Here is the press release:

Tampines 1 celebrates Official Opening on 100th Day of Business
More than 6.6 million visitors since Tampines 1 opened its doors on April 9

Singapore, 17th July 2009 – Asiamalls, the property manager of Tampines 1, announced today that the mall has attracted 6,643,989 visitors, since the mall opened for business. Celebrating its official opening today, Tampines 1 opened its doors on 9th April, 2009 and has revitalized the shopping mix in Tampines Town by offering an exciting array of new concept stores alongside several international fashion brands like Cache Cache, Diva, Dorothy Perkins, Promod, Springfield, Topshop, and Uniqlo that have opened their first or largest stores in a suburban mall.

“We are happy to note that the overall opinion of the mall has been extremely positive and that consumers have acknowledged that Tampines 1 is a great alternative to downtown shopping. A lot of effort was spent to put the “urban” into Tampines 1, from the mall’s design to the overall retail mix, and brand strategy. All these initiatives helped us meet the expectations of a new generation of consumers who visit the mall to shop, dine and relax after work or over the weekend,” said Stephanie Ho, General Manager of Asiamalls Management (South East Asia) Pte Ltd, Property Manager for Tampines 1.

The basement piazza and open space within the mall demonstrates an atypical shopping mall layout, and combined with the layered voids and external roof terraces the interior design of the mall focused on ensuring a break in between the mall’s shopping space. F.I.S.H, Sushi Tei and Thai Express have duplex loft style restaurants that offer customers a unique ambience for dining. There is also a 24 hour Coffee Club for those looking for a place to enjoy a late meal or drink.

The mall has also installed a digital directory on each floor where customers can learn more about each individual shop with just a touch of a finger, or they can learn more about on-going promotions, or pick up the phone and speak with the mall’s customer service officers for directions or further information.

Tampines 1 has also launched an overall Spring to L1fe branding campaign targeted at showcasing what the mall offers and has its own mall blog, facebook and twitter account, which helps to further differentiate it as a new generation mall for the young and savvy.

The mall will organize a Sure-win Lucky Dip + 8 Malls & More Lucky Draw where shoppers can get a chance to win one of eight cars when they spend more than $50 in one single receipt before 25th September.

With a total of 173 tenants, the retail mix comprises of Fashion (35%) + Food (20%) + Beauty (12%) + Sportswear (3%) + IT/Electrical (5%) + Lifestyle/Gifts/Entertainment (25%). The mall features a cluster of mini-anchor tenants including a fitness centre with a pool – Amore Living, IT retailer Challenger, Cold Storage, HSBC, and Japanese Gourmet Town Manpuku.

Launch Videos

Links

• Site: Tampines 1
• Blog: Tampines 1
• Facebook Gallery: Photos Taken By Me

The SWOP Party helps encourage recycling where anyone can come by to exchange their clothes and accessories with others. Highlights of the SWOP Party include donations from popular fashion brands like Adidas, Diva, Dorothy Perkins, Esprit, G2000, Springfield, and Topshop, free flow of ice-cream for participants, and live DJ music. Additionally, there will be a SWOP-me Cosy corner, to keep accompanying partners who are there to support their friend/ spouses entertained.

Here are the details:

• Date: 18 July 2009 (Sat)
• Time: 4.30pm to 6.30pm
• Venue: Tampines 1, Level 6 Roof Garden (Access via escalator next to Amore Living)
• Admission: $5.00 (non-refundable) and at least 5 fashion items in good condition

Coffee Bean, Nichi Fashion City, Comics Connection, Pasta De Waraku, Thai Express, Asian Kitchen and many more are already opened for business. Nevertheless, the shopping center is still quite empty. In particular the lower levels shops are all not occupied. Come across this interesting shop called Otaku House, which sells cosplay clothes as well as Japanese Anime collectibles. There is also a new cinema at Iluma is called Film Garde, which if I am not mistaken also operates a cinema in Kallang Leisure Park.

There is this extremely long escalator which goes up to level 4 directly from level 1. I took the escalator and I think it takes 45 seconds to reach to level 4.

View From Queen Street

This Escalator Goes From 1st Level To 4th level!

View Of The Lower Levels

View Of The Upper Levels

View From A Small Open Space At level 5

Facebook Gallery: Iluma

On the first day, an estimated 111,000 people visited Tampines 1 and on second day it rose to 143,000. All shopping malls are equipped with a human traffic counter at the top of all glass door entrances. I didn’t know about it actually. If you happen to note it next time, it is actually a little black box often mistaken as a sensor.

