Orchard Road, Singapore, which began in the 1830s, was originally unknown and lined with orchards, nutmeg plantations and pepper fields. Today, Orchard Road is Singapore's trendy shopping district, which, along with Shinjuku Street, Myeongdong Street, Champs Elysées and Fifth Avenue, is the world's most famous international shopping street. Today, orchard road's bustling avenue is a shopping and dining paradise, with thousands of shops located here, offering visitors and locals a high-end lifestyle experience.
Singapore's Orchard Road is inseparable from a Chaoshan man: in 1958, C.K. Tang, a Singaporean businessman from Teochew, founded the first department store on Orchard Road, TANGS. The poet Tung was first called "House of Tangs"; the inauguration of Tung Ha marks the first step in the transformation of Orchard Route Orchard into Singapore's most famous shopping district.
Singapore's famous department store pioneer Tung Chun-jin: founded the largest department store in the region
Founded in 1958, Shi Jia Dong was the first department store on Orchard Road and has become one of the largest and most iconic department stores in Singapore. Beloved by locals and tourists alike, this household-name department store features clothing merchandise from A-list to niche local brands under its iconic glazed green roof, and in Singapore, Poet Tung is even synonymous with large department stores.
Many famous department stores in the world are named after the founders of their brands, and "Poet Dong" is no exception.
Born in the early 20th century, Dong Jun, a Chao Chinese, is a pioneer in Singapore's department store industry, and he started from scratch with the diligence and wisdom unique to the Chinese and established the largest department store in Singapore.
Break into the world with your bare hands
Dong Junjing was born in Shantou in 1902, and his ancestral home is Raoping, Chaozhou. In 1923, 21-year-old Dong Junjing rode the "Fengsheng" passenger ship to Nanyang alone and came to Singapore to make a living. He carried a tin suitcase in each hand filled with silk ingress and linen embroidery brought from his hometown.
When he first arrived in Singapore, Dong Junjing, who was bare-handed and unaccompanied, found a temporary residence in a local church. After settling down, he rented a tricycle and took the goods in two boxes brought from China to the early immigrant community to sell door to door. Because of the good quality and good service he sold, the business went well and he saved a sum of money.
In 1932, Dong Junjing, who had a certain accumulation, decided to open a fixed store. He rented a storefront on River Valley Road and opened his first shop, named after the poet Dong, dealing in Chinese handicrafts, antiques and furniture. Later, he bought seven houses there for more than SGD 10,000 and built a three-storey "Yang'en Building" for SG$40,000 to commemorate his father. Since then, his career has laid a solid foundation, which has also become a major turning point in the development of the poet Dong Group.
The site selection strategy is surprisingly successful
In 1958, Dong Jun actually took a fancy to a piece of land on Orchard Road. At that time, this land was widely considered to be bad feng shui because it was facing the cemetery, and it had been vacant and uninhabited, and the land price was also very cheap. However, Dong Junjing has a unique vision, believing that this place is a must for residents of several nearby residential areas, and it is an ideal commercial location. He pushed the crowd to buy the land and use it as a store site.
Sure enough, the government later announced that Orchard Road was designated as a tourist and shopping area, so the land price rose from 3 yuan per square meter to 6,000 yuan! A few years later, Orchard Road quickly became a place of merchants, and now Orchard Road has become singapore's most prosperous commercial center and tourist area, and the poet Dong has also benefited greatly, and the customers are often crowded, and the business is getting more and more prosperous.
It can be said that today's prosperity of Orchard Road in Singapore, Dong Jun has made a great contribution. Because of this, Dong Jun has also won the reputation of "Adventure King". To this day, Dong Jun's surprising location strategy at that time is still widely circulated in the real estate industry as a good story.
The great development of the Poets Dong Group
In 1975, Shijia Dong Department Store was listed in Singapore, becoming the only listed company owned by Dong Jun, which specialized in high-end department store goods and had brilliant performance.
In 1979, Dong Jun decided to build a new department store and hotel on a piece of land bought in the early years next to the poet Dong Department Store. In 1980, the new Shijia Dong Department Store and the five-star Dong Palace Hotel were opened one after another.
