• Celeste Ecoflyers daS10, an inflatable drone, can reportedly fly for more than 10 hours
• Its 8-meter pneumatic wing replaces much of a conventional aircraft structure
• The drone can reportedly cover approximately 500 miles in one direction

A French aerospace startup is developing a 24-foot inflatable drone designed to remain airborne for more than 10 hours while covering roughly 500 miles one way.

The company recently completed early flight testing for the drone dubbed daS10, which uses a pressurized textile envelope and pneumatic wings.

The Korean company plans to establish robotics research hubs in the US, China and Japan and consolidate those operations under a strategy led by Dongkun Lee.

Samsung Electronics is establishing a new robotics division reporting directly to its chief executive and to be overseen by a recently hired former Hyundai Motor Group robotics strategist.

The new ‘robotics experience’ (RX) division of the South Korean giant will oversee mid- to long-term robotics strategy, core technology development and business execution while expanding research capabilities at home and ‌internationally, according to media reports today (21 July).

The company plans to establish robotics research hubs in the US, China and Japan and consolidate those operations under RX, whose strategy will be led by Dongkun Lee. Lee was previously in charge of Hyundai Motor Group’s robotics strategy, including the direction of its now wholly owned subsidiary Boston Dynamics.

Bloomberg reported that Samsung’s moves are likely to lead to expanded collaboration between it and Hyundai in the field of robotics.

The RX division has also hired two academics with prominent backgrounds in guidance and control for autonomous robots and drones, and the design of robotic hands and grippers that aim for dexterity function that humanoid robots would need for physical tasks.

Samsung has previously noted the cost and complexity of implementing dextrous hand-like function in humanoids.

Earlier this year, the company said it wanted tangible humanoid robotics results in 2026 and would consider investments and acquisitions where needed. It has a goal of deploying humanoid robots at manufacturing sites before potentially expanding to homes and retail.

Samsung’s shares rose by around 6pc today following the news. Reports suggest that the company plans to invest around $13bn in developing physical AI infrastructure and humanoid robot manufacturing facilities at its site in the city of Gumi.

Last week, following its full acquisition of Boston Dynamics, it was reported that Hyundai is aiming to deploy Atlas humanoid robots at some of its factories in the US.

American tech giants have been making investments in the robotics space in 2026. In May, Meta acquired humanoid robotics start-up Assured Robot Intelligence; in March, Amazon bought the New York-based Fauna Robotics.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

The Masimo trial ultimately failed to get a permanent ban on Apple Watch sales or use of the blood oxygen sensor, but the final verdict will have Apple pay $634M to Masimo’s new owner Danaher after the appeal was rejected.

Apple Watch users have been able to take advantage of the blood oxygen sensor in Apple Watch since a software update in January 2024 successfully bypassed a sales ban. Masimo’s attempts to reinstate a ban failed, and all that was left in the case for Apple to pay a fine.

Apple appealed the merits of the jury’s findings based on the definition of a “patient monitor.” According to a report from Law360, U.S. District Judge James V. Selna turned down Apple’s request.

That means Apple must pay the $634 million fine. There doesn’t appear to be any other path for appeal or recourse, as the judge rejected both requests for either a new judgement or trial.

Given the complexity of the United States legal system, don’t put it past Apple to find some other avenue for appeal. The money owed to Masimo is a paltry sum for the multi-trillion-dollar company, but Apple will always appeal where it can.

At least the lawyers got paid

In the end, Masimo didn’t succeed in getting the Apple Watch banned or fundamentally redesigned. It won an empty victory with the funds it will be paid, and the patents affecting the lawsuit will expire in 2028 and 2029 anyway.

Masimo isn’t a patent troll in the traditional sense of the word, as it does build products with its patents. However, it isn’t clear why the CEO pursued this lawsuit with such vehemence when the end result cost a lot of time and money.

As usual with these lawsuits, the real loser is the customer. At the least, it seems we may finally be able to put the Masimo saga to bed.

Masimo was purchased by the technology company Danaher on June 10, 2026 for $9.9 billion. It isn’t clear if the new parent company will care about the lawsuit or the patents in question.

