The brand expects the store to break even in two years
A Singaporean furniture retailer The Castlery will open a showroom in New York on May 15, making it one of the few local companies to establish a permanent retail presence there. This marks the next stage of the company’s growth in the United States, following six years of operating exclusively online in the market.
Co-founder Declan Ee called the brick-and-mortar flagship outlet, the first in the US, a “natural progression” from its digital retail model.
“The goal has always been to create a best-in-class experience for our customers… and the last part of this experience is completed when we have an offline store,” he said.
The 3,000-square-foot showroom in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood represents a seven-person investment in a 10-year lease. The Ee team evaluated more than 200 sites over two years before choosing this one.
The showroom has 17 fully furnished settings and a friendly interior styling service that will advise customers on space planning, furniture selection and interior design.
Yes, tell me The Business Times that he expects the store to break even within 1.5 to 2 years, or even within a year if sales are strong.
The store opening in the Big Apple marks Castlery’s fourth showroom worldwide, following its third opening in Brisbane last Aug. Its Sydney store opened in 2024 and expanded in 2025, while its 24,000 sq ft store in Liat Towers was launched in 2022.
Castlery is in 5 markets, with most sales coming from the US
Castlery was founded in 2013 by Ee and his co-founders, Fred Ji, Zhou Zhiwei and Travers Tan, as a digital furniture brand. It currently employs over 500 people worldwide, with 200 at its Singapore headquarters.
To date, this brand has sold more than 1 million pieces of furniture and introduced more than 7,000 products.
The label prides itself on affordable, globally consistent prices, from S$399 for a swivel chair to S$2,499 for a leather recliner.
Its first overseas foray came in 2017, when it entered Australia, a market 10 times bigger than Singapore at the time, according to the founders.
The brand entered the US in 2019 during the COVID-19 crisis as an online brand, starting with two warehouses in New Jersey and Los Angeles, California. Today, Castlery reaches all 50 states from six US warehouses, with the addition of locations in Seattle and Georgia in 2023, then Texas and Chicago in 2024.
Ee noted that this has reduced delivery times for its US customers, many of whom rent their homes and need furniture delivered with short lead times.
“We were very aggressive in the first two to three years, when we were growing the business online in the US,” he said.
The US currently constitutes the largest market for Castlery contributing to 65% of the company’s total sales. Australia comes second with 17%, followed by Singapore with 15%. The UK and Canada, where Castlery is expanding online by 2025, make up the remaining 3%.
The New York store will serve as a testing ground amid changing market conditions
With this offline expansion, Ee said Castlery will take a “moderate” approach in light of global developments and regional tensions.
The New York showroom will be a testing ground for Castlery before it decides to commit to more showrooms in the country.
Well aware of New York’s competitive retail landscape with players like West Elm and Crate & Barrel owning multiple stores, Ee acknowledged that this will give shoppers plenty of options.
“There is a lot of room for us to grow in the US, but we are taking things step by step because people’s perception changes after opening the first store. You get data, you see how customers react and the size of their basket – all these things,” he explained.
Like other foreign companies in the US, Castlery was hit hard by US President Donald Trump’s “Independence Day” tariffs in 2025. This was on top of certain import duties for furniture, such as upholstered furniture and kitchen cabinets.
Since more than half of the brand’s products were manufactured in China and shipped directly to US customers, Castlery saw its Chinese imports reduced by the highest prices of nearly 30%.
Castlery has since changed its supply chain to reduce its exposure to costs. It moved some of its production from China to places like Vietnam, Thailand, and India, leaving only about 20 percent of its production in China today.
After separating its supply chains, Ee said production costs have increased, given the high minimum order prices.
This caused profits to drop by 1% to 3%, which Ee noted is no small amount for a growing furniture brand that typically enjoys margins of 4% to 8%. Taxes also created consumer uncertainty, leading to a six-month sell-off, although they have since recovered.
Apart from prices, political tensions have put additional pressure on Castlery’s bottom line. Rising fuel prices amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East have reduced its profitability.
Taking all these factors into account, Ee expects Castlery’s current FY2026 revenue growth ending in Mar to be “flat or single-digit”, down from FY2025’s annual growth of 10% to 15%.
A step closer to Castlery’s global ambitions
That said, Ee remains “very optimistic” about Castlery’s growth prospects.
“We control what we can do, you never know where the wind will blow, so build a sail to catch it,” he said.
“For us, it’s about being close to the customer and making products they want to buy, even in tough economic times.”
The opening of the New York store brings the brand closer to its global ambitions.
By 2029, Ee aims to have eight to 12 showrooms in key cities around the world, including Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, as well as Melbourne and Perth in Australia.
Ee is actively looking for retail locations in London as well, seeing online sales of Castlery’s UK twice a month until Nov 2025 following a launch at the London Design Festival in Sep that year.
Ee explained: “Unlike the US, there aren’t many big furniture brands in the UK. So we think there’s room for us to enter the market, not to mention that the take-up of sales from customers has really encouraged us.”
Achieving its expansion plans will put Castlery “on track” to transform from a digital-first furniture retailer to a “relevant global retail brand.”
“If we’re nationwide (in one market), it gives customers the assurance that we’re not just a challenger brand online, but we’re working hard.”
- Read more about Castlery.
- Read other articles we’ve written about Singapore businesses here.
Featured Image Credit: Castlery
