SINGAPORE: After 70 years in Singapore, Metro is set to embark on a new chapter.

The department store giant will shutter its last two remaining department stores in Paragon and Causeway Point malls in a bid to move away from traditional large-format stores.

CNA traces Metro’s history from a small textile shop to becoming a household name.

The early years

Before it started operating in Singapore, Metro already had a store in Surabaya, Indonesia in 1953. A second store in 1955 was later dissolved when growing anti-Chinese sentiments in Indonesia was thought to affect business.

Its founder, the late Indonesian entrepreneur Ong Tjoe Kim, then decided to restart the business in Singapore, he said in an oral history interview with the National Archives of Singapore.

In 1957, he opened the first store here at 72 High Street (between Hill Street and North Bridge Road), which was a two-storey shophouse measuring merely 250 sq m.

He chose the location because he thought it was more upmarket than Chinatown.

A movie buff, Ong named the store after the Hollywood production house Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), shortening it to Metro to make it easy to remember.

This was because "people loved the movies, and they were familiar with MGM, which made good movies", he said in a past interview with The Straits Times.

He even invited a movie star, Hong Kong actress Li Mei, to snip the symbolic ribbon on the store's opening day – becoming the first retailer in Singapore to do so.

Metro started out as a textile shop selling a wide range of fabrics used for making traditional clothing such as the sarong kebaya and cheongsam worn by the ethnic communities here.

It was a hub for imported fashion and fabrics throughout the 1960s, selling lace from France, embroidery from Switzerland and linen from America.

While department stores Robinsons and Tangs catered to expatriates and Singapore residents respectively, Metro targeted wealthy housewives from Singapore and Indonesia.

Many of its early customers were Mr Ong's Indonesian friends who shopped in bulk at his store.