Retirees find second wind at Queensway Shopping Centre

SINGAPORE – Despite its weather-beaten facade and half a century of operations, Queensway Shopping Centre is still spry. Best known as a sporting haven stocked with an eclectic mix of apparel and goods, it continues to draw a loyal, if dwindling, stream of shoppers who hold fast to the conventional wisdom of trying before buying. 

This is where you will reliably find, say, a pickleball bat or an Inter Miami jersey, but also, increasingly, curiosities of another nature.

In search of a vintage comic book? Kalibak’s Kave at 02-10 likely has what you need. What about a clock made from an upcycled porcelain rooster plate? That, too, can be found here – on the second floor at Simply R&J. 

Nestled amid the phalanx of sports stores are thrift, hobby and niche speciality shops, many of them run by retirees embarking on a second, slower career. The Straits Times speaks to four retailers to find out how they are carving out their own niche at Queensway Shopping Centre. 

Thrift for good

When Maria Ismail turned 50, she pulled up her bucket list and realised that there was so much more to life than her day job as a senior client partner at an organisational consulting firm. 

She wanted to pick up hairdressing. She wanted to become a masseuse. She wanted to drive from Perth to Melbourne, traversing the Nullarbor Plain in a campervan over three weeks.

It took her two years to pluck up the courage to retire. In 2020, she finally took the leap, aged 52 and buzzing with possibility. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit. 

Stranded in Singapore with nothing to do but “twiddle my thumbs, quite literally”, she returned to the world of banking, managing human resources projects for around a year. When air travel tentatively resumed in 2021, she got out at the first opportunity and flew to Perth to spend time with her son, then studying at The University of Western Australia.

There, she started volunteering at a charity thrift shop in an affluent suburb. “I started to see the beautiful things people brought into the shop and that kind of started my journey into thrifting,” recalls Ismail, now 57. 

She started accumulating a roomful of pre-loved finds – homeware, accessories, knick-knacks, anything that caught her fancy. 

Two years later, another trip yielded a second epiphany. This time, she travelled to Iraq with the non-governmental organisation Habibi International to conduct a summer English programme at a refugee camp. “That’s when I saw all these young refugees, and I thought that despite their circumstances, they were very hopeful and aspirational. So I came back and realised that I needed to do something.” 

She dug out her thrifted treasures and started selling them at pop-up markets to raise funds for refugees, hoping to fund a scholarship that would put a few through university. In search of a more permanent space, she purchased a unit at Queensway Shopping Centre in July, where she now sells her collection of second-hand items, periodically restocked through trips to Australia every six weeks, from which she carts home three to four suitcases’ worth of goods. 

The proceeds from Upthrift go towards supporting four Yazidi refugees studying medicine, pharmacy and nursing under Habibi International’s Higher Education Scholarship Programme. Ismail also sells citronella candles made by indigenous women in the Philippines, keychains and other crafts from Afghan refugees in Indonesia, as well as mosaics created by Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, as part of tie-ups with other social enterprises. 

One wall is rented out to Regina Lim, 52, a partly retired accountant who specialises in upcycled crockery. Her brand, Simply R&J, turns them into tiered stands, clocks and other types of homeware.  

Ismail has found a community beyond her store too. Though she has yet to get to know the sports retailers – the “old world”, as she calls them – she is friendly with her neighbours and other corporate professionals-turned-hobbyist retirees. 

“We look out for one another, and sometimes we’ll buy lunch for one another too,” she says. “I can keep my shop door open when I’m out because I know someone will watch it for me.” 

She has also compiled a directory of thrift, hobby and speciality stores that some of the other tenants have agreed to display on their walls. “We can’t assume Queensway will be around forever, so we must put word out that these stores exist as quickly as we can.”  

Vintage comics and more

Stephen Fung, 56, lives and breathes comics, which occupy two of four rooms in his Housing Board flat in Clementi West. And now that they have become his full-time job, comics are also his “reason to get out of bed every morning”.

He says: “In most jobs, after a year, you might wake up and suddenly think, ‘I don’t really want to go to work’, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

The former merchandising manager, who spent over 20 years working for book retailers in Malaysia and Singapore, retired in 2021, having had his fill of corporate life. He initially planned to spend his retirement buying and selling comics. 

“But the minute the Covid-19 pandemic was over, my wife told me to get the business out of the house, and that’s why I’m here,” he quips. 

In 2023, he opened Kalibak’s Kave, a comic shop specialising in back issues from the 1980s and 1990s. Recently, to attract a wider audience, he has started selling toys like Hot Wheels and new comics too. Fresh stocks arrive from the US every week – sometimes as many as two boxes, which, for him, is considered a big shipment. 

“Shipping cost is an issue, so is getting it at the right price or getting it on time. But that’s what my previous jobs have trained me for.” 

Some issues are from his personal collection, though he is careful about which he puts up for sale. Once, after letting go of a Marvel comic his mother bought for him when he was six, he was filled with regret so deep, it kept him awake all night. “I kept thinking, I shouldn’t have sold that.” 

