The Price of Being Fair

Some praise it as a national treasure. Others tag it as the people’s supermarket. Many simply call it “NTUC.” While NTUC FairPrice is a household Singaporean brand, the story of its rise from just one store in 1973 to over 500 today is little known.

As FairPrice Group celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023, this authorised book traces its riveting success from a worker-led experiment to a S$4 billion food enterprise with more than 500,000 customers every day. Along the way, it has fought the biggest global and local challengers in the unforgiving retail market, from Carrefour to Cold Storage, from Sheng Siong to Amazon.

But unlike FairPrice’s rivals, it is not a company. It is a trade union cooperative with a social mission to moderate the cost of living for Singaporeans. Profits are not maximised for shareholders or owners, but for members and consumers. It continues to shoulder the burden of fighting inflation even as it forges growth.

For the first time, this homegrown Singaporean brand offers unprecedented access to its people and archives, revealing the crises FairPrice has had to navigate, from the Avian flu outbreak of 2004 to the COVID-19 pandemic. These pages reveal the tensions and struggles as it balances profit with purpose.

The Price of Being Fair tells the story of not just successes over half a century but also failures – from loss-making overseas ventures to aborted retail concepts. In the hands of the writers behind the No. 1 bestseller The Last Fools: The Eight Immortals of Lee Kuan Yew, this title provides insights into business, management, politics, technology, and more than a delicious dose of heritage and nostalgia.