Heartland stores, or more commonly known as Ah Beng Handphone Shop are located almost everywhere in Singapore.

Disclaimer: For a start, by the term “Ah Beng Handphone Shop” is just a Singaporean way of identifying these retailers. We do not necessarily mean that everyone working there is definitely an “Ah Beng”. Nor do we mean that these shops are unethical and dishonest.

Forget about Jover Chew, not everyone in the industry is like that!

Editor’s Note: “Ah Beng” is usually defined as a young man who operates within secret societies and street gangs. But as we all know, this was very much a thing of the past.

If you have no idea what an Ah Beng Handphone shop looks like, we have a photo of it here:

View photos

source: breakfixnow

*Breakfixnow is one of the more trustworthy shops in Singapore. We are just using the image to let readers understand the types of shop we are talking about here.

How do Ah Beng Handphone Shops survive and make money?

Very much like the 7-11s in Singapore, it is common to find a competitor Ah Beng Handphone shop less than a hundred metres away from each other.

Yet, under such intense competition, the owners of these shops seem to be least affected despite having little to no customer. This probably got some of us wondering, “What is the business model of these shops?”

Below are some of the possible ways these shops remain profitable.

Having shops operating in many locations, all under one boss

The owners of many of these handphone shops tend to diversify the location risk of their business by having a few branches operating in different parts of Singapore.

Based on my conversation with one of the “Ah Beng“, here’s an example of how they diversify their market risk:

An outlet located near Orchard will be selling to a different demographic of mobile phone consumers compared to that an outlet in Ang Mo Kio.

An outlet at City Plaza might experience a higher foreign workers customer base as compared to outlets at Ang Mo Kio and Yishun where it is more Singaporeans focused.

His consolidated phone stocks are then allocated to each outlet accordingly based on the preference of each customer base.

This is why they are more than happy to purchase any phones from you, as they can purchase, say an Android phone from you at the Ang Mo Kio outlet and spin it off for cash over the weekend at their City Plaza outlet.

This diversification allows them to buy back second-hand mobile phones from various location, which they eventually sell at a profit.

The unique part about an Ah Beng Handphone shop is that each outlet is a channel to buy and sell mobile phones. With outlets spread across different locations in Singapore, it allows more them to tap on to various demographics of each location.

Exporting of mobile phones to other countries

Having been through so many exciting mobile phone launches, we have come to a fact that not all countries are equal.

source: Apple

As seen from the Press Release by Apple on iPhone X as shown above, the highlighted portion depicts the countries which iPhone X will be available on 23 November 2017.

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