That acquisition did tell us one thing — Danaher expects Masimo to generate EBITDA of more than $530 million in 2027. So, Apple’s $634M payment will be quite the boon for the new owners.

Time will tell if this Masimo case is somehow brought back from the dead.

Audio brands do not return because somebody issues a press release, unveils a handsome loudspeaker at a trade show or revives a familiar logo on social media. They return when dealers can order products, customers can hear them, inventory arrives on time and somebody answers the telephone when a tweeter stops working.

That is why the launch of New Energy Audio Distribution, or NEAD, matters more than the usual distributor announcement.

The Chicago-based company will represent Jamo, Energy, Juke Audio, XLO and OXS Audio across the United States and Canada, creating a new North American sales and dealer network for five brands spanning passive loudspeakers, Bluetooth speakers, distributed audio, cables, gaming headsets and Dolby Atmos soundbars.

NEAD is led by Managing Director Jim Kozicki and was founded by Xiaodong Yang and his family, who also operate Chinese premium-audio distributor Cinemaster and have invested in Shenzhen-based audio engineering company Rayleigh Labs.

For consumers, the more important question is not who printed the new business cards. It is whether NEAD can turn the highly visible Jamo relaunch into a sustainable North American business and give Energy a credible path back into listening rooms after years of relative silence. We do not want this to turn into another Mirage situation where expectations were raised and nothing happened.

Distribution Is the Part Consumers Notice When It Fails

Distribution is not particularly glamorous, but neither is discovering that the loudspeaker you want has no local dealer, no confirmed inventory, uncertain warranty support and a delivery date apparently determined by the alignment of several planets in the Outer Rim and the availability of some Jedi Knights to handle any trade route disputes. Didn’t work out well.

A capable distributor has to establish dealer relationships, maintain pricing, manage inventory, coordinate marketing, provide training and make sure replacement parts and service remain available after the launch event has ended.

That has become especially relevant in 2026. Dynaudio recently announced that it would close its U.S. subsidiary and exit direct North American operations, reminding consumers and dealers that even established audio brands can struggle when regional support, costs and market strategy stop aligning.

NEAD is moving in the opposite direction by assembling a portfolio and attempting to build a more focused route into the United States and Canada. The line card is diverse enough to serve traditional hi-fi dealers, custom integrators and gaming-focused retailers, although those categories do not automatically become a coherent business merely because they appear together in a press release.

Execution will decide whether NEAD succeeds. The North American market has seen more than a few distributors stumble in recent years. For every strong operation such as Fidelity Imports or Playback Distribution, there are others whose names are better left out of print.

Jamo Finally Has a North American Route to Market

eCoustics has followed the Jamo revival from the beginning, when the Danish loudspeaker brand re-emerged under a new international ownership and engineering structure after being dropped by Voxx International in 2024.

The new organization combines Jamo’s Danish identity with development and manufacturing resources connected to Cinemaster and Rayleigh Labs. Xiaodong Yang had worked with Jamo previously, which gave the relaunch something more useful than a newly purchased trademark and a mood board filled with pale wood.

The first major products arrived ahead of High End Vienna 2026 with the Concert Legacy and Concert Element loudspeaker families.

Concert Legacy is the premium range, with three passive models priced from $2,999 to $7,999 per pair. The series is manufactured in Denmark and uses drivers developed with Scan-Speak and SEAS, while its design references the original Jamo Concert 8 and Concert 11 without simply copying speakers from 1996 and hoping nobody notices.

The more affordable Concert Element range begins at $1,099 per pair and extends to $2,499, with a matching $699 subwoofer. Both series are scheduled to reach the market in August 2026.

Jamo has also entered the lifestyle category with the HYG Flex, HYG Reflect and HYG Flow Bluetooth speakers, priced from $129 to $279. The lineup includes Bluetooth 6.0, Auracast support on select models, LC3, ambient lighting and as much as 27 hours of battery life, although Wi-Fi, app control, LDAC and aptX Lossless are absent.

That is a broad relaunch covering entry-level portable audio, two-channel systems and home theater.

