Picture this:
You’ve just finished high school and your father tells you
“Son… here is some money. You are old enough to decide what to do with it. So you can either go spend it on an education and get a degree… or you could go do business with it.”
What would you do?
My guess is that 80% of people faced with situations like that would spend the money on the education.
10% would do a business with it.
And the remaining 10% would tell his father that he will take the money to start a business but instead throw it all on girls and booz.
Meet Jian Bang.
Jian Bang is a Singaporean friend of mine who was faced with the exact same situation as described above years ago.
His dad gave him the money to his education and told him that he could either go study with it, or go do a business.
He chose the latter so he opened the first Pandora’s Box at Far East Plaza in Singapore.
Pandora’s Box has an interesting concept.
What Jian Bang does is he rents out boxes (shelves) in his shop to other aspiring entrepreneurs who want some store space to sell some goods but want to do without the heavy rent of an actual store.
Jian Bang gets a monthly rental for these boxes and also a commission for each item his ‘tenants’ sell.
Things were tough at first but Jian Bang persevered on and Pandora’s Box today has been pretty successful.
Now not only does he rent ‘boxes’ out to his ‘tenants’ but he now even has his own products.
Not being able to cope with the demand for ‘box space’ in his store and with a growing waiting list, Jian Bang decided to open a new shop at Orchard Cathay Cineleisure which I visited yesterday.
Now if you’re a man… Pandora’s Box probably has nothing for you unless you’re shopping for your girlfriend.
But if you’re a girl (a teenage one especially), you’ll find a great deal of very very cute items there.
Everything from hand made accessories to clothes or even boots.
I couldn’t help but buy a few of his items eventhough I had no clue when I will ever get to use them or who I would ever give them to.
But how could you not buy something from a cute store like that.
Heck even a little Hello Kitty greets you at the cashier every time you want to pay.
Of course… the main attraction for most of us guys was next door.
Just opposite of Jian Bang’s shop we saw a shop selling this
THE HARD GAY TOY JUST LIKE IN THE TV SHOW!!!
HARDO GAY TOY HOOOOoooooooooooooo!!!!
Initially we all grabbed it as soon as we saw it trying to test it out and hear what he says when we put those little plastic swords into him.
We all knew we had to buy one each!
But we gave up the idea when we saw that each one costs RM160 each.
*sigh*… all those Hard Gay toys and we can’t buy any of them 🙁
Anyway, back to Jian Bang.
At his age, I must say Jian Bang is an inspiration to all of us entrepreneurs.
I love meeting other entrepreneurs (which was why I got Ming to bring me to Jian Bang’s stall some time during my business trip to Singapore).
Those who make it… brings inspiration to the rest of us.
And those who didn’t make it… brings lessons to the rest of us.
Now not only is Jian Bang working on expanding Pandora’s Box…
He has also recently started an online store that sells sex toys… HO HO HO
PS: For those of you who have FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT HARD GAY (which I will consider as an ACT OF TREASON!!!!) then please refer to one of my older entries here.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space