How to start an Online Store in Singapore

3 June 2017 Howard Toh

This is not meant to be a full tutorial but I aim to give you a general sense of what to expect. Some of you will ask me why bother creating your own Online Store when there are so many Online marketplaces in Singapore such as Lazada, Qoo10, Shopee, Carousell, etc. Well, there are several reasons:

Unfair competition. On a marketplace site, you tend to have to fight with competitors trying to price you out. They could be selling counterfeit stuff or parallel import stuff that is not exactly the same as what you sell and they “won” by simply being cheaper.
Commission and fees. Apart from Carousell and Shopee, most marketplace platforms charge you commission and/or fees ranging from 7% to 13%. Some platforms like Lazada will even penalise you with fines if you did not manage to ship out your goods within 24 hours from the time of order. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in shipping orders out at the earliest opportunity. However, we are adults and we should be able to be responsible for our own customers’ satisfaction.
You should not build your ship at someone else’s port. You are at the mercy of the marketplace platform’s policies when you use their services. Should there be a day where the marketplace decide to shut down your shop due to policy changes or disagreement, the following you have built on that marketplace will be lost forever.

So it should now be clear that building your own online store is the way to go. You must be wondering what kind of effort it takes right? Generally, there are two ways you can “own” an Online Store.

Use an e-commerce provider like Shopify. I used Shopify for almost 2 years. The experience was great because you pay a monthly fee and they take care of everything like site security, provides you with a idiot-proof interface for you to upload your products, choose themes, etc – very much like WordPress. You can register a domain, like my Tupperware Online Store – http://tup.sg, which is my unique online identity. Although you will still be at their mercy when it comes to policies and stuff, at least you can migrate to another service together with your domain and keep your traffic and branding. What you need to do:
- Sign up for Shopify
- Register a domain (The cost will depend on the domain type and registrar you use. Typically ranges from $18 per year to $50 per year)
- Point the domain to Shopify based on their instructions
- Choose your theme, set up shipping options, set up payment gateway(s), upload your products, start selling!
Subscribe to your own web hosting account and do everything on your own. This is slightly more advanced but most of the difficult steps are one-time setups which you can engage people like me to help. If you want to try it yourself, here’s a glimpse of what you need to do:
- Sign up for a web hosting account (USD$3.95 per month)
- Register a domain (The cost will depend on the domain type and registrar you use. Typically ranges from $18 per year to $50 per year)
- Point the domain to your host
- Set up SSL using Let’s Encrypt (Free)
- Install Magento / WordPress with Woocommerce / Prestashop / Opencart / osCommerce / simpleCart, etc (I suggest WordPress with Woocommerce)
- Choose your theme, set up shipping options, set up payment gateway(s), upload your products, start selling!

As you may have noticed, doing it on your own with just a USD$3.95 web hosting account is just slightly more troublesome at first. Once you get past the setup, you will never need to pay anyone commission fees, be subjected to ridiculous policies and be locked-in to a particular service provider.

If you need help setting up an Online Store, reach out to me at howard@hj.sg

How to do a ECG/EKG test on the new Helo LX

10 May 2017 Howard Toh

We’ve received our new Helo LX and would like to show everyone how to perform an ECG test. It’s really simple! The most important tip is to remain very still during the measurement because movement causes stray electrical noise on the ECG plate and causes disturbances on the waveform. Good luck!

Helo LX – Measures Blood Pressure, ECG/EKG, Heart Rate, Breathe Rate, Steps and more!

17 March 2017 Howard Toh

So about a month ago, I wrote about my frustrating time with my Fitbit Charge HR which I have owned for less than a year. I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the product as the device couldn’t power on within a few months, started peeling and bloating at the band which cannot be replaced. After the 3rd replacement, I think enough is enough. Time to move on. My colleague moved on from the Charge HR to the Blaze which costs $300++ here in Singapore. I wasn’t inclined to remain loyal to Fitbit as this was already my 2nd Fitbit product and technologies used isn’t exactly groundbreaking either.

After searching for almost a month, skipping mainstream brands such as Apple, Garmin, Fitbit, Jawbone, etc, I caught sight of the Helo (Pronounced Hee – Lo).

