FOUR young men behind recently launched local frozen-yogurt chain Frolick may just have the perfect chilled-out product to ensure their business survives the financial meltdown.
Business is so hot, despite the economic downturn, that they are breaking into a sweat just keeping up with demand for the cool dessert.
Founded by four partners - Mr James Ong, 27; Mr Lee Yingxin, 26; Mr Ken Hsu Chen Kang, 26 and Mr Leslie Ang, 28 - Frolick is one of the fastest-rising brands on the local food and beverage (F&B) scene today.
They have been working non-stop since their first outlet opened in February just to keep up with demand.
In just over eight months, Frolick has grown from just one modest 100 sq ft, 'hole-in-wall' kiosk to three outlets, with a fourth in the works.
Great tasting yogurt aside, Frolick's appeal lies in its trademark white-wash outlets, plastered with mini-badges carrying cheeky slogans such as 'Spankingly good', 'We stay hard longer' and 'Frolick in the garden'.
They also scored a hit with the idea of handing out mini-badges free with each purchase. They offer a different one each day - and more than 30,000 have been snapped up already.
The young love it because the brand stands out as a bubbly, fun and fresh name in the cold dessert business, while the more mature crowd appreciate frozen-yogurt as a healthier choice to traditional ice-cream or gelato.
'We wanted to start an F&B business which all our friends could relate to,' said Mr Ong, an accountancy graduate from Nanyang Technological University.
'Our gauge then was whether our friends would eat it and that was how we wanted to position Frolick, but I am glad that younger and older people are also queueing up for our yogurt,' he said.
'Another reason we went for our age group of customers was also because we knew they had more spending power,' added Mr Lee.
The four buddies met while studying at Hwa Chong Junior College in the late 1990s. They kept in touch even after university and hung out often at coffee shops and cafes day-dreaming about someday running their own business.
The Straits Times met Mr Ong and Mr Lee at their outlet at Serangoon Gardens yesterday and learnt that the idea for Frolick was indeed brewed over a cup of coffee among the four friends.
'It was at one of those days when we were hanging out at a kopi-tiam that started the ball rolling,' said Mr Ong, who oversees the finance aspects of the business.
'I was getting bored working as a strategic risk management consultant at KPMG.
'Very long title, I know but it was nothing like I expected it to be and I wasn't happy doing the job. So I decided to stop whining and just get out and strike out on my own,' he said.
His partner, Mr Lee nodded in agreement and said: 'It was the same for me. After selling insurance part-time for a while I just wanted to do my own thing.'
'In fact, I even took a year off not just to bum around but also to figure out what I really wanted to do,' said Mr Lee, who graduated with an Arts degree from the National University of Singapore.
Many ideas were floated between the Mr Ong, Mr Lee and Mr Ang - ranging from starting a discotheque to selling bubble-tea.
It was not until the return of Mr Hsu to Singapore - after studying management consultancy at the University of Southern California - early last year that led to the idea of selling yogurt.
'We all loved frozen-yogurt and were already leaning towards starting an F&B business,' said Mr Ong. 'So when Chen Kang came back and told us about how frozen-yogurt was really big in the United States, it seemed like a natural thing for us to give it a go in Singapore.'
The four young men then pulled together their own savings of about $100,000 and spent the next three to four months figuring out how to make yogurt in Mr Hsu's mother's kitchen.
So how did the foursome - who had no formal training in making yogurt - succeed in creating a dessert regarded by its fans as rich, creamy and delicious?
Mr Lee is candid: 'Trial and error.'
'Once we knew how to make it, it was all about trying to perfect how we wanted our yogurt to taste, so we roped in many friends who came and tried,' he added.
And after they got the taste tied down, the guys looked for a creative design agency to give their product a more distinctive identity, one that they took pains to ensure reflected the personalities of each of the four business owners.
'We very much wanted a brand that exemplified who we were and something we were comfortable with, which is not your everyday 'guai-guai' type of shop,' said Mr Ong, referring to conventional dessert cafes.
'And indeed we are a playful and fun-loving bunch and you can see that through the loud and sometimes provocative slogans we use around the shops.'
According to Mr Ong, almost half of their seed money was spent on branding the business but the sales from its first outlet in Holland Village seem to suggest that it was worth every penny.
'When we first saw the sales figures of our first outlet at Holland-V, we were certainly wowed by them,' he added.
'To be honest, as first-time entrepreneurs, we didn't know what to expect. In fact, at the start we were even quite worried because of the high rent and initial outlay.'
Although they declined to reveal their estimated revenue for the year thus far, Mr Ong said that their growth plans remained on track despite the current economic gloom.
Frolick's main competitors are Yami yogurt and other ice-cream and gelato chains like Haato, Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream, Andersen's of Denmark and H?agen-Dazs.
'The only setback we had was that we could not expand as fast we had wanted to,' Mr Ong said. 'Our target was to set up five outlets by the end of 2008 but because of the lack of vacancies at locations where we want our outlets to be, that target will have to be delayed.'
Frolick now has three outlets: Holland Village, Serangoon Gardens and Millenia Walk. And with a fourth expected to open 'somewhere in the East soon', these four budding entrepreneurs seem to have the right formula to give them a good chance of licking the competition.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on October 29, 2008.
