The Serangoon Plaza branch of home-grown retailer
Mustafa will shut its doors permanently in February.
The outlet has been operated by retailer Mohamad
Mustafa & Samsuddin since 1985, but the mall will be
redeveloped into Centrium Square, a 19-storey mixed development
property.
Mustafa, a store synonymous with cheap bargains and
huge crowds, will be left only with its 200,000 sq ft Mustafa
Centre store at Syed Alwi Road. The closure of its 65,000 sq ft
branch reduces its total retail space by about a quarter.
Mustafa offers not just an array of goods but caters to
other needs as well, such as money changing, travel and visa
services, and for hungry shoppers, a rooftop restaurant.
Here are five things you should know about Mustafa
before its Serangoon Plaza branch closes.
Selling ready-made garments, the first Mustafa store
was opened in 1971 at Campbell Lane in Little India by the current
managing director, Mr Mustaq Ahmad, with father Mustafa and uncle
Samsuddin.
A second shop was opened two years later at Serangoon
Road, and it began to sell electronic items as well.
After the shops were acquired by the Government for
conservation in 1985, Mr Mustaq opened his flagship store at
Serangoon Plaza.
He then bought shophouses at Syed Alwi Road and
converted them into Mustafa Centre, which opened in April 1995.
The retailer took the plunge in June 2003, hoping to
boost profits in a then-slowing retail market.
The move was targeted at tourists, particularly transit
travellers, according to a report in 2002.
There were concerns that the business model would not
work after the closure of Yokoso, Singapore's first 24-hour
supermarket and department store, in the late 1980s.
However, the 24-hour concept proved to be a runaway
success and Mr Mustaq was even ranked 37th in Forbes magazine's
list of the 40 richest people in Singapore in 2011, with a reported
worth of US$240 million.
Mr Mustaq was only five years old when he first arrived
in Singapore from Uttar Pradesh in India in 1956. His father, Haji
Mohamed Mustafa, had come to the country four years earlier and
sold food from a pushcart.
He decided to bring his young son over when Mustaq's
mother died.
Despite being educated only up to Secondary 4, Mr
Mustaq defied the odds and his retail business has flourished.
In a 2006 report, he said: "Talent is not just about
paper qualifications. It's really about people doing something with
passion and a great deal of interest."
The entrepreneur became a citizen in 1991, and
according to a 2006 report, has four children.
Keeping prices as low as possible has been a mainstay
of Mustafa - and a reason why customers keep flocking back.
Affordability, coupled with the great variety of goods
and services sold, has continued to reel in locals, foreign workers
and tourists.
Even officials from developing countries visiting
Singapore for training under the Singapore Co-operation Programme
had Mustafa as their favourite haunt, according to a 1997
report.
The draw? Cheap electronic goods.
In 2010, Mustafa Centre chalked up 45 fire safety
violations - the highest by any building here - from 2005 to
2010.
While exit points and fire-fighting equipment were
obstructed, the greatest fire safety concern had been overcrowding
on the first floor.
In fact, the Singapore Civil Defence Force considered
it such a serious problem that it obtained a court order to suspend
business on the ground floor for 40 hours.
The retailer was required to implement stricter
crowd-control measures or review existing ones. That same year,
Mustafa Centre even restricted the maximum number of shoppers to
431 in the building at any one time.
In 2010, Mustafa was fined $10,000 for unauthorised
commercial use of its Mustafa Warehouse building on Kallang Pudding
Road.
The six-storey building had been approved for warehouse
use by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in 2001, but it
turned down Mustafa's 2004 application to change the building's use
to a wholesale centre for household goods and appliances.
However, Mustafa operated a department store on the
first level and a supermarket on level two for a few weeks in
2009.
Sources: The Straits Times, The New Paper, The Business
Times, www.mustafa.com.sg