The new Swee Lee music store in Singapore’s Clarke Quay entertainment district is popular with young people and families on weekends. In addition to selling musical instruments and equipment plus fashion items, it also offers a cafe space where customers can enjoy coffee while playing guitar or listening to vinyl records of their choice.
“Swee Lee Clarke Quay represents our vision to transform customer experience at our brick-and-mortar stores, cultivating a dynamic, community-centric retail space, thoughtfully designed to go beyond just buying and selling,” Kuok Meng Ru, the CEO and founder of the Caldecott Music Group, the startup that owns the Swee Lee chain, said in a news release in April when it opened the store, its third in Singapore.
“The space is a dynamic hub for programming, networking, education, fostering connections, unleashing creativity, and so much more.”
Swee Lee has been in business since 1946 and previously focused on wholesaling musical instruments. Kuok acquired Swee Lee in 2012, which was the beginning of his venture into the music business.
The 36-year-old Kuok is the son of Kuok Khoon Hong, the founder and chairman of Wilmar International, a Singapore-listed major palm oil plantation company. He revamped the Swee Lee brand for today’s youth and began developing retail stores alongside online sales. The music store has expanded into Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, totaling 11 across Southeast Asia.
Caldecott, which also owns the popular music composition app BandLab, has expanded through acquisitions, building a business ecosystem that connects music fans both online and in the real world. Its approach is to acquire prominent companies and trademarks that are no longer viable in the music industry and “bring brands back to life,” as Kuok put it.
In 2016, Caldecott acquired a 49% stake in the company that publishes the US music magazine Rolling Stone (but then sold it in 2019). It also bought Harmony, a Michigan guitar manufacturer that ceased production in 1975, and reopened its factory. Moreover, Caldecott last year acquired the trademark of Dawsons, a British music store founded at the end of the 19th century that had gone bankrupt, and is operating online and brick-and-mortar Dawsons stores.
Meanwhile, Caldecott’s core business, BandLab, has grown steadily. The app, which allows users to compose and arrange music with a single smartphone, had more than 100 million users worldwide by March, with users growing during the pandemic as more people enjoyed music at home. The app also functions to connect music fans worldwide through sound-source sharing and collaborative production.
About 30% of BandLab’s users are from the US, and some musicians have climbed the charts with songs composed and recorded using the app. The number of users is also increasing in the Philippines, India and other Asian countries where smartphones are more popular than laptops.
Investors are paying attention to the group. BandLab Technologies, which oversees Caldecott’s digital division, raised a total of USD 90 million in funding from venture capital firms and other investors in 2022 and 2023. The company also has acquired Cakewalk, a professional music composition software, and ReverbNation, an artist services platform.
In a recent movement, the company launched SongStarter, a songwriting feature using generative artificial intelligence, in 2022.
“We are extremely proactive in AI both in terms of where we believe AI can empower people, empower humans,” Kuok told Nikkei Asia last year on the sidelines of a business forum, adding that one has to be very considerate and ethical about how they use it. “AI for good is really important.”
This article first appeared on Nikkei Asia. It has been republished here as part of 36Kr’s ongoing partnership with Nikkei.