Marcus Wong, business development director of Danovel, a company that specialises in handcrafted bespoke furniture and upholstery. There aren’t many mod cons that capture a zeitgeist quite like the sofa — ubiquitous enough to bleed into the background of a domestic diorama, yet distinctive as a marker of shifting trends.perpetually coiled around a chintzy, dimpled orange mohair settee like vines, blithely bandying about their first-world grouses over oversized coffee mugs.
“Singapore opened up to the world in the 90s, when many MNCs came. With the influx of talents and cultures, we were exposed to more high-end furnishings,” recounted Wong. Amid this bonanza, his uncle — the first of the second-generation siblings to join the family business — branched out towards an entirely different market, mass-producing furniture in Taiwan.
As you might imagine, pandering to that level of personalisation does not lend well to a roaring trade. That’s not to say the firm wasn’t raking in a tidy profit when Wong quit his job in Certis Cisco’s quality management department in 2008 to assume the mantle of business development director. The computer science graduate admits that he decided to help run the business out of a sense of obligation but grew to appreciate the fine points of furniture crafting.
“I even went door-to-door around Bukit Timah distributing flyers, often facing barking dogs at GCBs ,” recalled Wong. To cut their losses, he shuttered their flagship factory in Eunos. Yet, folding the firm was never in the cards. “Our commitment to the business went beyond financial concerns, it was about preserving my grandparents’ legacy,” stressed Wong.
“Convincing my parents wasn’t easy as we are quite a conservative family, and mortgaging our own house to invest in this place was a huge decision to make,” revealed the reserved entrepreneur.