The tour started from level 5 all the way to basement 1. Due to time constraint, we only visited certain stores.

Amore Living is the first shop that we have visited. In case you did not know, there is an outdoor swimming pool within Amore premises. This is the first time Amore cater for the male and kids members as well.

The second shop we visit is Twister By Monsoon, level 5. Twister is opened by Addy and some other MediaCorp artists. Addy is present at the shop when we are there. The Twister at Tampines 1 is different from other Twister branches because they also sell apparels from Dusty and JC DC (by Lee Copper). The salon concept encourages the total packaging of a person, from the hair style to the clothes. You can go in to buy their clothes without the haircut services.

The only foodcourt in Tampines 1 is Kapitans By Kopitiam, at level 5.

Thai Express Bistro here occupies 2 levels, level 4 and 5.

F.I.S.H. By Fish & Co serves a rather unique never seen before dishes. They even serve steak as well as all-you-can-eat salad bar buffet. They are also occupying 2 levels, level 4 and 5.

Sushi Tei here also occupies 2 levels, level 4 and 5.

Down to level 3, teadot is a newly established Singapore café which specialized in tea. It is setup by four young Singaporean entrepreneurs. Try out their Hot Perfect Tea Latte, Little Red Fuji Frappe and Chocolate Macadamia Cake. Currently the cafe houses 8 types of tea leaves for all the drinks. They are currently working towards launching a monthly special featuring different type of tea leaves from around the world.

As usual the queue for UNIQLO is snaking long.

At level 2, there is Click!. Instead of selling the gadgets, they diversify half of the store into selling fashion clothing and accessories. Indeed, through my observation, there are more females attracted to the clothing section than men to the gadgets section.

Topshop occupies level 2 and a stairs within the shop leads to level 1 Topman.

Cache Cache sells French clothes but at a affordable price. They are located at level 1.

Sake Inn which sells all kinds of Japanese Sake is located at basement 1. They have friendly sales assistant which can help you with Sake testing. We each receive a plum liqueur from the boss.

We have an early dinner at Manpuku Japanese Gourmet Town, located at level 3. Mapuku belongs to the Aijisen Group. It is much like Japanese Marche style dining, similar to Shokudo Japanese Food Bazaar. But the food here taste MUCH better, trust me. Manpuku tries to bring in different long history and established Japanese food brands while Shokudo touches on only providing the different Japanese food categories. Many of these Japanese food brands are the first time in Singapore. With Japanese Chefs overseeing the cooking process and the quality is definitely assured. In Japanese, Mapuku mean “Eat Full Full”. I believe all bloggers have their stomach full full.

The die die must try includes the hand-made plain Udon and Ramen soup and for the dessert, the fruit tarts!

The management has actually stationed at least 2 staff to direct the crowd at every escalator point. However, we personally think that it is due to the narrow walkways that is not prepared for this immense crowd. I bet this will take at least another 1 month for the fever to subside a little. The mobile reception is very poor. The explanation given is there is not enough base stations within mall. They are currently rectifying the problems with the service providers. Cleaners are stationed outside every toilet to ensure the cleanliness. Generally, the restaurants are well distributed throughout all the levels in the mall. And all are of different varieties. Lastly, for Singaporeans who always complain that all shopping malls are the same, the “You see one, you see all” perception, AsiaMalls tries to inject new brands into this shopping mall, many have never been seen before yet. Rather than saying these spin-off brands are respective company’s direction, I think it is a continuous effort between vendors and management to innovate, to provide a new shopping experience.

Thanks to Evelyn Chua from Red Dawn Communications for the invite and kudos to the AsiaMalls team behind Tampines 1 for the great session!

Double thanks to Evelyn again for the media clearance and repeating yourself whenever we are stopped by the shop personnel when taking photographs.

