The books · Published September 2026
Two books on the ground Singapore small businesses compete on.
Written by ObserveCo founder Sean Foo from the same Singapore research behind our method — one book maps the ground, the other shows the move that wins on it. Both titles carry National Library Board (NLB) Singapore ISBNs.
Book 1 · The Ground
Small Island, Crowded Market
What every Singapore business owner should know about the ground they compete on
Every month, a hawker in Toa Payoh looks at his takings and asks the question that haunts a large part of Singapore: if I work this hard, why am I not getting richer? The headlines say the economy is booming — and the numbers agree. Both are true, and that is the trap. Singapore is not one economy. It is three, running side by side on the same small island, and the one you are standing in decides what is possible long before your effort does.
This book is the map of that ground. Every figure is traced to a named source and labelled for confidence — high, moderate or low. Where the data is thin, the book says so, because a plan built on a flattering picture fails, and a plan built on a true, hard one has a chance.
What it maps
- The money — where it comes from, and why a booming economy can leave a hardworking business exactly where it was.
- The people — four demographic waves that have already decided who your customers will be in ten years.
- The industries — every one in Singapore, its size, its trend, and whether the data is good enough to act on.
- The names — which brands own the money, and which words nobody has claimed yet.
- The AI shift — what it makes cheap, and the one thing it cannot make cheap.
- The decision line — what a map can tell you, and where it stops.
Book 2 · Being Chosen
How a Small Business Gets Chosen
Lessons from Established Singapore Brands
We had the same algorithm. The same product underneath, running the same way. We sold it for less, far less, and we still could not take those customers. The product was not the problem. The price was not the problem — we were the cheap one. The word in the customer's mind was the problem, and the word was not ours.
That single experience is why this book exists. In a market as dense as Singapore's, being good is not enough — there are thousands of good businesses. The only thing that separates one from another in the customer's mind is the word they own. The book follows the positioning method of Al Ries, Jack Trout and Gu Junhui, applied to real Singapore businesses as a process run on live markets, not imported theory.
What you will see
- The full method, end to end — one home-care provider walked from her real competitive set to the positioning statement she now runs her business by.
- The brands that owned a word for decades — and the ones that lost it: a fish soup specialist that widened its menu and closed after 86 years, a department store that became a property company, a fried chicken chain whose founder said the brand was no longer fried chicken.
- The case that breaks the myth — genuinely, flawlessly different, the only one of its kind in Singapore, and still failed: uniqueness is not the same as demand.
It will not hand you your position — that lives in your market, your rivals, and your customers' minds. What it gives you is the method, its shape, and the discipline to do the work. The products, the prices, the tools, all of it can be copied, and in the age of AI all of it already is. The word in the customer's mind is the one thing that cannot.
One question, in two halves.
If I work this hard, and I am good at what I do, why am I not getting richer? Book 1 answers the first half — where you are standing. Book 2 answers the second — the move you make on that ground. The two are drawn from the same research as ObserveCo's six white papers, which are free to read.