Canningvale resurrected Singapore's dead Robinsons as an online-only department store

Robinsons, the storied Singapore department store closed in January 2021 and bought by Australian online homeware retailer Canningvale, relaunched as an online-only store.

That a department store's brand can survive the death of its shops — resurrected online-only for Singapore's middle market, not just the 'atas' top end.

Canningvale acquired the brand after Robinsons shut its last physical store in January 2021, and set a relaunch for 24 June 2021 with a sale of more than 1,000 products from 200 brands at up to 60% off.

Incoming managing director Jordan Prainito, 29, said due diligence showed a large proportion of customers found Robinsons' offerings had become too 'atas' (high-class), so the new Robinsons Online would serve the middle market as well. The lineup brought back more than 50 brands from the old store and added local names like skincare company Jill Lowe Skin Care, Invity and home-grown toymaker Mighty Jaxx, alongside a Grab partnership: PayLater instalments, a GRAB20 20% discount code and points redeemable on Grab's rewards network.

The former owners' closure had torched customer and supplier trust, so the relaunch started from negative goodwill rather than zero.

An online-only format dropped the department store's core benefit — aggregating brands across price ranges in one browsable space.

The middle-market repositioning targeted the very customers the old Robinsons had drifted away from, an admission of how it died.

Rivals like Tangs still offered physical stores plus apps, setting a blended-experience bar the pure-play relaunch had to beat.

A brand is a rented relationship: buy the name without fixing why it died — in Robinsons' case drift upmarket and a trust-destroying closure — and shoppers will treat the relaunch as an audition.

Loyal customers met the news with wait-and-see scepticism: shoppers told The Straits Times the brand would have to rebuild loyalty, match competitors like Tangs that kept both stores and an app, and prove itself on navigation, listings, rewards and price — one noting the former owners had 'left a bad taste in my mouth after leaving customers, suppliers and staff in the lurch last year'.