The challenge is getting those products into stores, maintaining inventory and persuading dealers to allocate floor space to a revived brand competing with DALI, KEF, Wharfedale, Q Acoustics, Monitor Audio, Polk Audio, Paradigm and several dozen others that never left.

NEAD gives Jamo the regional structure it needed. Whether it gives the brand enough momentum is the more difficult question.

Energy Is Preparing a Much Harder Comeback

Energy carries a different kind of weight, particularly with Canadian listeners who remember the brand’s work with the National Research Council and loudspeakers such as the Energy Pro 22, Veritas, Connoisseur and Take 5.

Introduced in the early 1980s, the Pro 22 became one of the defining Canadian loudspeakers of its era. Its development was influenced by the NRC’s pioneering research into psychoacoustics, loudspeaker measurements and controlled listening tests, work that also helped shape the design philosophy of several other major Canadian audio companies.

NEAD says Energy is preparing a new generation of loudspeakers inspired by the Pro 22 and built around the brand’s historical emphasis on broad dispersion, low distortion and an accurate frequency response.

That is an encouraging direction, but consumers should keep their expectations under control. No new Energy model names, specifications, prices, photographs or shipping dates have been announced.

The Pro 22 name will attract attention, but it also creates a very high standard. Canadian loudspeaker buyers tend to remember the original Energy, Mirage and Sound Dynamics products rather fondly, and some of them still own working pairs. A new badge and a curved cabinet will not be enough.

Energy needs real engineering, competitive pricing and products that can stand beside current models from Paradigm, PSB, Totem, Monitor Audio, KEF and Revel without requiring buyers to grade on a heritage curve.

Until those speakers exist, Energy’s return remains a promising plan rather than a completed comeback.

Juke Audio Brings Whole Home Audio

Juke Audio gives NEAD a foothold in the custom-installation and whole-home market.

The American company produces multi-zone streaming amplifiers designed to power in-ceiling, in-wall and outdoor speakers without requiring separate matrix switchers, streamers and amplifiers for every zone.

The current lineup includes the Juke 6 and Juke 8, priced from $1,499, and the higher-powered Juke+, priced at $2,499. Depending on the model, the systems support six or eight powered zones, app-based control, Apple AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, DLNA and Bluetooth.

Juke has also introduced AudioMate ($249), which can transmit television or analog-source audio into the company’s whole-home system using HDMI ARC or eARC and RCA connectivity. That makes it possible to distribute TV audio, a turntable or another local source to multiple rooms without pulling another long cable through the walls.

This may be the least familiar consumer brand in the NEAD portfolio, but it could become one of the most important commercially because custom integrators require products that are easy to specify, install and support. They are less interested in Scandinavian heritage than whether the system will still work after the homeowner changes the Wi-Fi password.

XLO Returns With Four Cable Ranges

XLO was founded in 1991 by audio designer Roger Skoff and built its reputation around high-performance analog, digital, speaker and power cables.

The current catalog includes the Signature, Reference, Ultra and Pro ranges, covering entry-level systems through expensive reference installations. XLO continues to promote low capacitance, conductor geometry, dielectric control and signal neutrality as central parts of its engineering approach.

eCoustics has covered XLO products for nearly two decades, including its Reference and Signature generations, home-theater cables and earlier ownership changes.

OXS Audio Targets Gaming and Home Cinema

The fifth brand is OXS Audio, not “OSX Audio,” as it is written in portions of the distributor announcement. The official company name and website use OXS.

OXS develops gaming soundbars, home-cinema systems and wireless headsets, including Dolby Atmos products offering configurations as ambitious as 7.1.2 channels. Its lineup also uses the company’s proprietary Xspace spatial-audio processing.

We previously covered the OXS Storm A2, a wireless gaming headset with hybrid active noise cancellation, virtual 7.1-channel audio, low-latency wireless operation and support for multiple gaming platforms.

OXS broadens the NEAD portfolio beyond conventional hi-fi and custom installation into gaming, a category with a much larger and younger potential audience. It also creates some overlap with Jamo’s lifestyle products, but that is not necessarily a weakness if the brands are directed toward different retailers and customers.

