How to make a luxury brand from scratch? Lessons from a coffee shop
Singapore, and the air conditioning at the ION Orchard shopping mall is doing its job. Inside, well-heeled tourists and locals line up behind a velvet rope, eagerly awaiting their entry into a room bursting with hues of orange, blue and gold.
But this isn’t a trendy nightclub, or even a chance to check out the newest iPhone.
Once admitted, these guests will be drinking — coffee.
More specifically, Bacha Coffee, a brand fewer than five years old that has thrived in post-pandemic Singapore thanks to the grandeur of its stores and its positioning in posh locations like ION. It’s a spare-no-expense model that co-founders Taha Bouqdib and Maranda Barnes replicated after building Bacha’s sister brand, TWG Tea, into a status symbol across Asia.
“We are in the affordable luxury business,” Bouqdib said in a recent interview.
“Tea and coffee are kind of necessity products that anyone in the world — when you wake up or in the afternoon — you must have it.”
They’re also products that consumers, especially in Asia, are increasingly able and willing to pay a premium for. Disposable income in the region is set to surge about 60% through 2040 — the fastest globally — and Singapore sits at the heart of tea and coffee supply chains.
Those market conditions — plus a lack of import duties for tea and coffee — made the city-state an ideal home base for Bouqdib, who is French-Moroccan, and Barnes, an American.
Over the past 15 years, the married couple has expanded their retail outlets and cafes to more than 20 countries and territories with the backing of deep-pocketed business partners.
