From TikTok to trendy sports, some Queensway shops find ways to thrive amid retail disruption

In the four-storey labyrinth of sneaker and football gear shops, and bustling laksa and curry stalls at Queensway Shopping Centre, is a modest racket store that has found its way into the limelight.

- Deepanraj Ganesan and Melvyn Teoh

Occasionally, tourists hunt down the second-storey shop to get the latest badminton or tennis equipment, along with a wefie with its manager and racket-stringer Mohamed Hashim Marecar.

The 22-year-old is the face of a retail revival for Smashsports, a racket shop started by his father in the early 2000s. Mr Hashim's savvy use of social media has led to Smashsports' videos on TikTok attracting as many as six million views — in turn attracting customers to the store.

Business has grown so much that Smashsports has added another unit on the first floor and Mr Hashim's older brother Mohaiyadeen, 36, recently left his job at a multinational corporation to work full-time there.

Smashsports and several other shops are defying the perception that Queensway Shopping Centre is a "dying mall". One of Singapore's oldest shopping centres, it opened in 1976 and the $10 million strata mall development eventually became the go-to destination for sports apparel and goods.

But the rise of e-commerce and changing consumer habits have led to the decline of many brick-and-mortar retailers with major brands like Topshop, Esprit and Robinson exiting the Singapore market. Sports retailers like World of Sports and Royal Sporting House have also been hit.

An Opinion piece in The Straits Times published on May 8, "Queensway could be the next casualty in sportswear upheaval", noted that the niche the mall had carved for itself was "facing a reckoning".

It drew a response from some readers and Queensway shop owners, including Mr Mandeep Chopra, whose family has been part of the mall's community since the 1990s.

The managing director of home-grown sneaker boutique Limited Edt said in a Forum letter that his family continues to operate several successful stores there and argued that the Opinion piece did not reflect the diverse group of thriving tenants who "continue to serve the sporting community with passion and innovation".