No job too lowly for high-flier

Not too long ago, Philip Wee picked up a box of golf balls in a sports shop along Orchard Road.

The smartly dressed salesman got up and went to the cash register to ring up the sale. As he was doing that, Mr Wee decided to pick up a second box.

The salesman was congenial enough but in Mr Wee's books, he was no different from a robot.

"I increased sales for him by 100 per cent. If he were professional enough, he could have said, 'These are good prices, sir. Are you sure you wouldn't like another box?' "

He adds with a laugh: "And if he dared, he could have also said, 'You are going to lose them anyway.' After all, balls go all over the place when golfers play."

Service and professionalism, says Mr Wee, drive sales and this is something every business would do well to remember.

He should know. He has spent most of his professional life practising or preaching service. It has also taken him places; he went from a lowly porter at the Selfridges department store in London in the 1970s to country manager for Ikea in Singapore, a position he left five years ago.

Today, the tall, trim 66-year-old with a penchant for trendy glasses runs Claymore Training and Consultancy, which provides retail advice and training services. His clients include Far East Flora, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and his former employer, Ikea.

"I only take on jobs which I enjoy," he says with a laugh.

It's a philosophy which has guided him all his life, and one he believes job seekers, especially the young, should heed.

"Don't just go for money and title," he says. "Enjoying what you do is more important. And work for a company which can give you training. When you are good, the title and the money will come."

His life certainly bears that out.

He is the younger of two children of a manager and a dressmaker. His late father started out working for the colonial government. However, the Raffles Institution alumnus' impeccable command of English so impressed the late tycoon and philanthropist Lien Ying Chow that the latter employed him to write letters, and run Wah Hin, a ship-chandling company.

The family lived in a semi-detached house on Claymore Road. Next to the house was a field separated by a hedge.

"That's where I practised high jumping. As the hedge grew higher, I had to jump higher too," says the 1.82m Mr Wee, a high jump champion at St Joseph's Institution.

Although he and his sister were chauffeured to school, their parents saw to it that they were not so privileged that they "lost the plot".

Mr Wee had to iron his own clothes and, once a week, clean up the mess made by the eight Alsatians his father kept.

From a young age, he also had to learn to care for his parents, both of whom suffered from ill health. His father had chronic diabetes; his mother suffered a couple of strokes in her early 30s which led her to lose her hearing and ability to speak.

Mr Wee acquitted himself better in sports than in studies but managed to pass his Senior Cambridge examinations, the equivalent of today's O levels.

"My father probably hoped that I could have done better but he was not devastated. He suggested that I go into teaching."

So for three years, he spent half a day attending teacher training college and the other half, teaching at Whitley Primary School.

In 1965, on the advice of a family friend, he went to interview for the post of junior shipping executive with the Harper Gilfillan Group, a conglomerate with diversified business interests including shipping, engineering, marketing and manufacturing.

He got the job but declined it because he could not afford to pay off his teaching bond.

But three months later, the company contacted him again.

"I decided to go for it since they had faith in me," says Mr Wee, who took 10 months to pay off his $3,000 teaching bond.

Shipping was a mesmerising new world.

He started out in freight-forwarding, tending to shipowners and their needs, from clearing cargo including livestock, to embarking or disembarking passengers and fixing mechanical problems.

"It was the most exciting job I ever had. We handled all kinds of ships, from old-fashioned tankers to luxury liners," says Mr Wee, who rose through the ranks quickly to become operations manager.

The company also sent him on training stints to its headquarters in the United Kingdom.

"I was on top of the world as far as my abilities were concerned. I was so full of confidence, I felt I could tackle anything," he says. "I told myself that I wouldn't do anything to jeopardise what I was doing since I didn't know if I would ever get such a job again."

Ironically, he handed in his resignation letter after nine years even though his prospects at the company remained more than promising.

During that time, he had met and married a secretary. But problems surfaced in the union shortly after, and she left for London.

It left Mr Wee - then in his 20s - wrestling with guilt.

"I felt that I didn't put in enough effort to hold the marriage together and that it was my responsibility to try and repair things," says the Catholic.

In London, he got himself a social security pass. He ruled out another shipping job after visiting docks and ports like Southampton. "The weather was just too miserable," he says.

Instead, he was drawn to the vibrant retail scene in Oxford and Regent streets.

"I looked at the window displays and the merchandise on sale and said, 'This is wonderful and exciting, I want to be a part of it.' "

Determined to make things happen for himself, he headed for the upmarket store Selfridges and told a bespectacled woman in the personnel department that he was looking for a job.

"She asked me, 'What did you do in Singapore?' I said I did shipping and she said, 'I have a job for a porter', and I said: 'Yes, ma'am, I'll take the job.' "

And that was how the operations manager of a reputable shipping company ended up loading and unloading goods on a trolley in London's second-biggest store after Harrods.

