People sometimes look at our group of businesses and assume that we just keep executing based on instinct, and somehow most of the things we touch work.
Movement First. Javy Sports. Fit Bloc. Arkkies. Apex. The gyms. The sports supplies. The metal fabrication. The different pieces somehow look quite neat after the fact, as if there was always a grand plan and we just followed it.
But that is not really true.
A lot of things died before they became visible.
Some ideas never made it to a public launch. Some made it to samples, supplier meetings, trade fairs, websites, packaging materials, and early stock — but did not make it to a real business. Some were not killed in one dramatic meeting. They just died slowly because the more we studied them, the less they deserved our time.
I think this is the part people do not see enough. Entrepreneurship is not just about taking action. It is not just about being brave, moving fast, and executing harder than everyone else. Sometimes the more important skill is knowing when not to execute. Or more accurately, knowing when an idea does not deserve the next five years of your life.
The toy business we almost started
Around 2018, after we moved into a much bigger warehouse, we started thinking about how to optimise the space better.
When you suddenly have more warehouse space, your mind naturally starts wandering. What else can we store? What else can we sell? What other categories are adjacent enough to what we already do? Could we build another e-commerce business? Could we use our existing fulfilment, sourcing, and operational setup to attack another market?
Toys became one of the categories we looked at seriously.
It was not completely random. In 2018, Ian and I both became first-time parents. Our firstborns arrived that year, and naturally we started paying attention to children’s products differently.
Before becoming a parent, a toy is just a toy. After becoming a parent, you suddenly start asking different questions. What kind of toy helps a child think better? What builds spatial reasoning? What encourages curiosity? What is just plastic junk? What is actually useful? What is beautiful enough that you do not mind having it around the house?
We looked at wooden toys, technology toys, educational toys, flashcards, construction toys, problem-solving toys, and all kinds of products that promised to build a more curious child. So there was a personal angle to it. We were new parents. We were interested in the category. We were already in product sourcing and e-commerce. We had warehouse space. We had distribution ability. We had enough operational capability to think, maybe this could work.
And like many of our ideas, we did not just sit around talking about it.
We spent money.
We flew to Shanghai for the China Toy Expo. That trip probably cost around $5,000. We collected supplier contacts, looked at the China side of the market, spoke to factories, and tried to understand what was available. Then we went to Nuremberg for the Spielwarenmesse, probably another $10,000. Germany showed us a different side of the industry — not just cheap factory toys, but brands, design, positioning, European wooden toys, and all the more premium things parents like to imagine buying for their children.
We brought in batches of products from Chinese factories and from brands. That was probably another $20,000. We developed a subsection on the Javy Sports website — the plan was to sell under that brand first before spinning it out — and did early e-commerce work, maybe another $5,000. Marketing, packaging, miscellaneous costs, maybe another $5,000. Storage cost was there too, even if it is harder to quantify because we were already running the warehouse.
So this was not a random idea we entertained over coffee. Easily in the $40,000 to $50,000 range if we count everything properly.
But the more we studied the market, the less attractive it became.
The toy market was already very well served. Retailers were there. Online sellers were there. Manufacturers from China, Thailand, Europe, and the US were all fighting for the same parents’ wallets. And the barriers to entry were low. Anyone with a credit card and an Alibaba account could source toys and start selling them. There was no structural advantage we could build that someone else could not replicate quickly.
Then there was the bigger problem. Singapore’s total fertility rate was already low in 2018 — about 1.14 — and there was no obvious reason to believe it would recover. If anything, all the signs pointed the other way. And if the number of children is not growing, then the natural customer base for toys is not growing either.
Of course, a low birth rate does not mean nobody buys toys. Parents may spend more per child. Grandparents may spend more. Premium categories may still exist. But from a business point of view, we had to ask a more brutal question: why would we win?
Not, why are we interested? Not, can we source some nice products? Not, do we personally care as new parents?
Why would we win?
And the answer was not strong enough.
So the toy business died. There was no dramatic shutdown. No emotional meeting. No big internal disagreement. We just let it die a natural death. The old stock was sold through existing websites. The idea quietly stopped receiving attention.
In hindsight, I think the decision was largely correct. Over the years since, we have watched toy businesses and children-focused retail businesses in Singapore struggle, shrink, or close — some mass-market, some premium, some started by parents who genuinely cared about making better products for children. The operators were not stupid or lazy. The market was structurally difficult. Singapore’s TFR has since fallen below 1.0, and it keeps going lower.
The lesson from this one was not complicated, but it was important: just because you personally care about a market does not mean the market is structurally attractive. Personal interest and business viability are two different things, and a lot of founders confuse them. We nearly did too.
Javy Learn
The second idea was different.
Around 2021, we looked seriously at school supplies, especially art and learning supplies.
This was not toys anymore. This was more closely related to our existing customer base. Through Javy Sports, we were already serving schools. We understood some part of school procurement. We had relationships. We had warehousing. We had delivery capability. We knew how to supply physical goods to institutions.
At that time, we also had a new hire who was a native Chinese speaker and understood the sourcing side well. Because of her background, we thought we could explore categories closer to the China sourcing market with more confidence.
So we started looking at things like paint, paint markers, crayons, colour pencils, exercise books, art and craft materials, and other learning-related supplies for schools.
On paper, this looked quite logical. Schools were already buying PE-related supplies from us — why not art supplies? We already had the customer base — why not sell more things to the same customers? We already had the warehouse — why not increase product categories? We already had sourcing capability — why not use it?
This is the kind of business idea that looks very sensible in a meeting. And to be fair, it was not stupid.
