[EN] 新加坡家具品牌Castlery联合创办人 从“年少轻狂”到走向世界 The success story of Castlery co-founder Declan Ee | 早人物

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]I think I was young and delusional, that I thought I could do everything.

[00:00:05]So I started as an investment banker, straight out of school.

[00:00:09]I did that for about 10 odd years I was a producer and a DJ in music for about four or five years.

[00:00:17]For Castlery, we've been doing it for the past 13 years.

[00:00:42]2013 was when we started Castlery.

[00:00:45]At that time, it was meeting a need where there was a big space between what was beautiful and well designed and what was affordable.

[00:00:56]Because we didn't have a (furniture industry) background.

[00:00:57]We didn't realise how hard it was.

[00:00:58]So we were delusional, we just went into it.

[00:01:03]If we knew how difficult it was, we probably wouldn't have done it.

[00:01:06]The first three odd years were the startup phase.

[00:01:09]You started in Singapore, you met a customer need, you grew fast.

[00:01:12]We started in ubi, small kind of underground, 900 square feet space with four people and then moved to Delta house.

[00:01:27]The next three years were the struggle, where we went overseas for the first time in Australia.

[00:01:32]That was when we took what worked in Singapore and went to Australia.

[00:01:35]We lost money two years straight, and it was a real struggle learning how to navigate.

[00:01:41]What we didn't do was really try to understand What we didn't do was really try to understand what the Australian customers wanted.

[00:01:49]How they lived, how they shopped.

[00:01:51]Our assortment was not correct, we took a space that was not easy to find.

[00:01:55]Australian customers don't normally just shop like that.

[00:01:57]Australian customers don't normally just shop like that.

[00:01:58]We didn't brand or communicate it properly.

[00:02:01]We re-pivoted to focus on the largest market in the world, the US.

[00:02:08]That's where we realized if you want to scale up, it's not how you do things, it's where you play.

[00:02:22]I think where we really scaled up, the pandemic thing helped.

[00:02:25]From where we were a small regional player to a couple hundred million dollar company.

[00:02:31]So the thought really was large markets first.

[00:02:34]Because of the scale that you can hit in terms of the volume, so we just look at the top five markets.

[00:02:41]We would meet maybe six or seven Southeast Asian markets, which means six to seven languages, six to seven cultures.

[00:02:51]I need to replicate my every marketing team, finance team, all will be different.

[00:02:56]It'll be even more challenging operationally in my view, because furniture already has a high fixed cost base.

[00:03:04]If you want to operate the way we operate, so we thought, why not we use this to tackle the bigger market, the big english speaking one.

[00:03:14]The hypothesis is, the urban millennia or now Gen Z in New York or LA or San Jose and in Sydney and Singapore and London, they'll have the same aspiration, same kind of stress, watching the same Netflix show.

[00:03:31]But it will be very different from the same person in Jakarta or Thailand or Malaysia.

[00:03:44]Because I was naturally curious about different things.

[00:03:47]A bit delusional when young and have a lot of energy, so you just jumped in and you thought you could handle everything.

[00:03:54]I think it's really the seasons of life that you are in.

[00:03:57]In my 20s and 30s, I was a producer and a DJ in music for about four or five years.

[00:04:04]Music was something that was a deeply passionate project.

[00:04:08]End of year one of my law school in London, I was studying and writing music at the same time.

[00:04:13]I wrote the script over the summer and staged it after that.

[00:04:16]When we launched the musical, we sold out in five, six days.

[00:04:20]So it was a great kind of experience.

[00:04:28]I did that for about 10 odd years.

[00:04:30]You want to achieve something, you want to get validated, right?

[00:04:33]I saw a managing director just break down in the office, because he put his life savings in （lehman brothers).

[00:04:39]It was very impactful for me.

[00:04:41]Because three years ago, you looked up to it a lot, right?

[00:04:44]That one day you wanna be like him and then you realise that, this is not what it's pan out to be.

[00:04:50]So that was a good 20 years of my life up to, I think the mid late 30s, where it's evolved to something more instead of external facing, more internal.

[00:05:07]so I think the big shift is becoming a father.

[00:05:09]I have to travel a lot and I want to be with my family.

[00:05:13]So homeschooling became more and more real.

[00:05:14]We questioned homeschooling, and then as we started to learn more about homeschooling, and talking to a lot of homeschooling families.

[00:05:21]So, the 14-year-old kid will be joking about the mom, and they will banter.

[00:05:25]I want this kind of relationship and that was the start of why we wanted to homeschool.

[00:05:30]It’s still very overwhelming for me.

[00:05:33]So we take it one day at a time.

[00:05:35]I can build a company again next time, but you only get to bring up your kids once.

[00:05:45]This is our first store in the US.

[00:05:48]We need to send the right brand impression.

[00:05:50]So we compromise a bit on size rather than having a bigger store, which would cost much more.

[00:05:56]We decided to pick a location that is in the right area for our customers.

[00:06:01]Just recently my friend's father sent a text about our New York store and said (to me)make Singapore proud.

[00:06:09]It's a regular just Singaporean, and send such an encouraging message.

[00:06:14]It just made us feel that opening the store is maybe something more.

[00:06:19]That's very rewarding.