SINGAPORE: As Singapore turns 50, Sunil Amarasuriya, chairman of BP de Silva, reflects on what he has learnt reshaping one of the country’s oldest family businesses, while his three children talk about building on the brands they have inherited and weaving philanthropy into the company.

Born in Sri Lanka, Sunil Amara suriya came to Singapore in 1963. He was 14 years old and a fourth-generation descendant of the family that had turned BP de Silva into a celebrated name for artisanal jewellery. “Singapore was a village then compared with Sri Lanka, where we had department stores,” he recalls. The island, part of the Federation of Malaya, was struggling with poverty and political upheaval. It had just become a self-governing state, with the People’s Action Party in power for about four years, headed by a young Lee Kuan Yew.

It was during that era that premier Lee’s father, Chin Koon, worked at BP de Silva’s shop at High Street, after he retired from a long career at the Shell Oil Co. At the time, BP de Silva was the ultimate destination for fine jewelry, luxury timepieces and silverware; it counted royalty among its clientele. Sunil remembers his chats with the older Lee during his visits to the store. “He used to tell me about Lee Kuan Yew’s vision,” he says.

Today, as Singapore celebrates 50 years of independence, the vision from where 66-year-old Sunil stands is monumental on many counts. The village has morphed into a metropolis chock-full of shopping malls and gleaming skyscrapers. It hums to a daily tune of global trade and finance and it has scaled the ratings for liveability and prosperity.

“I’m a great fan of what we do here,” he says in an interview with Options at the group’s headquarters in Kung Chong Road in Alexandra. “We have benefited so much from Singapore over the years.” With him are his sons Navin, 30, and Rehan, 29, and daughter Shanya, 24, all of whom work in the family business.

As Singapore has transformed, privately held BP de Silva has morphed too. Pricey retail space and the rise of branded jewellery have pushed the pedigree business of personalised jewellery to the backburner. The horological business has been scaled down to a joint venture with Audemars Piguet, a Swiss maker of premium watches. Meantime, the group has added Risis, a home-grown maker of gold-plated orchids and gifts, to its stable. It also has tea production and cleaning facilities in Sri Lanka, and an emerging Singapore-based tea brand called The 1872 Clipper Tea Co. Aside from this, it owns a clutch of investments in restaurants, environmental engineering, hydropower, real estate and local start-ups.

While Sunil remains chairman of the group, the day-to-day running is handled by CEO Wee Swee Poh, who took over from him in 2009. Wee is a long-time employee, having joined BP de Silva 29 years ago as a management trainee right after graduating. Navin spends much of his time at Risis, Rehan has joined the tea business, and Shanya is working with her father, a trained gemologist, to revive the jewellery business.

The young Amarasuriyas are the fifth generation to step up to the 143-year-old family business — a feat in Singapore, where multigenerational enterprises are scarce. Yet, not only are they committed to preserving the BP de Silva legacy, they speak passionately about building on the brands they have inherited and moving the business forward into a world disrupted by online retailing.

Articulate and close-knit, the Amarasuriya siblings complete each other’s sentences as they chat and have the sort of connection with their work that doubtlessly comes from being raised within the family business. Rather than a sense of entitlement, there are signs of the work ethic their father is known for — Sunil still works weekends. Beyond that, there is a desire to weave philanthropy and social responsibility into the business blueprint, for example by improving transparency in the gemstone trade and investing in sustainable businesses.

The company’s roots stretch back to 1872, when Balage Porolis de Silva stepped off a clipper shipon the tiny colonial outpost of Singapore. From a small shop along the Singapore River, the enterprising young man began selling gemstones from his native Sri Lanka, renowned for its blue sapphires. Over the next century, BP de Silva carved a reputation for craftsmanship and exclusivity.

However, by the 1960s, the business had expanded into divergent trading businesses and friction had arisen among its many shareholders. When Sunil took over as MD in 1980, he was thrust right into the rough and tumble of rebuilding the sprawl of businesses he had inherited. He took the painful route of cleaving off those that were not performing; he laid off people. He also took on a large loan to gain a controlling stake of the com pany. This came at a time of personal crisis as his father had become paralysed from a severe stroke.

Learning from watchmakers
The harsh medicine steered the company back to health. By the 1990s, the watch business began to grow wings as increasingly affluent Singapore developed a taste for high-end timepieces. As one of the leading agents of exclusive Swiss watches in the region, Sunil became well acquainted with the key personalities in the industry, notably the late Nicolas Hayek of Swatch Group and the family behind Audemars Piguet.