We called it Javy Learn. We started javylearn.com and built the initial website. We sourced samples. We brought in products. We worked on collateral and packaging materials. We spoke to teachers and customers. We did sales outreach. Because of Covid, trade shows were not available in the same way, so the exploration was more through sourcing, samples, suppliers, and customer conversations.
Again, this was not free. Sourcing and bringing in samples probably cost around $10,000. Initial goods, collateral, and packaging material maybe another $20,000. Developing the e-commerce site maybe another $10,000. Sales outreach and customer development probably another $10,000 if we count time and cost properly. Another $40,000 to $50,000 experiment. We didn’t visit tradeshows this time due to Covid, so we saved some money here.
The difference was that Javy Learn was not necessarily a bad business. In fact, I think it could have worked. We could probably have built it to one or two million dollars in annual revenue if we executed decently.
But that was exactly the problem.
At an earlier stage of the group, a one to two million dollar revenue line would have been meaningful. In the early days, almost any profitable revenue matters. You are just trying to survive, build capability, hire people, and compound.
But by 2021, we were no longer asking the same question. The question was not just: can this make money? It had become: will this change the shape of the group?
And for Javy Learn, the answer was probably no. It would have meant more SKUs, more suppliers, more inventory, more packaging, more small orders, more school-specific servicing, more customer support, more working capital, and more management attention. But it would still hit the same kind of ceiling we had already experienced with Javy Sports. Singapore is a small domestic market. In certain categories, no matter how well you execute, the ceiling appears quite quickly.
The danger was not that Javy Learn would fail. The danger was that it would succeed just enough to trap us.
If it completely failed, the decision would be easy. Shut it down, move on. But if it worked a bit, then suddenly you have a small team, inventory, customers, obligations, slow-moving stock, and a revenue line that is too alive to kill but not big enough to matter. Everybody becomes busier, but the group does not become meaningfully stronger.
There was no big fight internally. Nobody had to be dragged away from it. The gym business started taking more attention. Other parts of the group needed more energy. Javy Learn slowly became something we did not push.
Some ideas do not die because they fail. Some ideas die because a better use of time appears.
The gym business was not obviously right
This is the part where it would be easy to rewrite history into something cleaner than it really was.
It would be tempting to say: we killed toys because it was a bad market, we killed Javy Learn because it was too small, then we entered the gym market because it was scalable, and then everything worked.
But that is not true.
The gym business had the characteristics we wanted — recurring revenue, a larger addressable market, the ability to open multiple outlets, a stronger brand moat, and a chance to make a meaningful contribution to the community. But having a bigger ceiling does not mean the business is easier. Actually, it is usually the opposite.
We struggled for a long time. The gym business only started to become clearly right from late 2024 onwards. Before that, we were grinding through it, and there were long stretches where the outcome was far from certain. Even now, I would not say it is easy. We have more breathing room, but that is not the same as saying the business is simple or solved.
So Javy Learn did not die because the gym business was already booming. It died partly because the gym business was consuming all our attention — and partly because, even if the gym bet had not existed, Javy Learn was still too small to justify group-level effort.
I wish I could say that the lessons from killing toys and Javy Learn immediately led us to the right bet. They did not. The path from killing a bad idea to building a good business is not a clean line. It is messy, slow, and full of doubt.
But the filters sharpened over time. Is the market structurally attractive? Is the ceiling high enough? Does this deserve our attention or just our interest? Is the upside worthy of the pain? Those were built from projects that cost money and went nowhere.
Spending money to not start
I know it sounds strange to say that spending $40,000 to $50,000 on an idea you eventually kill can be a good outcome.
But the alternative is worse. The alternative is to save that money, stay ignorant, convince yourself the idea is brilliant, hire people, import more stock, build a bigger website, spend more on marketing, sign leases, commit warehouse space, and then spend the next few years trying to make a structurally weak business work.
That is much more expensive. Sometimes the small loss is the thing that prevents the big loss.
The money we spent on toys and Javy Learn was not exactly fun to lose. Nobody enjoys spending money on things that do not become full businesses. But it bought us information. It forced us to see the market properly. It exposed the weak assumptions. It showed us where we did not have an unfair advantage. It clarified what kind of business was no longer worth our attention.
The best return on that money was not a new revenue stream. The best return was the decision not to continue.
Between these two ideas alone, we spent close to $100,000 and two to three years of intermittent effort. From the outside, that looks like waste. Internally, it was tuition. And I think it was cheap tuition, considering what we avoided.
The part people do not see
This is probably what bothers me most when people talk about entrepreneurship from the outside. They see the businesses that survived, and then they assume the founder has some kind of instinct. They do not see the dead ideas. They do not see the samples sitting in the warehouse, the trade fair trips, the packaging materials that never became a brand, the website that was built but not pushed, the slow internal loss of conviction.
From the inside, it is much messier. You are constantly testing, guessing, spending, learning. Getting excited and then getting disappointed. Trying to separate your ego from the facts. Trying to decide whether you are being too cautious or finally being disciplined.
And sometimes, the most disciplined thing is to stop. Not because you are scared. Not because you lack execution ability. Not because you cannot make the business work. But because making it work is not the same as making it worth it.
Toys taught us not to confuse personal interest with market attractiveness. Javy Learn taught us not to confuse viability with worthiness. These are different lessons, and both were expensive enough to remember.
Good entrepreneurs do not just execute well. They also kill well. They spend a little to learn a lot, and then they have the discipline to walk away from a business that is merely viable, in favour of one that might actually be worth the years it will take.
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