Revamping Singapore’s heartlands: How grants are helping neighbourhood shops find new life

BIKE SHOP PUTS ITSELF ON THE MAP

After taking over its Tampines premises in 2022, bicycle shop UCIG Enterprise quickly realised it needed to do more to put itself on the neighbourhood map.

“In Tampines, quite a number of people (don’t) know that there is a bicycle shop around this area,” said director Yap Siew Ha.

To solve this, the shop tapped into the Heartland Enterprise Placemaking Grant to move its bike fleet onto a nearby hard-court for a roadshow.

During the June school holidays last year, the event drew hundreds of residents with demonstrations of BMX bikes and “fixies”, or fixed-gear bicycles – an effort that Mdm Yap says paid off.

“Our sales, revenue, there was an increase thereafter,” she said, adding the distribution of CDC (Community Development Council) vouchers around the same time gave the business an additional fillip.