Colourful, Lebanese-born Hayek is widely credited with resuscitating the Swiss watch trade in the 1980s. An actuary and business consultant, he took over two ailing Swiss watchmakers whose brands included Omega, Longines and Tissot as well as premium names such as Breguet and Blancpain. At the time, traditional Swiss watchmakers were being pummelled by the affordable digital watches made by newcomers like Seiko and Casio of Japan. Hayek prodded his engineers to develop a quartz watch that sold for just 50 Swiss francs and the Swatch phenomenon was born. Today, it is the largest watchmaking group in the world. Sunil enjoyed, in his words, a very special relationship with Hayek, who, in fact, asked Sunil to work with him at Swatch. “I said no as I had my family business to run. But he was very persistent so I became a joint venture partner,” he recalls. The JV saw BP de Silva running the distribution and marketing of Swatch Group products in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2000, Sunil was invited to sit on the Extended Group Management Board of Swatch Group Ltd, which is listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange. That gave him responsibility over India, Australia and New Zealand.

“I learnt so much from him,” says Sunil of Hayek. “He was very open to any idea. He would look at things out of the box but with a lot of financial acumen.” From working with the large public company, he also learnt that marketing and distribution are crucial in any business. Sunil left his executive positions with the Swatch Group in 2004.

When he resigned from the board, he recalls that Hayek told him, “You’ll always be a part of my family”. Hayek passed away in 2010 and Sunil believes there will not be a bigger giant than him in the horological world for a long time. Today, whenever he visits the Swatch Group in Switzerland — Hayek’s son, Nick Hayek Jr is currently its CEO — Sunil is treated as family. “Relationships like that are so beneficial to business,” he says.

Aside from Swatch, Sunil took a leaf from Audemars Piguet, a company he admires and has been on the board of since 2007. The watchmaker from the small Swiss village of Le Brassus started in 1875, a few years after BP de Silva, and went on to establish a global name. Audemars Piguet is also one of the few global watchmakers where ownership has stayed with the founding family. It crafts such highly regarded watch movements that these are used by other brands such as Cartier and Bvlgari. “We were older but we had not built a brand,” Sunil notes. That galvanised him to steer BP de Silva towards nurturing its own unique Asian brands, after over a century of managing Western ones.

Going for gold
Staying in the trading end of business would have been the easy route. But retailing is being upended by web-savvy consumers, who now buy even diamonds by clicking on a screen. For the next generation of Amarasuriyas, embracing the digital world and branding is the way forward. “We’ve taken a conscious decision to build our own brands. It’s tougher but it’s a more rewarding task. More of Asia should be doing that,” says Rehan.

One Singapore brand in its stable is Risis, whose gold-plated orchids have become a signature souvenir of Singapore. Risis came about when former finance minister Dr Goh Keng Swee asked the Singapore Institute of Standards and Industrial Research to develop uniquely Singapore souvenirs. In 1976, the goldplated Risis orchid was unveiled.

When BP de Silva acquired the government spin-off in 2000, however, it was loss-making. Largely owing to the efforts of CEO Wee, Risis returned to the black. “She plugs away at a problem,” says Navin, who works closely with her at Risis. BP de Silva controls the entire production chain at the company, from design to manufacture to R&D and marketing. It has also extended its range of products to include jewellery made with precious metals such as rhodium and ruthenium, home and décor items, and customised corporate gifts.

The corporate gifts side of the business is one not many people know about, Navin says, and it is something he wants to promote. He also wants to push the 40-yearold brand into the region, beyond Malaysia and Vietnam, where it currently has a presence. However, the pace of growth will be dictated by whether BP de Silva finds the right partners. “The family business has lasted because of relationships,” says Navin and it is on this cornerstone that it will move forward.

Time for tea
Tea is another area where BP de Silva is cultivating an in-house brand. The family had owned vast tea plantations in Sri Lanka for decades but in 1970, the government nationalised the sector. Sunil eventually made the decision to sell off the remaining plantations but retained the tea production company, Tea Tang, which tests, cleans, blends, bags, packages and exports tea. In 2012, the family decided to expand into the retail side of tea, capitalising on its Sri Lankan lineage — the island is one of the largest exporters of tea — and its ability to source top-quality leaves. And so, The 1872 Clipper Tea Co was born. Clipper refers to the historic ships that carried chests of teas all over the world, while 1872 marks the year BP de Silva planted roots in Singapore.

To set The 1872 Clipper Tea Co apart from dominant names in the business, such as Dilmah and Twinings, the company is going for a more curated and concise offering, says Rehan. There about 60 teas currently, with classic blends such as Earl Grey, as well as fruit teas, non-caffeinated teas and luxury teas, which are premium teas from single estates. It has also come out with original blends to commemorate Singapore’s milestone birthday, such as an organic fruit tea called Orchard Road and a blend infused with gula melaka named Lau Pa Sat.

