.”

The ups and downs of business

But of course, there are the horror stories as well.

Said Lufi of instances where precious cakes would be destroyed on the day of delivery: “There were days where mishaps during deliveries resulted in us losing a batch of cakes and we had to disappoint our customers.”

“But placing an importance on service recovery meant we had to inform customers immediately and offer them the flexibility of rescheduling their deliveries or having their cakes the next day.”

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It is the same for Trishnu: “Sometimes when I’m in a hurry packing my bottles, a bottle of chai breaks. It feels like the end of the world at the time, but then I learn that I’m able to survive it. So now every time I accidentally drop a milk packet on the floor, I tell myself ‘don’t cry, don’t cry over spilled milk’.”

Being completely new to the F&B industry, albeit home-based, also meant she has the physical scars to prove it. “I remember when I was first starting out, I was in the kitchen reaching over for something and I received my first burn mark. And there were more that came after,” said Trishnu, who shared that a standing joke within her family is how she’d never stepped into a kitchen till her 30s, and there she was slaving over a stove day and night.

With the business basically being a one-man show, freeing up time to handle all aspects of the business including marketing and customer service is something that Trishnu still has to balance.

She has come to realise that the preconceived notions of her having more free time as her own boss was a fallacy.

“Now I see that this business consumes you 24/7. It’s literally all you think about and all you do,” confided Trishnu.

It is not just physically tiring, but emotionally exhausting as well, especially when having to deal with demanding customers.

“Sometimes, customers expect the moon and the stars from small businesses, and you have to draw boundaries,” she added.

“In the beginning I was very eager to please, and it took a toll on me. And if [drawing boundaries] means that you have to lose a customer, then I guess that customer’s not for you,” said Trishnu. But she maintains that she doesn’t blame the customers, “because I never really understood this till I started my own business”.

It is a point which Lufi brings up as well: “In the service line, there will always be instances where we have to face unhappy customers but it is always important to be rational and concise in your message to them to not aggravate them even more.”

From side hustle to full-time gig

For Cheryl Tan, 30, who started Beadbadwolf in 2017, her situation was similar to Lam’s , where the power of social media helped her to gain a following for her embroidery work and hand-crafted pieces, long before it became a full-time gig.

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Tan juggled a corporate nine-to-five job for three years and it was a wonder that she could take on everything, considering she also had two young kids (aged one and three at the time) to care for.

“The days were catered to my job, night-time was for my family and my young kids, and I would be fulfilling embroidery orders and embroidering out lingering ideas in my head at around midnight.

She continued: “My weekends were reserved for craft workshops as well. So, the hectic juggle was a challenge and struggle. I also handled pretty much everything single-handledly, from embroidery orders, workshop planning, design and graphics, to doing up the website and marketing.”

She finally quit her job to focus on her “side hustle” and in 2020, opened a physical studio for her burgeoning business.

“I provide up to 20 types of craft workshops as of now, all fully planned and conducted by me. A wide range of craft that includes embroidery, beadwork, weaving, crochet, knitting, sustainable crafts, home decor, tufting, sewing and more,” said the NAFA graduate, who also teaches textile design part-time at her alma mater.

But with her relative inexperience in doing business, Tan has also had her fingers burnt, figuratively. She was one of the vendors who were unable to get back what they were owed from local retailer Naiise, after it ran into financial trouble.

Shared Tan: “I suffered losses due to bad judgement and being too trusting. I spent three to four hours every weekend conducting workshops for them, and ultimately losing all this time and monetary value essentially, for naught.

“In gist, they did not manage to pay all my workshop earnings between 2018 and 2019 in full. As of now, the situation would be that there’s no hope of any repayment.”

It was a tough lesson learnt for Tan, “especially in the finance aspect of business management”, reflecting that when it comes to business, “it’s not as forgiving as making a wrong embroidery stitch”.

Crunching numbers — by yourself

Tan herself prefers using excel sheets to keep her accounts in order and issues invoices using her own templates. Although she admits that it is a laborious process “in that every single spending has to be keyed in as well as earnings”, it is currently still sufficient for her needs.

Like Tan, Lam too kept a manual accounting system where everything was filed in hardcopy. But that had to change as her revenue streams multiplied.

“It is much neater to keep tabs of these [revenue streams] on a cloud accounting platform and it’s easy to navigate, even for someone with no accounting background,” said Lam of her experience with Financio. “I am also able to do forecasting for the business going forward, based on the figures and charts that are neatly presented.”

And for primarily brick-and-mortar businesses such as Group Therapy Coffee that employ a team of staff, making sure that their finances are well taken care of is all the more critical.

This is especially when it comes to mundane backend stuff such as reconciling of bank statements, and doing up quarterly GST submissions.

Of the latter, co-founder Deborah Oh shared how “it used to be a very painful and manual process”, but it has been eased since turning to Financio for their finance and accounting needs. “It has simplified our accounting process by miles and we can’t imagine life without it,” she added.

Being in the business since 2011, Oh has also seen the challenges that the cafe has faced come full circle. She mused how even after a decade, the struggles they face now are more or less the same — “namely manpower, rising food costs and finding the sweet spot of serving a menu that engages the majority of our customers”.

Events and catering were a big part of their operations before 2020, but the pandemic however, has certainly thrown a spanner in the works. “We were forced to adapt our operations almost overnight,” said Oh, “to have a greater presence online and to find new ways to reach our customers”.

There’s the emotional well-being of staff members to consider as well, especially when some team members have been unable to see their loved ones at home for an extended period of time. “It takes a toll on their morale and their well-being is something that we have had to constantly prioritize,” she pointed out.

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Accounting made easy

If you are an owner of a small business and are looking for help in accounting so that you can focus on your people and products, try Financio.

Financio is a cloud-based accounting software designed for small- and medium-sized businesses.

With Financio, which is IRAS-compliant, business owners will be able to reduce the time spent on accounting and tax matters. It’s easy to stay on top of your finances, track inventory and get instant account updates with just a few clicks.

Find out more here.

This article is sponsored by Financio.