Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.

"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."
Sun Tzu

For the past year, there have been multiple calls from landlords' representatives calling us in the morning (when we are still in bed), asking if we are expanding. The not-so-good opening is "Can I speak to your boss?"

Unfortunately, we do not have the luxury of hiring someone to be our gatekeeper yet. You are already speaking to the boss directly. Whenever we mention we will call you back, they will try to give a number which SYL will never remember or when we try to give our email address, they can ask how to spell - our brand name?

The follow up email usually disappoints. How does a crowd of 10k students (tying up with a school, coming in batches) , IT sector and furniture actually benefits an activewear store?

Well, there is a certain lady who really put in a lot of effort to make it right though. From the first email and presentation, SYL & I thought that it's gonna be costing a lot. We were pretty surprise about the asking rental to be an okay factor but we were opening Bugis soon back then. We have to wait first.

Months later, a better location, a better opening and a better rate came knocking from the same lady. She even put in effort to tell us the potential and confirmed tenants which make the mall a very interesting concept for us to get into. But unfortunately, everything has to wait first as we are opening Wisma soon.

Another thought came to my mind, there is a good reason why the asking rental can be so low, the main cost will go to GTO, manpower and fixtures. Will it be better to pay more rental so manpower becomes a small component of the overall cost or risk losing manpower cost when rental is very low? It just make me thinks of Jcube. haha

There were some pretty interesting offerings in the middle but unfortunately, we should be happy enough with 2 of the top 3 malls (in our list) currently. If the third mall comes asking, then SYL will be having another temptation and headache again. Will a VIVI be possible in 2017?