Two friends, Eugene Chen and Keyis Ng, realised just what a grip coffee has on Asians and found a gap in the market that hadn’t yet been tapped into. And so Cafebond.com was launched – in Singapore in June, and Malaysia in October.
The website offers high-quality coffee blends from some of Australia’s best coffee joints in Melbourne like Auction Rooms, Ona Coffee (home of 2015 World Barista Champion Sasa Sestic), Seven Seeds, Dukes Coffee, Wide Open Road and Market Lane as well as single origin beans sourced by the brand’s coffee merchants.
Bags of 200 to 300g start at upwards of RM50 with a flat shipping fee of RM10 and a guarantee that the product will arrive within 10 days of roasting.
What’s great about the site is the sheer variety of what’s on offer. You’ll find over 100 selections at any given time, making it the largest coffee collection available to Malaysians at the moment.
These include a selection of espresso roast and filter roast blends and single origin coffees, with detailed tasting notes and explanations about the beans and also the cafes. All you have to do is narrow your search according to your preference and navigate through the many options available to find your favourite ones.
Some of the best sellers on the site include the signature blends from ST ALi, Seven Seeds (both from Melbourne) and Ona Coffee (from Canberra).
Eugene Chen (left) and Keyis Ng are the brains behind Cafebond.com, which has launched in Singapore and Malaysia. Their next goal is to launch in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China next year.
The idea for the site was spurred by the Singaporean duo’s holiday in Melbourne where according to Ng, they had one of the best cuppa ever at the popular coffee mecca, ST ALi.
“We then began to play with the idea of bringing the iconic coffee culture of Melbourne back with us to Singapore. We wanted to bring home the distinctive flavours found only while drinking Australian coffee and establish a platform that would allow people to connect and share global cultures through coffee. That idea is what led us to founding Cafebond.com,” says Ng.
Ng combined his background in marketing with Chen’s expertise in coding to develop the site. After persuading the Melbourne cafes to come onboard, they set about developing the site, and used the Eels system to consolidate orders. This also allowed them to lower shipping fees to a flat RM10, regardless of the size of the order.
For context, the cost of shipping 250g of coffee beans (which retails at around RM50) from Australia to Malaysia through an international courier company is around RM150 – three times the price of the beans! With Cafebond.com’s system, orders are collated on a weekly basis and delivered to the company’s Malaysian office in Johor, thus ensuring a minimal shipping fee is incurred.
Cafebond.com promises to deliver coffee from Melbourne’s finest cafes (like Wide Open Road, pictured here) within 10 days of being roasted.
