By Tessa Wong

INSTEAD of offering something for everyone, shops could focus on serving certain niche groups, such as older shoppers, to improve their odds of survival.

At the annual Singapore Retailers Industry Conference which kicked off yesterday, industry observers noted that stores here tend to target broad consumer groups, such as youth, working professionals and women, who have been shown by research to spend more.

This means that many stores here plan to be the same as one another, instead of being tailored to the kind of customer segment they are catering to, said Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Manpower.

Business strategy was one of the challenges tackled in the conference. Other challenges included service improvement, productivity and costs.

Agreeing with Mr Lee, Ms Lau Chuen Wei, executive director of the Singapore Retailers Association (SRA), pointed to bubble tea and doughnut shops as examples: 'There's a lot of follow-the-leader. Once people see something successful, they jump on the bandwagon.'

While shopping centres such as sports mall Velocity and female-centric Century Square have sprung up recently, these still appeal to general categories and business owners need to be more adventurous, she said.

Mr Lee used older shoppers as an example of a possible niche market. In the United States, a greying population has seen more retailers catering specifically to baby boomers in their 50s and 60s, with supermarkets creating smaller portions of packaged food and shops selling more wellness products or clothes for older women.

With a similarly ageing population, Singaporean businesses could follow suit, said Ms Lau. Besides shops offering products for older shoppers, malls could also be more accessible to them. One suggestion she gave was reversing the recent trend of converting atriums into store space, which deprives shoppers of a place to rest.

As for productivity, a government inter-agency task force is establishing productivity benchmarks for the retail, hotel and food and beverage sectors, said Mr Lee. He urged retailers to take advantage of training programmes such as the Customer-Centric Initiative to improve service levels.

Perennial issues such as rentals and manpower also came to the fore. Ongoing discussions between retailers and landlords have resulted in some headway, with at least one upcoming development allegedly slashing its rentals by 30 per cent. But other businesses saw an increase in rent when they renewed leases recently.

Mr Lee said that retail sales rose to $35 billion last year from $33.9 billion the year before.

When asked how sales would fare this year, he said that the worst impact was felt in the first half, with some moderation and pickup in the second half. 'I'm quite optimistic that we will have a brighter future going forward,' he said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.