Who Is Running NEAD?

Jim Kozicki brings 34 years of consumer-electronics and premium-audio experience to the distributor. His background includes leadership roles at Abt Electronics, territory development involving Bowers & Wilkins and Klipsch, and most recently business development at the ProSource buying group.

That dealer and retail experience matters because the five brands need different sales strategies. A Jamo Concert Legacy loudspeaker, Juke multi-room amplifier, XLO speaker cable and OXS gaming headset are unlikely to reach consumers through precisely the same channel.

Xiaodong Yang adds the international and manufacturing side of the operation through Cinemaster and his family’s investments in audio brands and Rayleigh Labs. His direct involvement in the Jamo relaunch also makes NEAD more than an unrelated third-party logistics company hired after the products were finished.

The companies are connected strategically, which should make product planning, inventory and regional marketing easier—at least in theory.

What We Still Need to Know

NEAD says its portfolio is available across the United States and Canada, but it has not yet published a complete authorized-dealer list, detailed warranty arrangements or specific inventory dates for every brand.

There are also no final details for Energy’s new loudspeakers, while Jamo’s Concert products are still expected in August.

The company says additional specialty brands and product categories will be announced. That may create more scale, but there is also a point at which a “focused portfolio” becomes another distributor with 37 logos and no time to explain any of them.

The Bottom Line

The launch of NEAD is good news for Jamo, Energy, Juke Audio, XLO and OXS because North American distribution is the difference between being announced and actually being available.

Jamo has already completed the most visible part of its comeback. It has new products, clear pricing and a design direction that reaches from $129 Bluetooth speakers to $7,999 Danish-made floorstanders. What it needed was a credible dealer and support structure in the United States and Canada.

Energy has more work to do. The Pro 22 connection will generate interest, especially in Canada, but the brand must reveal products capable of supporting the weight of that history. There are enough resurrected audio names in the market already; nobody needs another one returning solely because the trademark was available.

Juke Audio, XLO and OXS give NEAD useful reach into custom installation, high-end accessories and gaming audio, making this a more diverse portfolio than a loudspeaker-only operation.

For more information: newenergyaudio.com

Related Reading:

GPU memory is the most expensive resource in production AI, and it’s also the one running out fastest.

Long context windows and multi-turn conversations force AI models to repeatedly recompute information they’ve already processed, consuming GPU memory and compute that could otherwise serve additional users or generate new responses.

Instead of treating GPU memory as the limiting resource, why not extend it with much cheaper storage technologies?

Weka, for one, believes that cheap flash storage can close that gap. The company’s NeuralMesh 6 software platform, launching alongside its first self-designed hardware line, Wekapod 3, extends what Weka calls Augmented Memory Grid, an approach that aggregates NAND flash to behave like GPU memory at a fraction of the cost.

This is an active and increasingly crowded category. Dell, NetApp, Pure Storage and VAST have all repositioned toward AI infrastructure over the past two years and Weka is one of several vendors arguing it’s built for this specific moment rather than adapting to it.

“What we’re seeing now with customers is they’re chasing availability of compute, and once they get new allocation from anyone, they want to be able to grab it and start running right away,” Weka co-founder and CEO Liran Zvibel, told VentureBeat.

The potential payoff is straightforward: better utilization of existing GPU investments, lower inference costs and faster deployment of new AI workloads without waiting months for additional GPU capacity.

The technology is most relevant for organizations already operating AI at scale or expecting rapid growth in usage, particularly enterprises building internal copilots, customer service agents, software engineering assistants or retrieval systems with long context windows. Smaller deployments may see less immediate benefit than organizations where GPU utilization has already become a limiting factor.

Inside Weka’s NeuralMesh 6

NeuralMesh 6 adds four capabilities aimed directly at a functionality gap Zvibel says has been costing Weka deals in competitive evaluations.

