Everyone buys from Courts. So how did this small family shop double its revenue to S$500K/mth?

For 40 years, his parents ran Etronin Home their way. Today, he’s modernised the biz & doubled its revenue.

The pie is large enough for everyone if you know how to fight for your slice.

At a time when most Singaporeans buy their fridges and fans from Courts, Harvey Norman or Gain City, it’s easy to assume that small, independent appliance retailers have been squeezed out of existence.

But Etronin Home, a family-run retailer nestled in the heart of Tampines, proves there’s still room for smaller players. Surviving, however, has taken more than good service and a loyal customer base.

We spoke with Oh Khoon Seng, 31, the second-generation owner now running the business, on how he is modernising his parents’ four-decade-old business, navigating a challenging retail landscape, and carving out a space of their own at a time when the big chains dominate the floor.

40 years & not a single online listing

Etronin Home was founded in 1983 by Khoon Seng’s parents, who ran a large corner shop—a place he describes simply as the family’s “golden years.” Today, the business stocks a wide range of home appliances from ceiling fans and air conditioners to washing machines and fridges, carrying around 1,600 products across major brands.

Growing up literally above the store, Khoon Seng watched promoters and salespeople stream through the shop floor his entire childhood, though he never really got involved in the business itself.

That changed around 2019, when he was in his final year at the Singapore Management University. With more time on his hands as lectures shifted online and exams moved to digital formats due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he started helping out and spotted something his parents had missed.

The e-commerce wave was arriving, and the family business had no real presence in the online world, except for a simple website.

Khoon Seng made an early attempt to list products on then popular e-commerce platform Qoo10, but it went nowhere. His parents, who had spent decades doing business in cash, weren’t comfortable with digital payments, and without active management, the listings attracted nothing. 

Not giving up, Khoon Seng tried more up-and-coming avenues like Shopee and Lazada, which proved more fruitful. Transaction fees were just 2% then, which made sense even for a business as old-school as theirs: it gave customers a way to pay by credit card without having to make the trip down to the shop, expanding their customer reach beyond physical transactions.

“I didn’t have a plan,” Khoon Seng admitted, recalling those early days. “I was just helping my parents out by putting our business online.” He still remembers being genuinely proud on 11.11 when he sold 10 standing fans in 2019. 

Running e-commerce operations alone

When the COVID-19 circuit breaker began, Khoon Seng found himself running the entire online operation alone—listing products, managing pricing, coordinating deliveries—while keeping his parents at home to shield them from the virus.

The timing turned out to be fortuitous. Stuck at home, Singaporeans were suddenly confronted with how tired their appliances had become.

“Everyone at home suddenly felt that their fan, their aircon, was not cold enough; everyone wanted to change home appliances fast,” he recalled. “They realised that they do a lot more laundry and the washing machine spoils more quickly.”

While demand was strong, Etronin could not fully capitalise on it. His parents had always operated on a just-in-time basis: order from the supplier only once a customer had already paid, then deliver when stock arrived. It kept risk low, but it also meant customers who needed something urgently often went elsewhere, to bigger retailers who had units sitting ready in a warehouse.

Khoon Seng learnt a big lesson from that period. Today, Etronin pre-stocks inventory in its own warehouse to fulfil orders on demand, giving it negotiating leverage with suppliers and the ability to promise faster delivery. 

“If you gave me my current setup [back then], I think we could have done a lot more,” he said.

A market that had moved on, and parents who hadn’t

When the circuit breaker lifted, and his parents returned to the business, the tension that had been brewing between the two generations came to a head.

For decades, Khoon Seng’s parents had run the business on healthy margins. Earning S$200 from a single fridge sale was considered a good day’s work. But to Khoon Seng, the market had fundamentally changed.

With platforms like Shopee and Lazada allowing customers to compare prices instantly, retailers were constantly undercutting one another. A ceiling fan listed at S$458 would quickly become S$457, then S$456, in a race to the bottom that left little room for profit. In this environment, Khoon Seng believed independent retailers could no longer rely on large margins—they had to compete on volume.

“My parents used to say that they would rather not do this business anymore if the profit per product fell so much,” he recalled.

Delivery speed also became another point of contention, as his parents couldn’t understand why next-day delivery was necessary when they were already earning so little per unit.

Frustrated by the constant disagreements, Khoon Seng stepped away from the family business in July 2021. He handed the online operations to a close friend, refocused on his career, and eventually rose to become Head of Secondary Sales and Strategy at Zenith Education.

