Isetan went from six Singapore stores to one in thirteen years

Isetan Singapore reached its peak footprint in 2013 with six outlets across the island, from Orchard Road to the suburbs. The retreat since then has been steady rather than sudden: Isetan closed its original Orchard store in 2014 to sublet the space, Jurong East in 2020, and Katong in 2022, each closure attributed to slowing sales and rising competition rather than one single event.

The pace picked up in the store's final years. Isetan Tampines, open since the mall's 1996 debut, closed on November 9, 2025 after its lease expired — nearly thirty years in the same location. Five months later, on April 26, 2026, Isetan NEX in Serangoon closed too, ending a 15-year run there, again attributed to lease expiry alongside a stated 'strategic review of business operations.'

Each closure was announced and explained separately — a lease running out, a store being resized, a location no longer justifying its rent — but taken together they describe one continuous decline: a chain that once anchored six Singapore malls was down to a single store, Isetan Scotts on Orchard Road, by mid-2026. Isetan Scotts itself had absorbed rising rents that squeezed its own results even as it became the last one standing.

The pattern matched a broader retreat of Japanese department stores from Singapore over the same period — Yaohan, Sogo and Daimaru had already left the market in earlier decades — and matched Isetan's own parallel retreat from mainland China, where its last store was rebranded away from the Isetan name in the same year its Singapore footprint fell to one.