Composable and virtual multi-tenancy. Composable clusters give anchor tenants full hardware-level isolation, dedicated CPU, memory, and storage. Virtual multi-tenancy runs through Weka’s RDMA fabric, delivering network-level isolation that scales past 1,000 tenants per cluster, with provisioning in under 30 minutes. Combined, a single cluster running 50 composable clusters can support up to 50,000 tenants. 

Unified file and object storage. Most storage systems keep two separate paths: a file-based path (the standard way servers and applications read and write files, used heavily in training and fine-tuning pipelines) and an object-based path (S3, the format inference and cloud-native tools typically expect). Normally a gateway translates between the two, meaning the data effectively exists twice. Weka’s claim is that the same physical data on disk is directly readable through either path at once, no translation layer, no second copy. Zvibel is targeting non-AWS GPU clouds specifically, naming Lambda, Nebius, G42, and CoreWeave, with what he described as roughly two orders of magnitude higher performance than conventional S3 and a capacity-based pricing model instead of per-API charges. 

Metadata-first replication. Destination environments become browsable before a full data copy arrives, with data hydrating only when accessed. 

“They had to wait for all of that to make it to the other side, and this takes days or weeks, in extreme cases a month,” Zvibel said. “We now allow our customers to grab some allocation of new GPUs and get up and running within an hour.”

AlloyFlash and Always-On data reduction. TLC and QLC are two types of NAND flash memory. TLC is faster and more durable but costs more per terabyte, while QLC is cheaper and holds more data per chip but is slower. AlloyFlash mixes both within a single cluster, automatically routing latency-sensitive work to TLC while running bulk-capacity workloads on QLC, cutting cost per terabyte without a performance penalty on the work that needs speed. Data reduction now runs by default rather than as an option.

Solving AI’s context problem

Multi-tenancy and object storage solve how enterprises and neo clouds operate the platform day to day. A harder problem sits underneath: as context windows and multi-turn interactions grow, so does the GPU compute wasted recalculating work a model has already done. Augmented Memory Grid, a NeuralMesh 6 feature built specifically for this, is Weka’s answer.

Every prompt triggers two stages. Prefill calculates attention, the core mechanism behind how large language models process input, and it’s computationally expensive. Decode converts that calculation into output and is comparatively lightweight.

The cost shows up hardest in multi-turn sessions like chat or coding, where each new turn re-triggers prefill for everything that came before it, unless that work has been cached.

“If you have 10 turns, you may overcalculate 100 times because you’re redoing all of them. If you have 20, you’ll overcalculate 400 times,” Zvibel said. “You can put two orders of magnitude more NAND than you could afford in shared memory, and we can cache 100% of the pre-calculated tokens, so you never need to redo it.”

Where Weka sits competitively

Storage vendors have spent the past year and a half repositioning around AI, and separating genuine capability from repositioned messaging is now a real evaluation problem for buyers. 

“The storage world is shifting its focus from serving bits to enterprise workloads to managing data at the speed of AI. We’ve seen that most clearly over the past 18 months from Dell, NetApp, and Pure,” Steve McDowell, chief analyst at NAND Research, told VentureBeat. “The interesting thing is that companies like Weka, and VAST, are the true AI-native data companies, solving these problems since day one.”

McDowell singled out Augmented Memory Grid as Weka’s clearest technical lead. 

“Weka continues to have the most technically capable KV cache implementation on the market with its Augmented Memory Grid,” he said. ” They were early with this technology, and continue to innovate. This is critical for AI inference, as it enables a level of GPU efficiency that, without question, saves money on GPUs and memory. That’s key for today’s memory and GPU constrained market.” 

He also flagged Weka’s contractual guarantee on its data reduction claims as underappreciated. 

“One flying a little under the radar: Weka is putting its money where its mouth is with its contractual guarantees for its data reduction promises,” he said.

McDowell’s advice to buyers evaluating competing claims from Weka, VAST, Pure and NetApp alike was pointed suggesting that enterprise buyers should look hard at what vendors are promising versus what they’re actually delivering.

“A smart buyer will look at how competing vendors are solving real-world problems today,” McDowell said. ” They do this by talking to organizations running similar workloads at similar scale. If a vendor can’t point to that, then it should be a warning sign.”

