Cover Sunday Bedding founders Clara Teo (pictured left) and Alex Fan
Sunday Bedding founders Clara Teo (pictured left) and Alex Fan
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With the opening of its new flagship store in Joo Chiat, Sunday Bedding founders Clara Teo and Alex Fan reflect on slowing down and creating a brand people return to
When Clara Teo and Alex Fan started Sunday Bedding in 2018, their ambition was modest. Shopping for bedsheets for their own apartment, they found themselves caught between two extremes: department‑store basics on one end, and prohibitively premium options on the other. “Design‑wise, colour‑wise, there weren’t many options,” Teo recalls. “You’d go to the department store and that was it.”
Fan, a Hong Kong native whose family has spent four decades in home textile manufacturing, brought a perspective that was both distinct and complementary. For years, his family’s Pac‑Fung Group, a leading softhome textiles manufacturer, had supplied American and European markets, ranging from mass retailers such as Macy’s and JCPenney to design‑driven labels and luxury hotel groups. Teo, meanwhile, came from a different world entirely. After earning her MBA at Columbia University’s Columbia Business School—where the pair met—she went on to work in e‑commerce at Amazon before returning to Singapore to take up a role in data analytics at a pharmaceutical distribution company.
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Above Sunday Bedding’s bed linen comes in various materials, including bamboo and cotton
Sunday Bedding’s bed linen comes in various materials, including bamboo and cotton
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Born from the meeting of these perspectives, Sunday Bedding marries Fan’s generational expertise in textiles with Teo’s e‑commerce acumen and a shared belief that bedding—our most personal daily essential—could be done better. “There wasn’t anything that appealed to millennials,” Fan says. “We knew there was more room for improvement in how good the quality was relative to what you were paying for, as well as in bringing more personality to the market.” That product sensibility was reinforced by Fan’s familiarity with the supply chain. “Given his background, Alex has a better understanding of the supply chain and what kind of better materials we could use,” Teo says, pointing to the brand’s adoption of regenerative and plant‑based fibres for its bed linen, drawn from more sustainable production processes.
In its early years, the brand was almost entirely online. Physical retail, while always part of the long‑term vision, felt premature. “As a brand, there’s only so much you can express online. With a physical store, there’s a lot more you can express from a branding point of view,” Teo shares. Through pop‑ups and boutique fairs, the duo began to realise how much they valued face‑to‑face interaction. “At the back of our heads, [opening a physical store] was always something we wanted to do,” she adds. “We just didn’t know exactly when [we’d do it].”
Above Sunday Bedding’s Joo Chiat store also carries a variety of lifestyle brands
Sunday Bedding’s Joo Chiat store also carries a variety of lifestyle brands
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That changed after the Covid-19 pandemic. As restrictions lifted, Teo and Fan noticed a shift in customer behaviour: people craved connection through new experiences and destinations. It felt like the perfect moment to test physical retail.
The transition, however, was anything but seamless. A planned shophouse deal collapsed after months of delays. Undeterred, the duo pushed ahead, opening two stores simultaneously in 2022—one in Raffles City, the other in i12 Katong. Tatler Singapore last spoke with Teo around this time, just as Sunday Bedding ventured into brick-and-mortar.
“We went from zero stores to two stores,” Fan says plainly. “It was hectic.” The learning curve was steep. Retail operations, staffing, inventory management and the logistics of running consignment partnerships all collided at once. “We jumped into the deep end,” he admits. “It was logistically difficult and our team struggled through that.”
The experience prompted a conscious slowing down. While the brand went on to open a collaborative space in Holland Village with Mavrx Coffee in late 2024, it eventually pulled back from its earlier pace to focus on doing fewer things better, closing first its Raffles City store and then the one in i12 Katong within 2025. Only in hindsight did the lesson crystallise. “As a young founder, you want to say yes to every opportunity,” Teo reflects. “But at some point, you realise you have to be more intentional.” This insight spills into the couple’s personal lives too, with Fan sharing that with a young child at home now, they have had “to learn how to prioritise better”, adding that growth for them now is not always about doing more, but about knowing when to pause, refine and focus on fewer things done well.
Above The couple with their daughter, Emma
The couple with their daughter, Emma
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That philosophy is embodied in Sunday Bedding’s newest 900sqft flagship store in Joo Chiat, which the founders describe as “your home through the seasons”. The space marks a refinement of the brand’s identity—from bedding specialist to something closer to a lifestyle curator. Alongside Sunday Bedding’s own products, the store features wares from a rotating mix of regional and home‑grown brands that share its ethos around craft and comfort, including 3D‑printed lamps by Malaysian label Lampu Lampu, homecare essentials from Ome Living and timeless T‑shirts by local brand Source Collections. “We want people to find things they’ll always return to,” Teo says.
This approach mirrors how the duo think about their own products. Sunday Bedding’s first launch, a printed bamboo bed sheet design called Drizzling Rain, still has a devoted following. “Some of our early customers still ask if we’re restocking it,” notes Teo, sharing that they recently made a single set for a long‑time customer who refused to use anything else. Fan adds: “To me, that’s the greatest compliment: when someone grows emotionally attached to something.” That emotional durability continues to guide product development. Bamboo sheets remain the brand’s bestseller, prized for their breathability in Singapore’s climate, and for the range of colours and prints they support. More recently, the brand revisited cotton—this time an organic cotton voile that Fan describes as “more substantial, but still smooth”. Soft and breathable, the open weave offers an airy feel that hits the sweet spot between the breeziness of linen and the smoothness of cotton.
Some seven years after its founding, Sunday Bedding has hit its stride with two locations under its belt, guided by a simple ambition: to be a brand people return to, again and again, as their lives evolve. Now, as it makes itself at home in its new store, the founders are looking inward, and focusing on fostering a more meaningful dialogue with the spaces and people around them. For Teo, the goal has always been to build a brand that lasts. “It’s about growing with intention,” she says. “We want to be a place people return to as a source of comfort and familiarity, no matter where they are in life. Circumstances will always change [and] we hope to be there through all of it.”
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Nafeesa Saini is the Features Editor at Tatler Singapore, where she shapes long-form stories on culture, business, philanthropy, wellness, and the people driving change in Asia. With a deep interest in storytelling that intersects meaningfully with identity and impact, she has profiled a diverse range of visionaries, from scientific pioneers in AI and health to creative trailblazers and literary minds.
Nafeesa’s writing includes cover stories and profiles that spotlight influential voices, alongside commentary on the trends reshaping our world.
Off the clock, Nafeesa unwinds with fiction, a good thrift hunt, and ‘brainrot’ TikTok scroll—while always keeping one eye on her next cultural getaway, usually to Indonesia.