But the store has given him a different perspective. His joy now comes from seeing children and teenagers wander in, tentatively pick up their first comic book, and return a month later, again and again. “It’s all about getting new readers in. Instead of looking at their phone, they’re getting this tactile experience and I think that’s fantastic.” 

Business has steadily picked up over the years. Initially, he was not sure a concept like his would work at Queensway Shopping Centre, with its glut of sporting stores. Plus, with no nearby MRT, he was apprehensive about how big a crowd he could draw. 

Though some days are quieter than others – Fridays are a ghost town, surprisingly – business remains profitable and he can rely on a loyal clutch of regulars in their 40s, as well as younger walk-ins.

Have the anxieties of running a business dulled his passion for comics? Not at all, he says. “I suppose the rewards are different from when it was just a hobby,” he muses. “A hobby is a very personal thing and it’s usually quite lonely. I mean, sure, you have your friends you can talk to about the stuff, but the collection is yours.” 

“But when you share it with other people and they can enjoy it, I think that’s the biggest reward.” 

A 79-year-old leathersmith

When Frank Chen retired in 2007, he was 60 and had spent the bulk of his 30-year career cutting, stitching, repairing and restoring leather. It was time to relax.

The tight confines of his workshop gave way to the open green of the golf course, and his days, filled with wine and friends, grew long and leisurely.

After about five years of this, he had enough. “Not my cup of tea” – his verdict of the good life. 

“I found retirement very boring. There was nothing to do,” says the 79-year-old, who reopened his workshop, Frank’s Leathersmith, now a 200 sq ft unit in Queensway Shopping Centre. 

And here he has remained for the last 15 years. “This place is very laid-back. It’s very old school,” he says. “I picked it because I wanted a place that’s easy to operate. It’s not one of those REIT (real estate investment trust) malls where rents are very high and operating hours are strictly controlled by the landlord. And it’s near my house.” 

The Strathmore Avenue resident specialises in exotic skins and often receives custom orders from patrons. He has a retail shop next to his workshop as well, where his creations retail for $150 and up for a Nappa leather bag and over $2,000 for a bag made from crocodile leather.

Most of his customers are locals, “aunties and uncles, mostly heartlanders”, as he describes them. They have urged him to conduct workshops to pass on his meticulously honed skills – his four children have their own careers, he says – but he simply does not have the space or time. 

“I won’t be able to manage. My hands are already full with the orders and restoration work. It’s very serious work because I restore all the famous brands,” he says. 

In a way, all this work is a reassuring reminder of the ongoing demand for his services in these tough times. “Customers have dropped tremendously,” he observes. “Some days, you hardly see a soul. If we didn’t depend on regular customers, we’d have to close shop.” 

And then what would he do? “Retire, probably.” 

Again? Would he not be bored? Well, he is nearly 80 after all. Doing nothing sounds a tad more appealing now. 

Second-hand designer fashion

The one anomaly on this list, Pamela Chong, is not retired. On weekdays, the 63-year-old lawyer is director of Infinitus Law, where she works 12-hour days and heads her company’s conveyancing and real estate department. 

On weekends, however, you can find her weaving between racks of stylish designer clothing at Blueprint Principles, a social enterprise that sells second-hand fashion at prices ranging from $5 to $800.

Some items – bangles her mother made from upcycled jewellery fragments that retail for $20 to $35 – are more homespun, while others, like a Loewe bag selling for $675, bank on their renown.

“I know the profile of 99% of donors well enough to know they don’t buy fakes,” she reasons. “But of course, I’m not an expert, and you have to buy it at a risk because if I were to give you a certification of quality, I’d be pricing these items a lot higher.” 

She is flexible too. Midway through our conversation, a young man pops into the store and manages to bargain a pair of New Balance shoes down from $50 to $38, which he pays for with a mix of PayNow and cash. 

Affordability is important because it is difficult enough to attract customers as it is. Like many thrift store owners, Chong has mastered the art of the polite smile when customers ask for alternative sizes. 

The quicker she runs down her inventory – donated mostly by friends and family – the better. “I want people to buy and enjoy. It’s not a museum,” she says. “I would love to move the stuff that people have so generously given me. If I ever run out of stuff, it’s a good thing.” 

Especially since the money is funnelled towards those who need it most, with profits split between charities Beyond Social Services and Impart. 

“I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” she says. And, since she has no time to volunteer, this is the next best thing. “Part of me really feels like it’s easy giving money away. I feel like we have so many things. Why not find a way to put them to some use as well?” 

Previously located at the now-demolished Peace Centre, she moved Blueprint Principles to Queensway Shopping Centre in 2024 and has since been fully embraced by her fellow tenants. 

“It’s hard not to be friends here,” she says, waving to a passing neighbour, who reacts with some surprise to her presence here on a Thursday. “It’s like a village. When there’s less footfall, people will mingle and walk to one another’s stores. When there’s free ice cream downstairs, they’ll distribute it to the people who can’t get out of the shop, like me.” 

She laughs. “I’m so well-fed here.”