COURTS Singapore, a consumer electronics household name, was as British as they come when it was established here over 35 years ago, but the company is almost all Singaporean now, save for its intrepid CEO, Terry O'Connor.

'I am the only one from management from that year (1993) left. I am the last man standing,' he says. 'We've outlived our parent and basically, we are a South-east Asian company.'

In Singapore, about 90 per cent of Courts' workforce is local. Over the years, the company would have become more localised in terms of staffing anyway, but about two years ago, when it was bought over by a private equity firm, Mr O'Connor made the unpopular decision of getting rid of expatriate packages.

Until then, the remaining expatriates still got the works - the rented house and car, allowances for their children's education and a maid, plus other perks.

But Mr O'Connor was quick to see the need to trim the fat. 'We are living in a competitive world and the colonial package is a thing of the past,' he says.

He made other big changes too. Largely a furniture retailer when it was established here in 1974, Courts catered to the aspirations of an emerging middle class which still had tenuous links to its colonial past. Some might even remember the faux English country furniture it used to sell.

But while furniture remains one of Courts' big ticket items, it is consumer electronics that is really moving on the shop floor. To develop the consumer electronics business, Mr O'Connor has fashioned a clear and simple marketing strategy that he sums up as 'product, price, deals'. Anyone who reads the main newspapers cannot but notice Courts' full page ads which scream out low prices and credit deals.

'We want to resonate with the heartlanders and mass market,' says Mr O'Connor. 'I tell my people that we don't want to get higher than where we are now; don't get all aspirational on market elevation.'

No one can mistake Courts for anything other than a mass market retailer but because all Singaporeans love a bargain, Mr O'Connor believes Courts will also attract middle and higher income customers - after they realise they have been paying a premium for snob appeal in other stores.

Mr O'Connor knows this for a fact because a high-end furniture retailer once approached him about buying a Courts leather furniture range. While he was interested to sell, Mr O'Connor said that the best he could do was to offer a 10 per cent discount, which would give a very attractive margin. The high end furniture retailer was fine with the deal - he was going to sell the same furniture at twice the price.

There are different ways to approach retail. Courts is more interested in increasing its consumer base. And it aims to do this by enhancing the customer experience.

Explaining how this is done, Mr O'Connor says: 'A customer could come through our doors and ask for a computer game console. We could show him where to find it and that would be it.

'However, if we ask questions - the number of kids; boy or girl; what kind of games they like - then we can match the console with the right game for each child, and the customer goes away happier. We would have also sold three products as opposed to one.'

'And guess what: the margin in the software is better than in the hardware, so we've got better sales productivity, margin productivity and service productivity all in one transaction.'

This article was first published in The Business Times.