<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Dark days for night markets
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Many vendors quit as sales fall; trade body out to rejuvenate business </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Jermyn Chow
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Night markets, such as this one in Marine Parade, usually offer cheap wares, but customers are not biting. -- ST PHOTO: ALBERT SIM
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->THEY are occasionally part of the night scene in housing estates - rows of makeshift stalls by the roadside, hawking anything from burgers to gaudy bolsters and silk flowers.
But the familiar yells of 'Lelong, lelong!', meaning 'Sale, sale!' in Malay, are fading out.
These are bad times to be a pasar malam or night market vendor. Many are dropping out of the business, hit by a triple whammy of factors: competition from heartland malls, rising overheads, and the ongoing financial meltdown.
Each vendor either mans the stall himself or with the help of relatives, friends or hired hands, forming what is known in the trade as a 'family'.
The number of such families has fallen by about a third, from 1,000 in 2005 to the current 700, said Mr Alan Toh, president of the Trade Fair Merchants' Association of Singapore.
The body, which was set up in April, has about 200 pasar malam contractors and vendors as members.
Twenty vendors told The Straits Times that their takings have shrunk by as much as half in the last five months, as heartlanders tighten their belts.
Things usually go cheap at these night markets, but consumers are not biting. Most show up just 'to soak in the atmosphere', grumbled watch stall operator Leow Tuck Heng, 50.
He is often unable to sell even a single timepiece, despite setting up his stall in the mid-morning and staying open for 13 hours.
A 55-year-old veteran pasar malam vendor, who wanted to be known only as Ah Lan, said she makes just $250 a day selling belts, wallets, bags and caps.
'I don't have enough to pay my employees and for my lunch,' she said.
Customers say the problem is that the wares at a pasar malam tend towards the frivolous and are badly made. One can buy all essentials cheaply at a supermarket, said housewife Lam Siew Mei, 38.
Air-conditioned heartland malls are also pulling customers away from these stuffy and crowded street bazaars, said trade fair operator Toh Kang San.
Spiralling overheads, including stall rentals, utility bills and salaries are crimping profits as well. A 3m-by-3m stall now costs $3,000 for a two-week run, twice what it cost 10 years ago.
The association has a few ideas to rejuvenate the pasar malam.
One is to put in lower bids to organise these bazaars when grassroots groups invite contractors to hold one.
The contractor with the winning bid foots the cost of organising the fair - now at between $10,000 and $300,000 - and pays the grassroots group for the use of the space. The grassroots group uses this 'revenue' to promote community bonding activities in the estate.
If a smaller bid can clinch a contractor the right to hold a bazaar, he can charge vendors lower rents for their stall spaces.
Mr Toh is also in talks with the Manpower Ministry to get clearance for lower-cost foreign workers to be hired to run the stalls.
And vendors, too, have been urged to up their game with better offerings. Efforts to raise the hip factor in night markets appear to be working. About half the vendors are now aged below 30.
Among them is Kenyan businessman Steve Washington Ochieng, 26, who hawks camel bone necklaces and antelope horn rings from Nairobi.
'I don't earn much, but at least I create awareness of my culture by talking and interacting with Singaporeans.'
He hopes greater awareness will translate into better sales. [email protected]
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Many vendors quit as sales fall; trade body out to rejuvenate business </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Jermyn Chow
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
Night markets, such as this one in Marine Parade, usually offer cheap wares, but customers are not biting. -- ST PHOTO: ALBERT SIM
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->THEY are occasionally part of the night scene in housing estates - rows of makeshift stalls by the roadside, hawking anything from burgers to gaudy bolsters and silk flowers.
But the familiar yells of 'Lelong, lelong!', meaning 'Sale, sale!' in Malay, are fading out.
These are bad times to be a pasar malam or night market vendor. Many are dropping out of the business, hit by a triple whammy of factors: competition from heartland malls, rising overheads, and the ongoing financial meltdown.
Each vendor either mans the stall himself or with the help of relatives, friends or hired hands, forming what is known in the trade as a 'family'.
The number of such families has fallen by about a third, from 1,000 in 2005 to the current 700, said Mr Alan Toh, president of the Trade Fair Merchants' Association of Singapore.
The body, which was set up in April, has about 200 pasar malam contractors and vendors as members.
Twenty vendors told The Straits Times that their takings have shrunk by as much as half in the last five months, as heartlanders tighten their belts.
Things usually go cheap at these night markets, but consumers are not biting. Most show up just 'to soak in the atmosphere', grumbled watch stall operator Leow Tuck Heng, 50.
He is often unable to sell even a single timepiece, despite setting up his stall in the mid-morning and staying open for 13 hours.
A 55-year-old veteran pasar malam vendor, who wanted to be known only as Ah Lan, said she makes just $250 a day selling belts, wallets, bags and caps.
'I don't have enough to pay my employees and for my lunch,' she said.
Customers say the problem is that the wares at a pasar malam tend towards the frivolous and are badly made. One can buy all essentials cheaply at a supermarket, said housewife Lam Siew Mei, 38.
Air-conditioned heartland malls are also pulling customers away from these stuffy and crowded street bazaars, said trade fair operator Toh Kang San.
Spiralling overheads, including stall rentals, utility bills and salaries are crimping profits as well. A 3m-by-3m stall now costs $3,000 for a two-week run, twice what it cost 10 years ago.
The association has a few ideas to rejuvenate the pasar malam.
One is to put in lower bids to organise these bazaars when grassroots groups invite contractors to hold one.
The contractor with the winning bid foots the cost of organising the fair - now at between $10,000 and $300,000 - and pays the grassroots group for the use of the space. The grassroots group uses this 'revenue' to promote community bonding activities in the estate.
If a smaller bid can clinch a contractor the right to hold a bazaar, he can charge vendors lower rents for their stall spaces.
Mr Toh is also in talks with the Manpower Ministry to get clearance for lower-cost foreign workers to be hired to run the stalls.
And vendors, too, have been urged to up their game with better offerings. Efforts to raise the hip factor in night markets appear to be working. About half the vendors are now aged below 30.
Among them is Kenyan businessman Steve Washington Ochieng, 26, who hawks camel bone necklaces and antelope horn rings from Nairobi.
'I don't earn much, but at least I create awareness of my culture by talking and interacting with Singaporeans.'
He hopes greater awareness will translate into better sales. [email protected]
