Two Singapore brothers are making their hobby profitable through eCommerce, selling vintage toys.

When they were teenagers, Arnest and Spencer Ng were so into collecting toys that one of them worked servicing karaoke machines at a pub to finance their hobby. They collected and filled their bedroom with so many toys they had to sleep in the living room of their four-room Singapore Housing and Development Board flat.

Eventually, they decided to cash in on their ever-growing prized possessions to fund more toy purchases, but their brick-and-mortar shop failed to take off, reports The New Paper.

They turned to eCommerce last year to market their collection of vintage toys and items. Today, their business Collectors Baze is booming, raking in about S$20,000 (US$14,000) in sales a month. Their customers, mostly repeat ones, are mainly between 25 and 40 years old.

“We were seeing retail businesses shift online and we thought to tag along. We are now constantly getting calls from other collectors and customers,” says Arnest.

The brothers, who also run a business transporting food packaging, have an office at industrial development Eco-tech @ Sunview in Jurong. Their two-storey office unit is filled with glass showcases of vintage collectibles such as Transformers robot models, space robots, Ultraman figurines and even Vespa vintage pedal scooters.

Arnest says their toy-collecting hobby started when he was 16 and his brother 12 – 23 years ago. They would frequent the flea markets at Clarke Quay and to buy toys.

Their first foray into selling their toys was in 1994, when they rented a shop for $500 a month in Clarke Quay. But their business was hit in 2003 with the Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic.

In 2012, the Ng brothers decided to revive their business by featuring their vintage toys at the Singapore Toy Game and Comic Convention. They had only a shelf to display their wares, but Arnest says the response was amazing.

“Many people wanted to buy our toys, yet we had to turn them down as we did not plan to sell any.”

So they rented an exhibition booth the following year to sell their vintage toys, while relaunching their business on social media. Then last April they launched an online store plus a mobile app for Android and iOS.

“With eCommerce there are no boundaries,” says Arnest. “We are getting customers from Thailand, the US, Taiwan and more.