First world shopping

Buying local is a topic close to our hearts. Just like how we flew the national flag proudly last August, we take pride in things created here. But we're really careful with this process: It makes most sense to put in support only for the strongest locally produced products.

When we do that as retailers and you - as a consumer - purchase with the same mind set, we help raise the bar and up the standards of ideas/concepts/craftmanship conceptualised here.

With a survival-of-the-fittest mentality, all labels - foreign and local - here then compete in the market fairly and have to produce appealing products that do not require artificial subsidies or support. This way, in whichever genre (fashion, arts, music, movies), we get maximum creativity channeled through strong business making: Which really is the key if we're serious about nudging the standards of our work up. So you have Books Actually who picks the best fresh writers and Black Market to provide a tight platform for fashion talents.

There are many challenges Singaporean producers face: Labour costs, market size and branding potential. We barely make up a city in a large country like China or the United States!

It all boils down to economies-of-scale versus volume of sales.

Producing 50 shirts and 500 shirts in one run results in very different costs (with the former generally costing more). Because of our geographic size, producing 500 pieces of the same shirt does not happen easily. Throw into this pot the materials used (quality?) and to whether good tailoring can be afforded, you get the selling prices we ultimately pay for as customers.

Mass market labels like Charles & Keith fight a different battle. No less glorious, just different. Independent labels bring to the table microscopic attention to quality and details, and an old-school pride in making an original idea work - in the spirit much like an inventor or an artist.

You would have noticed in our Men's corner that we now carry two predominant labels - SIFR and new to us DRIFTERS. Both labels (and the teams behind them) are perfect showcases of craftmanship, steadfast principles and - most importantly - good products designed with utmost pride.

We are very proud to have DRIFTERS join us recently and highly recommend their pieces to the gentlemen reading this post.

At Rockstar, our hope is if we do things right, we'll eventually rub off on you an appreciation for originality, smart effort and integrity. And to find the idea of paying a reasonable premium for exceptional cases - TOMS, unusually good fabric, extraordinary ideas - a very desirable one.

We look forward to having you try out these new thoughts at our store really soon.