The biggest publicly traded tech companies in the world, commonly known as the “Mag 7” — or magnificent seven — may not be enjoying their stranglehold at the top of the US economy for much longer. That’s, of course, if the leaders of a swathe of new AI-centric tech firms, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have their say as they plan to IPO in the coming months. But positioning these businesses in the new big tech landscape has been a major challenge.

The Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was reflecting on his history in the AI industry during an interview with Bloomberg that aired earlier this year.

offbeat

Don’t worry – it can autonomously attack ground targets, too

The US military is adding autonomous gun-based counter-drone systems intended to reduce its reliance on expensive interceptor missiles. They also have the potential to kill humans.

Defense robotics firm Allen Control Systems (ACS) announced a deal with the US Marine Corps on Monday to get its Bullfrog autonomous weapon system attached to the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS) expeditionary counter-drone platform. L-MADIS consists of pairs of off-road vehicles, one carrying a suite of sensors and the other slated to be outfitted with a Bullfrog autonomous weapon station.

Videos on ACS’ YouTube page demonstrate the Bullfrog in action, taking down a number of small drones in demonstrations over the past couple of years. While we didn’t hear back from ACS about the Bullfrog’s capabilities to target manned vehicles and troops, a short video on the company’s channel also shows a Bullfrog unit switching from targeting aerial drones to ground targets with ease. This suggests that Bullfrog systems aren’t just capable of knocking drones out of the sky. They are also fully capable of – and lack any software protections against – the fully autonomous targeting and killing of humans with complete autonomy.

Bullfrog systems are a little different from your typical AI-controlled counter-drone systems in that they’re not built with an attached weapon, but are designed to slot in “any legacy or modern firearm” in order to turn them into systems able to “detect, track, and defeat incoming threats at a fraction of the cost of even the least expensive kinetic interceptors.” 

In other words, ACS claims it’s cheaper to build a system that can adapt existing military firearms than to invest in a purpose-built counter-drone weapon system. Bullfrog units provide the AI, computer vision, and precision aiming robotics to take out drones, while the military only has to plug in its own hardware.

There are several variants of the Bullfrog available from ACS, with units designed for everything from the M240 machine gun to the M2 50-caliber machine gun. The company is currently working on M230 chain gun and M134 minigun variants as well. In the case of the Marine Corps contract, it appears the service is taking on some M240 variants based on a link in ACS’s press release to the M240-variant’s page.

The M240, the smallest of the weapons designed for the Bullfrog, fires up to 850 7.62×51 mm NATO rounds per minute and is effective up to 800 meters in the Bullfrog. The Bullfrog M240 is capable of taking down drones up to DoD Group 3, meaning anything with a max gross takeoff weight less than 1,320 lbs, able to operate as high as 18,000 feet above sea level, and with an airspeed of less than 250 knots. The DoD grouping goes up to Group 5, which includes some of the military’s largest drones, such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk.

The US Army and US Navy are both already fielding Bullfrog units, making the Marines the third branch to get their hands on the system. ACS cited the proliferation of cheap drones in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and in the Middle East as a need for comparable cheap counter drone tech. ®

One of Singapore’s oldest vintage furniture businesses runs a 7,000 sq ft store and offers refurbished furniture ranging from S$15 to tens of thousands of dollars.

In a world driven by consumerism, one Singapore business is giving pre-loved furniture a second life. Meet Hock Siong & Co., a family-run business that has spent decades collecting, restoring, and reselling secondhand furniture.

Today, the business is run by sisters Brillyn Toh, 38, Beaunice Toh, 33, and Blessance Toh, 30, who grew up surrounded by used furniture and discarded household items.

The trio are the second generation of a family deeply rooted in Singapore’s karung guni trade. Their grandfather went door to door collecting unwanted newspapers, clothing, and household items, while their father, Toh Chin Siong, 65, grew up helping in the trade before founding Hock Siong & Co.

We spoke with Brillyn about how she and her sisters have grown Hock Siong into a 7,000 sq ft showroom in Tai Seng, with no plans of slowing down.

