OSIM's US beachhead cost $77M: its Brookstone venture was written off, chain went bust

OSIM, the Singapore massage-chair brand, made its first foray into the United States in 2005 by acquiring gadget retailer Brookstone in a joint venture with Singapore sovereign fund Temasek and Boston-based private equity firm J.W. Childs Associates. The deal put OSIM's chairs into Brookstone's roughly 300 stores — but the chain did not adapt quickly enough to the rapid adoption of online shopping. OSIM put the brakes on the venture and took a US$77 million (S$104 million) write-off on Brookstone, which went bust in 2014.

After the failed partnership OSIM tried its own US stores, and stumbled again at first: deputy CEO Lynn Tan recalls choosing locations believed to have potential where 'sometimes when we set up a store, it just didn't attract customers'. The company kept testing formats and partners, leaning on Enterprise Singapore for market intelligence — and by June 2023 opened its first East Coast store, at Roosevelt Field in New York, part of a network the Straits Times put at some 400 stores in 100 cities. The Brookstone loss became its reference case for picking local partners.

US$77 million (S$104 million) write-off on the Brookstone venture, which went bankrupt in 2014

OSIM tied its US entry to a mall-based gadget retailer just as online shopping was hollowing out exactly that model.

The joint venture structure spread the risk but did not fix the partner's core problem — Brookstone's own digital lag.

The write-off of US$77 million acknowledged the venture could not be saved, two years before Brookstone's Chapter 11 made it official.

OSIM's own follow-on stores also underperformed at first, showing the US market needed local market knowledge it had not yet bought or built.

A distribution partner is a bet on the partner's business model, not just your shelf space: when their model rots, your expansion capital rots with it.

Brookstone went bankrupt in 2014. OSIM absorbed the US$77 million write-off, rebuilt its US presence with its own stores — opening its first East Coast location in New York in June 2023 — and continues expanding in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia, using the Brookstone failure as its reference case for choosing local partners.