Helo is a healthcare wristband that can be worn 24/7 much like your typical fitness band. The key difference is that it is not just a fitness band. It is a health and wellness wearable that is developed to continuously monitor your vitals such as:

Blood Pressure (Yes, without the cuffs!)
Heart Rate
Breathe Rate
ECG/EKG
Steps
Mood and Fatigue Levels
Sleep Quality
Blood Glucose Levels (No needles, coming Q4 2017)
Blood Alcohol Levels (Q4 2017)
And more to come

I was initially skeptical. How the hell can this device measure some of these vital signs without cuffs, needles and such? As a technology savvy person, I had my reservations so I questioned the company and did my research and found that PPG (Photoplethysmography) is used by many products such as Apple Watch, Fitbit and more for their Heart Rate detection. From my investigation, a PPG signal offers much more than just your heart rate. For example, a simple Google search on PPG ‘s role in blood pressure measurement yields plenty of medical articles on them such as this. They key takeaway is that PPG is able to provide reasonably good estimations of the blood pressure measurements in a continuous manner (due to the portability of the Helo) which is impossible to achieve with a standard blood pressure measurement device with a cuff. You can’t really go about your day with a blood pressure machine attached to you all day with the air pump going off every 30 minutes to inflate the cuffs right?

Vital signs measurements are useless if no one sees them (or only you see them). We tend to procrastinate about going to the doctor or seeking medical treatment when we are not feeling that good. This is usually because of the fear of being diagnosed with something serious. Isn’t it the case that your spouse, parents or children are the ones who will drag you to the clinic or hospital when you let slip that something isn’t right about you? Spend some time thinking about this!

Working together with the Helo, the Android / iOS mobile companion apps work to close the gap between receiving and abnormal vital reading and getting the follow up actions. The Guardian function allows you to pre-set conditions that will automatically trigger an alert to yourself and your loved ones / caregiver. You just need to set upper and lower thresholds for your systolic/diastolic blood pressure, heart rate and breathe rate and the app will do the rest for you. Of course, you’ll first have to set up your guardian(s)’ contact details to use this feature.

Another useful feature is the Panic Button. This is a physical button on the Helo for very easy access (just press twice) but works hand-in-hand with the mobile app to send mobile notifications and SMSes to your guardian(s) containing the last known GPS location as a way to report an emergency. This is extremely useful for anyone especially young children and the elderly. Potential use cases:

Child who got lost
Child feeling unsafe (e.g. suspect being followed by stranger)
Elderly who fell down
Elderly who got lost
Anyone feeling dizzy, on verge of collapsing, etc (potential medical emergency)

At the end of the day, it is not only the technology of the health and wellness band but also the thought put into developing a product that does more than just display pretty numbers on an app. Even as a tech person, I am more intrigued by the Guardian and Panic Button feature.

Want to find out more? Drop me an email at howard@hj.sg

If you want to order a Helo, please use this link: http://catalog.worldgn.com

P.S. I have ordered one for my wife too.

Fitbit disappoints. Looking for alternative.

19 February 2017 Howard Toh

I got my first Fitbit Flex (Gen 1) in 2014 and used it for almost 2 years until April 2016 when I decided to upgrade for a few reasons

I got really sick of changing the bands. Each band, even the original ones, lasted me an average of 3 months before cracking and splitting.
I wanted that Heart-rate monitor feature badly

So fast forward to April 2016, I threw the still-functioning Fitbit Flex aside and got myself a Fitbit Charge HR (Gen 1). I love the heart rate detection feature as it allows me to track my heart rate when I have my rare jogs or when I feel unwell.

In July 2016, barely 3 months after the purchase, my Fitbit Charge HR started peeling at the bangs and the band got bloated. A few days later, it became non-responsive and cannot be powered on again. Dead.

fitbit1

I contacted Fitbit Support and sent them this photo as per their request (Nice right? I just bought a lightbox back then and happened to be in the mood of taking photos in the light box)

There was much back and forth between Support and me and I got pretty frustrated because they were asking me one question per email and each email took several days to get a response from them.

Finally, they agreed to ship a replacement to me – all the way from the U.S. Luckily, it didn’t take too long (a week+) for me to get the replacement. It took an entire month (till August) before I could close the matter with them.

Fast forward to December 2016. Despite extra care taken by me (and almost zero instance of exercising with the band -_-), the bangs started peeling again and the bloating happened too. I discovered that the skin of the band was glued onto an inner band and adhesion doesn’t last more than a couple of months with daily removal of the band (it’s stupidly not waterproof enough to even wear into the shower).

fitbit2

I raised a ticket with them in January 2017 and this time round, they wanted me to take a photo of the band with a piece of paper with handwritten date and a case number that they have just issued to me.

