WhereIsAtlas · Retail

What Happened to Popular Bookstore?

Singapore's home-grown bookstore chain closed its Jurong Point branch after 31 years — the story of a retailer that outlived the era of the neighbourhood bookstore.

Popular Bookstore is not closing down — but it is shrinking and changing shape. Its Jurong Point outlet, open since 1995, shut on 13 September 2026 after 31 years, and VivoCity closed in August 2026. Within weeks POPULAR reopened at Hougang Mall with 26 Singapore stores, still selling the assessment books it is famous for alongside stationery, gadgets and snacks.

From Cheng Hing to Popular

The chain's story starts in 1924, when Chou Sing Chu left China for Singapore and set up Cheng Hing Company, selling Chinese storybooks and picture books. In 1936 the business took the name that would stick: Popular Book Company was established as a retail channel for Chinese books. A flagship store at Bras Basah Complex followed in 1980, marking POPULAR's transformation into a bilingual bookstore, and by the 1990s its stores were a fixture of Singapore's suburban shopping centres.

The company describes itself today as the largest bookstore chain in Southeast Asia, with over 100 retail stores in Singapore and Malaysia. Its Singapore footprint, however, is now a fraction of the mall-by-mall network that once made it unavoidable.

The assessment-book era

For generations of Singaporeans, POPULAR was inseparable from school. It was where parents bought assessment books by the stack, where students hunted for pens, files and calculators before term started, and where the queue at the cashier lengthened every December. The chain built a business around that ritual: a loyalty card in 1990, the Educational Publishing House imprint for textbooks and assessment titles, and from 2006 the BookFest@Singapore fair.

It also consolidated. In 2013 POPULAR acquired the Singapore stores of the American chain Borders and renamed them POPULAR, and in 2021 it launched POPULAR Online as its own e-commerce arm. For many families, the store had become less a bookshop than a default errand — the place you went for whatever the school list demanded.

What happened at Jurong Point

On 6 August 2026, responding to queries from The Straits Times, POPULAR said its outlets at VivoCity and Jurong Point would close because of the shopping malls' retail plans. The VivoCity branch, which had opened in 2018, closed after 16 August 2026. The Jurong Point branch, which had been trading in the mall since 1995, held a moving-out sale from 14 August and closed on 13 September 2026 — 31 years at the same address.

The closure was the chain's most emotionally loaded in years, because Jurong Point sits in the heart of Jurong West, where many residents had grown up shopping in that store. POPULAR pointed customers to its remaining west-side branches at Westgate, West Mall and The Clementi Mall, and VivoCity shoppers to Tiong Bahru Plaza.

There was also a counterpoint. POPULAR reopened at Hougang Mall on 4 September 2026, after its previous outlet there closed in January for the mall's renovations, and said that with the reopening it would operate 26 stores in Singapore — with "no plans for any further store closures".

Why the branches closed

Physical book retail in Singapore has been shrinking for more than a decade, squeezed by e-books, screens and online shopping, and by the cost of running a large store in a mall. When POPULAR closed its Marine Parade outlet in June 2023 after 37 years, it told The Straits Times that rising rental and labour costs were among the main challenges facing retailers, and that footfall there had fallen significantly before the pandemic and never recovered. Thomson Plaza closed in 2019 and IMM in 2021.

For the 2026 closures, the company gave a different reason: the malls' own retail plans, rather than its own balance sheet. Either way, the pattern is the same — each closure removes a branch that a neighbourhood treated as permanent.

A chain that became a one-stop shop

Anyone who has walked into a POPULAR store recently knows that books are only part of it. The shelves carry stationery, gadgets and IT accessories, small home appliances and snacks, alongside English, Chinese and assessment titles. The company has said that changing consumer habits pushed it to transform "from a traditional bookstore to a one-stop shop", and that shift is now the core of its survival strategy.

Ownership changed with the business. Popular Holdings delisted from the Singapore Exchange in 2015, and in November 2023 Hong Kong investment firm ZQ Capital acquired and assumed full ownership of the group, covering its businesses in greater China, Singapore, Malaysia and North America. The company said the change would not affect its staffing or the way it operates.

Where Popular is now

POPULAR is still a working chain, not a memory. After the Hougang Mall reopening it counts 26 stores in Singapore, has refurbished and reopened outlets including Tampines Mall, and says it is continuing to look for new locations and to run roadshows in malls around the island. Its Malaysian stores and its publishing and e-learning arms remain part of the group.

What has ended is a particular kind of store: the long-lease, deep-inventory neighbourhood branch that a whole housing estate grew up with. Jurong Point's last day, after 31 years, closed one of the last of them — and left Singapore's most familiar bookstore name trading, smaller, in the malls that still want it.

Entries in this story

Sources

  1. Our Story — POPULAR (2026-09-15)
  2. Popular Bookstore closing Jurong Point and VivoCity outlets, reopening in Hougang Mall — The Straits Times (via Nestia) (2026-09-15)
  3. POPULAR Bookstore Is Closing Its VivoCity & Jurong Point Outlets, But Says No More Closures Are Planned — Goody Feed (2026-09-15)
  4. Popular Jurong Point Outlet's Closing-Down Sale — TheSmartLocal (2026-09-15)
  5. Not just books: The changing face of Popular bookstore — The Straits Times (2026-09-15)
  6. Hong Kong investment firm takes full ownership of Popular bookstore chain — CNA (2026-09-15)