Over the next four years, the business carried on largely unchanged. His friend kept operations running, but growth stalled.

When I came back, I realised a lot of things were still status quo. It didn’t grow. Oh Khoon Seng

In Apr 2025, his mother had a health scare. That, combined with watching the business stagnate, was enough to make Khoon Seng reconsider helping out in the family business.

Khoon Seng didn’t quit his job immediately. Instead, he gave himself a runway: he’d come back part-time, audit the books properly for the first time and make sure customer payments were being collected neatly.

But he also made one thing clear to his parents: if he was coming back, it would be on his terms. He would make the changes he believed were necessary, and they would have to trust him to do so. 

“I felt that since I’m 30 and I don’t have kids yet, it’s quite a safe space,” he said. “We have regular customers—the business won’t become zero immediately.”

To show his family he was serious, he put S$100,000 of his own savings into the company. “Now my money is in here too,” he said. “I’m fully responsible for it.”

Playing both sides

Coming back in with fresh eyes in 2025, Khoon Seng quickly identified how dramatically the e-commerce landscape had shifted since he’d first helped his parents list on Shopee. The 2% transaction fee he’d entered with in 2019 had crept up incrementally and was now sitting at 15 to 17%.

Ironically, those rising platform costs had created a new advantage for offline retailers.

Sellers had to factor Shopee’s fees into their pricing, meaning customers shopping on the platform were often paying more than they would have if they bought directly from a physical store.

Khoon Seng saw an opportunity in combining both channels. During major Shopee sale events, he lets the platform compete on its own terms. But outside of those periods, he uses Etronin Home’s showroom to build direct relationships with customers.

More importantly, he believes the store’s biggest advantage is something large chains cannot easily replicate: personalised advice.

As an independent retailer, Khoon Seng positions himself less as a salesperson and more as a consultant—someone who understands the products, responds quickly, and has no obligation to push a particular brand.

“At the bigger stores, they are all the individual brands’ promoters,” he said. “But if it’s an independent advisor like us, we will tell you what the best brand and plan is for your budget.”

The results of Khoon Seng’s transformation have been tangible. Monthly revenue has grown from approximately S$200,000 in May 2024, before he formally took over, to around S$500,000 today, although he acknowledged that the higher figures also come with larger-ticket products and increased operating costs.

The team has also expanded from just Khoon Seng and his parents to 11 people, including a finance staff member, an operations manager, four sales staff, and two delivery personnel who handle 30 to 40 locations a day, often working from noon until midnight.

Another milestone has been the stronger relationships Etronin has built with suppliers.

As order volumes increased, the company gained greater negotiating power, securing better pricing from agents and earning sales rebates. For example, one brand provides a 4% credit note for every S$1 million in annual sales, effectively giving Etronin S$40,000 worth of stock value to reinvest into the business.

Brands that once overlooked the small retailer began to see Etronin as a serious partner.

“Our supplier brands started treating me seriously,” he said. “The salesman used to think, ‘ Wah, this shop every month only brings in S$10,000 in sales.’ But now we are a bit more respected.”

Earning its place

To grow beyond the base his parents built through decades of word-of-mouth, Khoon Seng is pursuing a personal branding strategy—positioning himself as the go-to “home appliance guy” online, the way some car or renovation businesses have done on TikTok.

The brand’s physical showroom, a newly renovated 800 sqft space at Block 820, opened in Feb 2026, is part of the same push. Designed to feel more modern than the original shop, it gives customers somewhere to see products in person and puts a face to the business for people who found them online first. 

The hardest part of the journey, he shared, hasn’t been competing with the big chains, but transforming a business built over four decades without losing what made it work in the first place.

I feel it’s harder to work on a business that has already been there for 40 years than to start from a blank sheet of paper Oh Khoon Seng

Khoon Seng’s immediate goal is a personal one: to retire his parents properly by the end of the year, with the business stable enough that they no longer need to be involved in its daily operations.

Beyond that, he is focused on Etronin’s next chapter—expanding into hobs, hoods, and ovens, adding a second delivery lorry, and continuing to build a reputation strong enough that customers choose a heartland retailer over a major chain like Gain City, even if the latter is sometimes S$10 cheaper.

For Khoon Seng, the challenge is no longer just keeping the family business alive. It is proving that a small independent retailer can still earn its place in a market dominated by giants.

• Find out more about Etronin Home here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: This chef left Michelin-starred restaurants to sell mee pok—now he’s opening a S$400K coffeeshop

Featured Image Credit: Etronin Home/ Amando Choo via Google Reviews