It started with old newspapers & used clothing

The story of Hock Siong began not with furniture, but with old newspapers and used clothing.

It started with Brillyn’s grandfather, a karung guni man (rag-and-bone man) who, in the 1970s, travelled through Singapore’s housing estates sounding a horn to announce his arrival and collecting whatever residents no longer needed.

His son, Toh Chin Siong, grew up helping with the collections. After finishing school, he worked briefly as a lorry driver before founding Hock Siong in the early 1990s.

The business initially served as a middleman in the karung guni trade, buying from individual collectors, sorting the items, and exporting them to overseas markets where there was demand. Used clothing was shipped mainly to Indonesia, while electronics found buyers across developing countries in Southeast Asia.

The pivot into furniture came in 1998. That year, Chin Siong learned of an opportunity to tender for the contents of the former Marco Polo Hotel, which was slated for demolition in 1999. The once-prominent hotel has since been replaced by a condominium on the same site.

He partnered with a Malaysian agent to purchase everything inside the hotel—beds, mirrors, tables, chairs, restaurant furnishings and lounge pieces from roughly 300 rooms.

The pair split the haul, with half going to Malaysia and the other remaining in Singapore to be sold through Hock Siong. At the time, storage was inexpensive, and the family had access to a large warehouse in the old Sungei Kadut area, making it feasible to keep such a massive inventory.

That single project transformed the business. From then on, secondhand furniture became Hock Siong’s primary focus.

What Hock Siong won’t buy

Today, Hock Siong is run by sisters Brillyn, Beaunice and Blessance Toh.

Each oversees a different part of the business. Brillyn heads procurement, assessing and purchasing incoming furniture; Beaunice manages operations, overseeing how pieces are sorted, stored and displayed in the showroom; while Blessance handles the administrative side, including finance and payroll.

Hock Siong acquires furniture from homes, restaurants, corporate offices and hotels that are renovating or clearing out their spaces. The team is sometimes even called upon to help families empty the homes of loved ones who have passed away.

Most enquiries begin with a WhatsApp message. Customers send photographs of the items they wish to part with, and Brillyn personally reviews each one to determine whether Hock Siong can take it.

Material is the biggest deciding factor. Pieces made from solid wood, such as teak, mahogany, or elm, are far more likely to be purchased, as they are durable enough to be restored and represent decades of growth.

“Sometimes I find that this wooden piece is beautiful, and I think it has the potential to be remade,” she said. “I will buy it.”

On the other hand, Hock Siong passes on items whose storage costs would outweigh their resale value, or pieces that would require so much refurbishment that the time and effort simply wouldn’t justify the eventual selling price.

Today, Hock Siong’s sprawling showroom carries everything from a S$15 vintage desk lamp to a three-metre Raffles statue priced at S$3,000. At the top end are bronze sculptures by Chinese artist Liu Ruo Wang, which can fetch tens of thousands of dollars.

What the refurbishment process looks like

The carpentry team at Hock Siong typically performs two distinct types of work. Structural refurbishment addresses what daily use does to a piece of furniture: loose joints, stuck drawers, shelves that have buckled under weight. 

The other form is exterior refurbishment, such as sanding, refinishing, and revarnishing, which helps to make something look almost brand new.

Brillyn said that most pieces typically need both types of restoration. For example, a sideboard cabinet that arrives with cloudy, discoloured lacquer goes through structural fixes first, then sanding and refinishing. 

The refurbishment capability wasn’t baked into the business from the start, but developed gradually as a necessity. With the design of furniture evolving with the changes in interior design, some items from the Marco Polo Hotel could not be sold as-is, and so Hock Siong had to innovate and repurpose some furniture.

As such, there are some larger modifications made to match current interior design trends, like adding fluted glass to cabinets that previously had plain glass, because that conveys a contemporary look to some buyers who prefer a modern element in their secondhand furniture.

Another example is old television cabinets, the hulking built-in units that were standard in Singapore homes a generation ago. They’re often solidly built, sometimes from good wood, and almost impossible to sell as they were. 