The newly built "Dong's Department Store" covers an area of 15,092 square meters, with a height of 5 floors, with different shopping areas, and a wide range of goods, from Asian brands to European classics, all for sale. In Singapore at that time, whether it was the scale or the variety of operations, Tung's Department Store was a must, with the reputation of "essence gathering, Tung's family", and won the title of "Best Store of the Year" in Singapore for three times in several years.
Since then, Dong Junjing's career has taken a new leap forward, and he has taken a longer view and begun to expand overseas operations. In 1991, He opened his first overseas branch in Kuala Lumpur, jointly developed Kuala Lumpur real estate with Malaysia's Mayang Sari Bhd to build hotels and commercial buildings, and assisted Malaysia Refrigeration Group in operating dval fashion stores in Kuala Lumpur.
In 1992, Tung was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the top eight richest people in Singapore. In 1993, he was listed in Singapore's Top 10 Richest With a fortune of S$640 million. The Poets Group has also twice won the Best Store of the Year Award from the Singapore Tourism Promotion Board.
In 2009, the famous BBC radio station in the United Kingdom compared the status of the poet Dong Department Store in Singapore to the Harrods Department Store in London and the Macy's in New York in the United States. This fully shows that the poet Tung is indeed the well-deserved king of the department store industry in Singapore today.
The way to operate: people-centered
Dong Junjing has his own characteristics in the operation and management, that is, to emphasize the "people-centered", attach importance to the quality of employees, reasonable prices and enthusiastic service of the three principles, so that the poet Dong Group in the Singapore department store industry, is a good image of good taste, high service standards, high quality of employees of the company.
Dong Junjing attaches great importance to the training of employees. Department store industry is intensive, the required employees and direct contact with customers, the key to improving the overall quality and level of the company is to cultivate a high-quality staff. Therefore, the Shijia Dong Group allocates a lot of management fees every year for the training of employees. The main targets of their training are salesmen, managers, supervisors, managers. The training courses received by each class are also different.
Dong Junjing and the leadership team of the poet Dong Group pay great attention to communication with employees and keep abreast of customer needs. Usually, he and the main leaders of the company have to go to the sales department every day to talk to the salesmen to understand their work. At the same time, through the conversation with employees to understand the needs of customers, the quality of products, the service of employees, etc. The Group also requires managers of various departments to fill out a customer complaint form every day to keep abreast of customer opinions and attitudes towards the company, understand the customer's requirements for the company, and serve as the basis for the company's improvement work.
Dong Junjing also regards employees as colleagues in operation and management, and always cares about their warmth and cold, making the poet Dong Group a group with a strong sense of group. This makes employees feel that working in the Shijia Dong Group, as if living in a warm family, willing to work hard for the group, the turnover rate of employees is very low, and many employees have served in the company for more than ten years, more than twenty years.
The poet Tung Group, founded by Tung Chun-jin, became one of the largest department stores in Singapore and stood in an invincible position with this business strategy. When evaluating the performance of listed companies, Singapore stock bank Fraser Roaeh praised the management of the Jia Dong Group, believing that the management of the group was clever, efficient, far-sighted, attached importance to business quality, competent management team, the company had very little debt, and high cash reserves.
In September 2000, Dong Junjing died at the age of 98. The career baton of the poet Dong passed to his two sons, Tang Wee Kit and Tang Wee Sung. Among them, the eldest son, Dong Weizhe, is not only an executive director and executive chairman of TANG Group, but also has a private investment company. In recent years, Dong Weizhe has also been a frequent visitor to the rich list: in 2020, Dong Weizhe ranked 2142nd in the "2020 Shimao Shenzhen-Hong Kong International Center Hurun Global Rich List" and 24th in the "2020 Forbes Singapore Rich List" with a wealth of 9 billion yuan and 1.4 billion US dollars respectively; in the "2022 Daye Wine Hurun Global Rich List" just released this year, Dong Weizhe ranked 2843rd with a wealth of 7.5 billion yuan.
▲ "2022 Daye Wine Hurun Global Rich List", Dong Junjing's son Dong Weizhe ranked 2843rd with a wealth of 7.5 billion yuan
To this day, Shijia Dong Department Store is still the largest retail brand in Singapore, and when traveling to Singapore, Shijia Dong Department Store is one of the recommended shopping spots in many travel guides.
Source: Daoke Baba, Raoping County People's Government official website, Winshang Network, Singapore Overseas Real Estate, Baidu