The big career comedown came with a massive pay cut.

"I was not insulted, not one bit," says Mr Wee, adding that he was already prepared to take on any job when he left for London. "I've never lived in a world where I felt I was too special to do anything. If I have a job to do, I do it."

Moreover, he saw himself not as a porter but as a retailer-to-be. He quickly moved on to other duties - tagging prices, receiving goods and managing the storeroom.

Within months, he was put on a management training programme.

Unfortunately, he had to leave after a year because his work permit was not approved.

Around this time, he developed eosinophelic fasciitis, a medical condition in which muscle tissue underneath the skin, called fascia, becomes swollen and thick. At that time, the syndrome was so rare that he became an exhibit at Hammersmith Hospital.

"I was case No. 37 in the south of England. My skin would become so tight the hospital would get medical students to prod me all over the place," says Mr Wee, who experienced agonising pain.

The period threw him into a funk. Not only was he in bad physical shape, his attempts to save his marriage also failed.

When he could, he took jobs flipping burgers and driving mini cabs because "my mind was just not focused on doing anything of great responsibility".

He was fearful that his condition would worsen and that he would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Fortunately, researchers later discovered that the drug prednisone was effective in treating the condition.

A chance visit to Selfridges found him back in the company's employ, this time for 41/2 years. He moved through and headed several of the store's departments, including stationery, ladies' wear and men's wear.

Mr Wee, who remains good friends with his former wife, also found love again. He met and married Sheila, a former nanny who now runs a professional story-telling outfit, Storywise, in Singapore. The couple have two daughters, aged 24 and 28.

In 1983, he returned to Singapore after being offered a job as store manager with Emporium Holdings. In the next two decades, Mr Wee worked for some of the best-known names in retail in Singapore. He was retail manager at Habitat Mothercare and store manager at Robinsons in Centrepoint.

Together with then training manager Kim England, he is well-known for helping to thrust Robinsons - which he joined in 1987 and where he stayed for seven years - into the limelight for its acclaimed service standards.

The way he sees it, many stores sell the same products. What gives one an edge over another is a team of professional sales staff, that is, people who are not only happy and willing to serve but also knowledgeable about what they are selling.

"If they have been trained how to do it, they can confidently go up to any customer," he says.

As his was a well-known name in the retail market, Swedish home furnishing giant Ikea invited him for coffee, which led to a job, when it was looking for a store manager in 1994.

"Many people were surprised when I left Robinsons. It was a lateral move and they asked me why I would leave a job in Orchard Road to work in Amber Close," he says, referring to the furniture giant's first location in Katong. "But I've always worked where I felt I would be happy."

He liked Ikea's reputation for cost control, operational details and continuous product development, and felt he would fit right in. He was also confident his work experience would stand him in good stead when it came to operations and crowds on a big scale. Ikea's two stores in Alexandra and Tampines attract more than seven million visitors a year.

Mr Wee became general manager after six years, and was well-known as the face of the store until he left in November 2007. He was instrumental in helping to secure the land for Ikea's second store in Tampines and to influence the opening of Singapore's first retail park there.

"We boast about Singapore being a retail paradise. We had small stores, shopping chains and HDB shopping precincts, the Orchard Road shopping belt, hypermarkets and even online stores but we had no retail park then," says Mr Wee, who worked with Spring Singapore to develop the area which now includes Courts and Giant.

When he joined Ikea, the store already had a well-entrenched corporate and service culture.

"I guess I helped to introduce service in a self-service concept. I put a lot of attention to human resources and training," he says, adding that staff were empowered to solve problems as and when they cropped up.

His style did not always dovetail with the Ikea way of doing things.

"But for me, what's important is that man hours are translated into positive brownie points with customers, and make them come back," he says.

Ikea interior designer Fauzeya Ahmad says Mr Wee was her mentor.

"He was a real people person. Not only was he knowledgable, he was also very approachable. He placed a lot of importance on training and pushed for me to get training abroad," she says.

The staff threw him an emotional farewell when he left five years ago.

"Nothing lasts forever," says MrWee, who loves horses and used to ride a lot. "I called it quits because I needed a run-up to the last stage of my life."

He hopes to raise awareness about recycling and clean living. With a sigh, he sidetracks to lament the difficulty of getting customers to clear away their trays after eating in public places.

"I really do not see how much effort it takes to put all your things on a tray and take it to a rack. The table is then free for the next guy - who could be you."

Meanwhile, the service maven says he is not quite done on the corporate front yet.

"I want to help small and medium enterprises which have been at the top of their league but now need to go up the value chain to compete with the big boys," he says.

kimhoh@sph.com.sg