NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO - More Singapore businesses are looking to set up shop or expand in the United States, drawn by the potential for growth and the vast customer base in the world’s largest economy.
Singapore companies in financial technology, biomedical sciences, sustainability and renewable energy are especially well-placed to compete in the US, given Singapore’s strength in those sectors and the huge market in the US for such products, he said. “From the start, we were already a global business, because you can’t differentiate a husky in Singapore from a husky in the US,” said chief technology officer Navaneeth Sreekandan.As long as you have a pet that the Internet finds endearing and spawns followers, content can be created from anywhere in the world, he said.
Pet influencer marketing platform Pawjourr co-founders Navaneeth Sreekandan, Jane Peh and Tay Sijun moved to the US in April 2022 to expand their business there. PHOTO: COURTESY OF PAWJOURR “It really propelled our growth to the next level,” said Ms Peh. “The company is still growing, because the budgets from American companies are just a lot larger.”
“As a new brand in a new market where nobody’s heard about us… it’s very different from LB in Singapore, where everybody knows it as a household name. Here it’s like, who are you?” said LB’s North America head Stephanie Seow. LB’s clothes are cut differently, from leg-to-body ratios and even the thickness of the padding on their padded dresses, which makes them more suited to Asian and petite customers and helps set them apart from other Western brands, said Ms Seow.
Mr Hoe added that EnterpriseSG advises companies serious about expanding in the US to have some presence there, and to have the mindset that “what works in Asia doesn’t work in the US”.