I just visited the new Uniqlo store in Parkway Parade today, and it was crowded with many shoppers eager to buy Uniqlo's clothing as they were giving opening day discounts! The store was done up very beautifully by Kingsmen.
Also, I took the chance to visit Kingsmen's booth yesterday at Invest Fair 2012, and spent some time speaking with Andrew Cheng, the Group's General Manager. He also gave a short talk about "Experiencing Kingsmen" - basically an introduction to what the Group does along with many photos of the jobs they did for international clients. Please do check out a post done by FFN on his blog which details some of the salient points:-
http://financiallyfreenow.wordpress.com/...fair-2012/
To add on to what he has mentioned in his post:-
1) Export Fixtures business continues to remain strong. Sales was $11m for 2010 and $23m for 2011, and is posied to continue to grow steadily. Kingsmen has two staff deployed in Canada and USA to do business development for export fixtures, and Europe and Japan clients also engage Kingsmen. The pieces are all fabricated in their Johor factory and Kingsmen has a cost advantage over European clients.
2) Roll-out management continues to be a key feature of Kingsmen's business model, but some clients do not use Kingsmen for all their territories, preferring instead fo choose local contractors in some instances.
3) Kingsmen continues to aggressively go after new clients, as well as working hard to retain existing ones which are expanding regionally. Singapore is seen as a good test bed for launching their flagship Asian expansion stores, and if they can make money in Singapore, they will usually roll out shops in other parts of SEA.
4) Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a growing division but is very niche, therefore it helps to supplement Kingsmen's business but will never grow to be a significant revenue generator. Still, the division is cash-flow positive.
5) Margins will continue to hover between 6% to 8%, but top line is hard to grow as Kingsmen has too many projects to bid for and insufficient staff to manage all these projects. Staff recruitment and retention are problems, but it is good that the Company intends to build their foundations slowly snd steadily.
6) With the development of more theme parks in SEA through 2012 to 2015, there can only be more opportunities for Kingsmen to pitch for projects.
7) Kingsmen is in negotiations for the second H&M store to be opened soon in Jem mall, the new mall in Jurong East.
8) Gardens By The Bay contract was $10m while the recent USS contract was $18m. There are also other opportunities to garner contracts as more attractions are coming up, and mall refurbishments are always ongoing not only in Singapore but also in Malaysia and other countries.
9) Kingsmen only owns their premises in Seoul and Malaysia. The rest of their offices and factories are rented, therefore this keeps them asset-light.
10) For some of their contracts, they differentiate between design and fabrication as some clients only desire design while getting other contractors to do the job. Kingsmen obviously earns higher margins from design work compared with fabrication, but their focus is on holistic client satisfaction and therefore will work with the client on all aspects of the job.
11) There are events such as Air Shows in which the organizers are the same, therefore Kingsmen will follow them globally and assist them to set up whichever part of the world they are in - this is as good as recurring income as there will always be air shows all around the world, just to give an example.
Andrew has confirmed that the FY 2011 AR should be out by this week (probably Thursday), and the AGM will be held at Kingsmen's premises on
April 26, 2012 (Thursday) at 11 a.m.