To stay exclusive, The 1872 Clipper Tea Co will only be available at retail outlets. “You won’t see us in supermarkets,” Rehan empasises. There are currently seven points of sale, including CK Tangs and Robinsons. There are plans to open a café showcasing the teas and, further out, to make inroads into the region. “I want to focus on Asia,” he says. “The Asian market is huge.”

Meantime, BP de Silva found its way into the restaurant business by virtue of a long-standing friendship. In 1996, Sunil invited the son of his best friend in Switzerland to work with the company. The young man, Oliviero Bottinelli, was all set to take up a job with Howard Schultz of Starbucks in Seattle following his graduation. Bottinelli called Schultz and told him about the job opportunity in Singapore. Schultz replied that he should go because Asia was where things were happening.

Bottinelli worked first with the jewellery line and then the watch business, rising to the role of MD of Asia-Pacific for Audemars Piguet. At the same time, he dreamed of bringing classic Italian food to Singapore. So, in 2000, in partnership with BP de Silva, Senso restaurant was set up in Club Street. There are now eight food outlets, including pizza restaurant Spizza and casual Italian eatery La Nonna. Today, the Bottinelli family is the biggest shareholder in BP de Silva, after the family.

Doing good
More recently, BD de Silva has started to invest in businesses that promote sustainability. In Sri Lanka, it owns three microhydroelectric power plants. And in 2005, it acquired 50% of Envipure, a Singapore- based environmental engineering company. The company, founded in 1979, is a leading technology supplier of air-pollution control, odour control and water treatment systems. During the 2004 tsunami, it was instrumental in providing containerised water purification systems in Sri Lanka.

Looking ahead, it is going to be a “priority for us to integrate the social impact such that it becomes a significant part of the business”, says Navin. One way it is doing this is by backing people with promise. From Uva Wellassa University in Sri Lanka, which runs a tea technology degree programme, it takes in one to two students per batch to intern at Tea Tang. Interns who are subsequently hired have turned out to be “our strongest young staff”, notes Rehan. In Singapore, The 1872 Clipper Tea Co also takes in an intern a year.

As of last year, BP de Silva Jewellers started giving out stipends to outstanding individuals that take them through vocational training in Colombo. The best will be selected for a role in the jewellery business, which is being reshaped. The plan is to have an experiential retail space that makes fine jewellery less intimidating, says Shanya. She also dreams of conducting classes where couples can design their own wedding rings. “I love the idea of integrating someone’s story into jewellery,” she says.

BP de Silva is banking on this personal touch as well as the cache of trust from its long history in bespoke jewellery to give it an edge in today’s digital world. Yet, it knows it will have to embrace online shopping. The model of the jewellery shop is changing, notes Navin. The Internet and mobile gadgets have allowed people to go online and research products and compare prices, at their convenience and in comfort. More and more, con sumers are snapping up high-priced items at the click of a button.

Which makes branding all the more important. “Today, you won’t grow without a brand,” says Sunil, who trained at the Gemmological Institute of Germany. When he started in the business, goldsmiths and craftsmen dominated the business. Branded jewellery from the likes of Cartier, Bvlgari and Tiffany made up about a tenth of the market, then valued at US$40 billion. Today, the market has more than trebled, with branded jewellery making up a quarter.

As he prepares to hand over the storied family business to the fifth generation, Sunil has these parting words for young Singaporeans and budding entrepreneurs. “Don’t be someone who buys and sells assets. Don’t think of quick money. You’re not helping society.” He pauses then adds: “Look at what we’ve achieved over the last 50 years. Lead a simple life and you won’t need much money.” From a man who has toiled to preserve and reshape one of Singapore’s most enduring enterprises, those are indeed precious words.

A NEW CYCLE
As a child, Navin Amarasuriya gave his parents countless heart-stopping moments with his adventures on his bicycle. “He would cycle down the steps,” his father Sunil recalls with a shudder. Now 30, Navin remains attached to his wheels, commuting to work each day on his Cannondale bike.

He also cycles to slake his wanderlust, biking across Europe, for example, after graduating from the University of Manchester in the UK. On top of this, he pedals hard for a good cause: in 2012, he rode across Sri Lanka to raise funds for BP de Silva’s Cycle on Ceylon project.

“The bike is a beautiful machine,” he says. “It gives more than it takes from the earth.” Lean and fit looking, with a quiet, thoughtful air about him, Sunil’s eldest has a passion for bikes — and anything mechanical. Given his interests, he opted for a degree in science.

Navin joined the family business in 2010 and currently sits between product development and manufacturing at Risis. He is also in charge of the corporate gifts business and exports business of the home-grown brand, known for its gold-plated souvenirs. Aside from this, he consults at the group level with the other companies within BP de Silva and works closely with CEO Wee Swee Poh. Wee, who has had a 29-year-career with the group, used to be “Aunty” to Navin in his younger days; today, he considers her his “key mentor”.

