Footwear label's unusual business strategy has been key to its success

Mr Neeraj Teckchandani remembers the first time he saw a Charles & Keith (C&K) store.

- Amanda Chai

It was 2003 and the chief executive of Apparel Group, a Dubai-based fashion and retail conglomerate, had been visiting Singapore for market research. The group had just secured the rights to launch Canadian footwear brand Aldo in South-east Asia, with Singapore as its first market.

"When we were doing the market research, the one name which popped up everywhere in our research with the landlords and consumers was Charles & Keith," says Mr Teckchandani, who decided to visit its Wisma Atria store.

"It was crazy. The traffic was mind-boggling. We saw a huge potential in this brand."

That would be the start of a beautiful partnership that has lasted till today, with Apparel Group now the brand's official partner in the United Arab Emirates, responsible for opening more than 70 C&K stores in the Middle East.

By now, most Singaporeans will know and cheer the fact that footwear label C&K is a proudly home-grown brand. With roots as a discount shoe store in Ang Mo Kio in 1990, it is today Singapore's most successful fashion export, with more than 600 stores in over 30 countries.

They never set out to conquer the world, confesses chief executive Charles Wong.

"We didn't have a big plan on how this brand would eventually become. We just wanted to create accessible fashion products for our consumers in the neighbourhood," he tells The Straits Times.

Once the enthusiastic face of the brand, Mr Wong, 51, stepped out of the spotlight in recent years to let the company's global accent speak for itself. He was also busy growing the business in China over the last decade.

The eldest of three sons—who clinched the top accolade, Businessman of the Year, at the 2024 Singapore Business Awards—returned during the Covid-19 pandemic to spend time with his ageing parents.

His younger brothers Keith Wong, 49, and Kelvin Wong, 46, remained in Singapore to grow the business while Mr Wong was in China.