Written By Lay Hiang + Lester Chan

Gallery

• Facebook: Tampines 1 – Part 1
• Facebook: Tampines 1 – Part 2
• Facebook: Tampines 1 – Part 3
• Facebook: Tampines 1 – Part 4

Links

• Tampines 1
• Tampines 1 Blog
• AsiaMalls
• Red Dawn Communications
• Amore Living
• Twister By Monsoon
• Kapitans By Kopitiam
• Thai Express Bistro
• F.I.S.H. By Fish & Co
• Sushi Tei
• UNIQLO
• Topshop
• Cache Cache
• Manpuku Japanese Gourmet Town

Here is a snippet from the press release:

Singapore, 6 April 2009 – Tampines 1, Singapore’s newest shopping destination is 100% leased out and will open its doors to the public on 9 April 2009 at 10.00am. The 260,000-square feet six-storey modernist mall will house 172 tenants. More than 75% of tenants will open for business on the first day, including key tenants Amore Living, Challenger, Topshop, Topman, Uniqlo, and new Japanese concept gourmet town Manpuku.
…
With Tampines 1 positioned as an iconic retail landmark for the young and savvy, other fashion stores opening for business on April 9 include Bossinistyle, Cache Cache, Diva, Dorothy Perkins, Mulana (new brand that will retail Korean contemporary hand crafted ladies apparel), numflipflops.com by Newurbanmale, Promod and Springfield.

The exciting lineup of fashion shops will include Singapore’s very own fashion stores such as Bus Stop, bYSI, Chameleon, Click!, Couple Lab, Dyel, Man Master, Maternity House, Mettalurgy, Mezzo Wear, Messy, Mitju, Natural Project, Net, New Maternity, Noda Shoe, Outfitter Girls, Petale Jewellery, Punk Star, Queen’s Avenue, Recoil, Runway 75, Secret Island by Sheer Romance, Silver Corner, Trend Corner, Two Elements, Vogue and Zeal.

Sports and Casual wear brands with shops at the new mall include Adidas, Puma, Kappa, Fila, Running Lab, Sportslink, World of Sports and New Balance, all located on the 3rd level of Tampines 1, making it a mini sports retail haven for shoppers.

Jewellery shops at the mall include I’NOVA by Citigems, Jewel Pavillion, Lee Hwa Galleria and TianPo.

F&B tenants opening on the first day include Bakerzin, Frolick, Hong Kong Kim Gary Restaurant, Max Sandwich Grill and Creamery (by Imperial Treasure Restaurant Group), Sake Inn, Secret Recipe, Subway, Yamazaki Boulangerie Chaude (by Sun Moulin, offering freshly baked English, Japanese and French breads and cakes).

Japanese Gourmet Town MANPUKU (the name means “full stomach” or “having eaten to one’s content”) will offer Japanese cuisine direct from the traditional establishments in Japan – Botejyu, Hokkyokusei and Toku Toku from Osaka, Yoshimi and Aoba from Hokkaido.

Celebrities who will be opening shops in the mall include Jeff Wang with a Taiwanese snack shop, Xiao Bar Wang, Shaun Chen with his optical shop, Monsoon Optics, Addy Lee, Mark Lee and Michelle Chia with their hair salon Twister.

Other familiar names that will have shops at Tampines 1 include key tenant Cold Storage, Mayer, Simmons, United Kids by Tom and Stephanie, Times Bookstores URBANWrite by Popular (trendy art paper and craft store), Velocity powered by City Chain, and one of Singapore’s leading travel agency, WTS Travel.

The mall will feature duplex stores for fashion brands Topshop and Topman, Esprit with its flagship store, and F&B tenants F.I.S.H by Fish & Co, Sushi Tei and Thai Express Bistro.

The mall will have a SISTIC counter at its Customer Service Centre and has full banking facilities by HSBC. Additional amenities available within the mall include handicapped toilets, nursing rooms, and Cash Card Top-Up Machines located at the Basement 2 carpark. The mall also offers loans for baby strollers, umbrellas and wheelchairs. Free wireless broadband access will also be available at Tampines 1.

The mall has 203 Basement parking spaces available and valet parking services will be available for visitors to Tampines 1 on Saturdays, Sundays, Eve of Public Holidays and Public Holidays (10.00am to 11.00pm) and Fridays (5.00pm to 11.00pm). The valet parking fee is a flat rate of $5 where the cost includes full day parking fees. Shoppers will also get to enjoy a $1 rebate from their $5 valet parking fee when they spend a minimum of $50 in a single same-day receipt at Tampines 1.

The mall’s opening hours is from 10.00a.m to 10.00p.m. Operating hours for the carpark will be from 6.00am to 12.30am, with $0.50 parking fees per half hour for weekdays, $0.55 per half hour and subsequently $0.35 every 15 minutes after the first 2 hours for weekends and public holidays.

*UPDATE* While you are searching on Tampines 1, do take a look at Tampines 1 Blogger Mall Tour & Meet Together Session.

Links

• Tampines 1
• Tampines 1 Blog