20/08/2026
On 20 July 2026, Metro Holdings quietly filed a bourse announcement that closed the book on one of Singapore's oldest retail formats. The company confirmed it will shut its remaining two department stores — at Paragon on Orchard Road and at Causeway Point — once their leases expire, ending nearly seven decades of Metro operating large-format stores in Singapore. In its place, the group says it will roll out smaller, "multi-concept" retail formats, with CEO Yip Hoong Mun noting plainly that "consumer expectations today are fundamentally different."
Metro isn't closing because one lease ran out. It's closing because the department store, as a format, has stopped making sense.
It's tempting to read all of this as "e-commerce killed the department store." A more useful reading is that e-commerce exposed a format that hadn't kept up.
This post explains why e-commerce isn't the enemy for department stores, It's the roadmap instead.
https://bff.com.sg/blog/tough-days-ahead-for-singapore-department-stor