Hock Siong’s experienced carpentry team has developed ways around this by removing the TV cavity, adding shelving, and making what was unsaleable into a storage cabinet with some character.

Such work is labour-intensive, and with skilled carpenters becoming increasingly difficult to find, every restoration has to make commercial sense.

It’s this ability to reimagine old furniture for modern homes that has become one of Hock Siong’s defining strengths—and one reason the business has remained relevant for decades.

Of course, not every item that passes through Hock Siong is an ordinary cabinet or dining table. Over the years, the business has handled its fair share of unusual pieces, each with a story of its own.

One of the most memorable was an old Mini Cooper. The team had it cut in half at a workshop before transforming it into a sofa with custom cushions. Today, it sits inside Brunches Café.

Another was a three-metre-tall statue of Sir Stamford Raffles salvaged from a hotel before it closed.

The statue was eventually bought by a retired private collector known for filling his home with unusual finds. Rather than placing it indoors, he displayed it prominently in front of his house.

The economics of a traditional business

Hock Siong currently occupies a 7,000 sq ft store at Tai Seng with a team of 28, split across sales, operations, delivery, carpentry, and administration.

With years of being in the business, Brillyn is honest about the structural limitations of Hock Siong’s business model. “This is really not a super scalable business,” she said.

A conventional furniture retailer can look at a catalogue, identify a bestselling chair, and order 20 more, but Hock Siong cannot. 

Everything in the store has arrived from a different location, in varying conditions and at an unpredictable time. When something sells, there is no restocking, and it’s more likely than not that the next piece of rosewood will be different from the last.

Brillyn explained that this means the business has to be exceptionally good at managing what it cannot control and at creating the ideal conditions for pieces to sell. 

As such, store arrangement matters more than it might appear to strangers to the business. Hock Siong’s team regularly repositions items because changing how a piece sits in the space changes how customers imagine these restored pieces in their own homes. 

Being a family business, Hock Siong is also open to dynamic pricing and bargains as they see fit. With global geopolitical instability, rising raw material costs have squeezed profit margins in ways that are harder to manage. 

For example, turpentine, a material regularly used by Hock Siong’s carpentry team, has gone from S$30 to S$40 per tin to S$50, by nearly 20 to 40%. 

Diesel for the collection trucks has climbed too. 

Despite rising costs, Hock Siong has held its free delivery threshold at S$400, absorbing some of the increase rather than passing it on, partly because it considers its relationship with regulars as a long-term asset.

“Customers are very understanding,” Brillyn said. “I’m really very grateful.”

A sunset industry that is slowly rebounding

When Brillyn joined the business full-time in 2011, after graduating from NUS Business School, the secondhand furniture trade was not exactly seen as a growth sector. 

Over the years, cheap imports from China had compressed the prices of furniture and made buying new a reasonable alternative to buying restored secondhand items. Brillyn used to refer to her family’s line of work as a “sunset industry,” a traditional business that is facing long-term stagnation.

However, what Brillyn and her sisters did instead of accepting that was to begin marketing Hock Siong online. 

Facebook pages were new in the early 2010s, and it cost almost nothing to ride the wave of social media and share about the business. On Hock Siong’s Facebook page, Brillyn would post pictures of restored pieces for sale, and that eventually led to a following.

Later, Hock Siong hopped onto other digital platforms like Instagram and eventually established its online store.

Besides digitalising the business, Brillyn shared that the secondhand furniture market in Singapore has changed over the past decade in ways that have worked in the business’s favour. 

Western thrifting culture, globalised by social media, has made buying secondhand feel like an intentional choice rather than a compromise for something brand-new. 

Moreover, a growing number of younger homeowners are prioritising items with a backstory, while more interior designers want something that stands apart from the usual offerings, leading to a demand for secondhand furniture from businesses like Hock Siong.

I think it’s really very heartening that people are beginning to accept all this and really find the beauty in old things.

Brillyn Toh

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Looking ahead, the Toh sisters are focused on growing their family business further, adding to the family history of dealing with secondhand items.

• Find out more about Hock Siong here.
• Read other articles about Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Hock Siong