As you can see from the image, the bloating is quite bad on this one. I requested for them to issue me a store credit so that I can order a different (more expensive) model that may not fail on me so often. No matter how I explained about the frustration that I had to go through due to the product flaw, they refused to obliged. They insisted to send me a replacement Fitibt Charge HR again. I’m obviously less than pleased.

I am now looking around for a new fitness / wellness band. I do hope I can find a band that looks decent and can do more than just telling me about my heart rate. Maybe one day, I can measure my blood pressure without using my clunky Omron machine. Just maybe.

Anyway, good bye Fitbit. Thanks but no thanks.

StarHub Happy Roam for my Taiwan Trip

16 February 2017 Howard Toh

Disclosure: Although I work in StarHub, I do not work in Marketing, Sales or the Prepaid product team. I have no personal vested interest in the prepaid product, I paid for the prepaid card with my own money and nobody in the company asked me to write this. I am writing this as an original content for my personal blog and also because out of my 5 trips to Taiwan, this is the first time I did not buy their local prepaid card.

Since this is my 5th time in Taiwan, I’ve gotten pretty sick of queuing at the Taoyuan International Airport and having to present 2 photo IDs in order to sign up for a Taiwan prepaid card. It didn’t help that one traveller is only entitled to purchase 1 prepaid card. This had me scrambling to collect 2 photo IDs from each family member in order to get a prepaid card for each of them. Cost wise, a 10-day unlimited prepaid data plan from Chunghwa Telecom costs $500 NTD (~S$22.70).

In the past, roaming data charges had been prohibitively expensive for casual travellers like me. Although I’m not in ops, I’ve been hearing about how affordable (planned) data roaming can be so I’ve convinced myself to give this a try.

I have a choice between Data Travel and Happy Roam. Without going into the specifics of both, I can highlight that Data Travel is more convenient as you can use your existing StarHub postpaid SIM to roam in a controlled manner. Downside is, the price is a tad more expensive at 2GB/30days/$15 (Data Quota / Validity / Price) compared to Happy Roam’s 1GB/3days/$5. The minor inconvenience for Happy Roam is that you need to get a StarHub Happy Prepaid card.

For me, personally, I’ve already had the intention to plug a SIM into my Mobile Wi-Fi device anyway so an additional SIM means I don’t have to remove my current SIM from my iPhone.

For that reason, I decided to go with Happy Roam. Researching deeper, I found that the Data quota is stackable – I can pay double of $5 to get double the data and double the validity period. This can be stacked all the way to 10GB/30days/$50 as shown in this table below:

Data Quota	Validity	Price
1GB	3 days	$5
2GB	6 days	$10
3GB	9 days	$15
4GB	12 days	$20
5GB	15 days	$25
6GB	18 days	$30
7GB	21 days	$35
8GB	24 days	$40
9GB	27 days	$45
10GB	30 days	$50

Since my prepaid card came with a promotional free 5-day 15GB local data, I did not have to worry about credits depleting due to background data usage just because I put it into a smart phone. If yours does not come with promotional free local data for the first X days, remember to turn off mobile data before inserting the prepaid SIM!

To manage your data usage while overseas, download and install the Happy Prepaid App

You’ll be prompted to enter your Prepaid number and confirm the OTP that is sent to that number. I’ve noticed instances where OTP isn’t required such as when the prepaid SIM is inserted in the same phone that is running the app. Once authenticated, you can go ahead and purchase the plan.

Purchase the plan 3 times if you need 3GB. For me, I had to purchase 5GB despite free Wi-Fi at most of my accommodation in Taiwan since I’m such a heavy social media user.

Do remember to check your balance regularly so that you have ample time to top up and add on an extra GB or 2 if necessary.

Conclusion

The following list of Pros and Cons are solely judged based on my trip to Taiwan.

Pros

Skipped the queue at the airport. I was able to get online right after touch down before even arriving at the gate.
Price comparable or even cheaper compared to a Taiwanese prepaid SIM if your data usage is 5GB or lesser.

Cons

I had to monitor my data usage carefully on the StarHub prepaid SIM as it is not unlimited like the local Taiwan prepaid plans.
There’s a hassle to switch out my original SIM with this new prepaid SIM unless I’m using an external Mi-Fi device.

In the end, I used more data than I expected and had to top up another 2GB on top of my budgeted 3GB but that’s my problem. I would use Happy Roam again definitely if I’m heading to a country where I foresee myself not being able to (or want to) queue at the airport telco counter.