Even as he takes on the responsibility of steering the family business to the next level, Navin is on a drive to make a difference. He personally spearheaded the Cycle on Ceylon effort, which raised funds for Practical Action. The UK-registered NGO works alongside communities in Sri Lanka to find low-cost, maintainable technology solutions to alleviate poverty. “I’m always looking forward to the journey tomorrow,” says Navin, when asked about his most memorable bike ride to date. Tomorrow, for a BP de Silva helmed by this socially aware young man, would decidedly mean business with more of a tangible social impact.

A TASTE FOR TEA
Rehan Amarasuriya was not always a devotee of tea. During his university days in Melbourne, the Australian city that has become a Mecca for java lovers, his brew of choice was coffee. It wasn’t until he came home in 2010, armed with a degree in finance, that he started delving into the world of tea. The second son of Sunil looks after BP de Silva’s growing tea enterprise, which includes Tea Tang, a tea production company based in Sri Lanka, as well as its own Singaporebased brand, The 1872 Clipper Tea Co. “I find it so fascinating,” the affable 29-year-old says, talking animatedly about the beverage. “Tea resonates with me as it can have a huge impact on geographies.”

Rehan recounts the story of how a tea bush made its way from China to British-colonised Sri Lanka in the 1820s, following fears about restrictions on tea exports by China. A whole industry arose and today, Sri Lanka is one of the world’s largest producers of the commodity.

He is also taken by the fact that tea is a very nuanced beverage, with thousands of variations across the globe. His aim is to demystify tea and make it more accessible. One way he plans to do that is by allowing consumers to smell, touch and even taste the teas on offer at the retail outlets of The 1872 Clipper Tea Co. “Most other companies sell tea by letting people smell it. But people really want to taste tea, so we’re closing the loop on that,” he says.

In his view, the best way to judge a tea brand is to drink its English Breakfast concoction. A blend of black teas from Sri Lanka, Assam in India, and Kenya, it is a robust brew that is typically drunk with milk and sugar. Rehan’s role in the family’s tea business takes him on numerous sourcing trips a year, typically to Japan, India, China and Taiwan, aside from Sri Lanka. Last year alone, he chalked up 40 flights.

Like his siblings, he also strives to do good while doing well. He highlights the line rooms in Sri Lanka’s tea estates, where most plantation workers live. Entire families grow up in these tiny rooms, built like barracks during the colonial era. He hopes to improve those spartan living conditions. “That would be my ultimate success, if I could change the situation in the back,” he says.

GEM GEEK
For someone who calls herself a “gem geek”, Shanya Amarasuriya wears surprisingly little jewellery. For her interview with Options, the svelte 24-year-old sports simple diamond studs in her ears, both of which are almost obscured by her long, wavy tresses. Around her neck sits an eternity chain made of white gold. On her left hand she wears a ring of blue sheen moonstone set in rose gold, which she designed herself.

The moonstone is currently her favourite gem to work with. “I love stones,” says the youngest of the Amarasuriya siblings, who also loves working with her hands. For the last three years, Shanya has been part of a team of five at BP de Silva Jewellers, creating bespoke bijou. Being part of a small team has exposed her to the entire chain of the fine jewellery business, from sourcing to testing, designing and manufacturing.

This stint at the family’s heritage trade has also persuaded her that this could be her life’s pursuit. She originally yearned to study fashion. “As a child, I was always doing my own fashion shows at home,” says Shanya, who is wearing an arresting black and white vintage dress, handed down to her by her mother. “I love design, I’ve always loved it,” she adds.

When she told her father Sunil she wanted to study fashion, he said, “Yes... but start with business. You can always study fashion later”. She promptly completed her diploma in business Studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic and in 2011, started working at Risis, learning how to run a retail store. She also shadowed Sunil, sitting in at management and board meetings.

After more than three years at what she calls the “school of life”, Shanya feels it is time to hone her craft further. In September, she leaves for New York, where she will pursue a two-year degree course in jewellery design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “The US is such a cultural power and I want to see what’s happening in the jewellery world,” she says.

She also plans to work towards improving sustainability in the supply of gemstones. Working with precious stones, she has taken an interest in where they come from and how they are obtained. She rues the fact that best practices are not being adhered to in some mines, for example in Brazil and Mozambique. Mechanised mining, for instance, can pollute water sources and damage the environment, she notes.

As far as possible, Shanya personally visits mines in Sri Lanka where BP de Silva sources its gems. That has given the company traceability for all stones recently acquired. Looking ahead, she would like to influence consumer demand “so that people can be more picky about where stones are from”.

Sunita Sue Leng was formerly associate editor of The Edge Singapore 

This article appeared in the Options of Issue 689 (Aug 10) of The Edge Singapore.