Elfaine Tan Interview - Co-Founder of Fr3b Pte Ltd, Singapore’s 1st Online Sampling Platform & Concept Store

Today, I'm pleased to have a young Entrepreneur from Singapore, Elfaine Tan here with us.

Elfaine is the co-founder of Fr3b Pte Ltd, Singapore’s 1st Online Sampling Platform & Concept Store. She has been featured on many Singapore media such as Lian He Zao Bao, Lian He Wan Bao, FM 100.3, CNET ASIA, The Straits Time, My Paper, Sin Ming, Channel U, Money week, RAZOR TV. 

Hi Elfaine, congratulations on your award of recent SHELL Livewire Most Promising Enterprise 2009, could you describe what you do and how you earn your living? 

Thank you! Basically, other than sampling, Fr3b does provide advertising avenues for our clients and thus that’s where our revenue comes from. 

How did you come up with this business idea and know it will be viable? 

I always wanted to do a business that is related to the word “free” and that’s how I kicked started. 

Being a young Entrepreneur with no track records, what is your secret to convince "big name" merchants to collaborate with you? 

Actually there is no secret, haha, its more of the hard work you take and your initiatives to contact them to build constant rappo. 

What are the factors that keep your customers coming back day after day? 

For Fr3b, providing the best customer service is what we believe in, we treat our members feedback seriously and always find ways to improve our service to serve them better. With that, we build a closer relationship with our members and thus many of them became our “virtual” friends. As such, these members turned into powerful sneezers, where they constantly recommend their friends and families to join Fr3b. And of course not to mention, we have a membership system that makes them keep coming back too. 

Being a new start up on a tight budget, how did you manage to get noticed? 

All thanks to Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) reporter for noticing us, they happen to find our site and decided to cover a half page editorial write up on the newspaper. And from there, more reporters get to know about us and we get noticed by our school too. 

What do you think is the most important factor that propels your business? 

Passion. It is loving what you do that makes you wake up every day looking forward to your job and enjoy what you are doing. 

Thank you very much for the interview, do you have any final words of wisdom that you would like to share with us? 

You must expect the road of entrepreneurship to be difficult but at the same time, it's also very rewarding. It's how much effort you put in, cultivate the patience to wait for your return in result. As the saying goes, 'nothing is easy, but who wants nothing'. 

That's an excellent point, 'nothing is easy, but who wants nothing'. You can find out more about Elfaine at her business website: www.fr3b.com.