Tiger Beer turned a Canal Street fake-goods store into a shrine to Asian design

Prove that made-in-Asia means much more than inexpensive goods and counterfeits, and reset perceptions for the launch of Asia's number-one premium beer in New York.

A Canal Street discount store rebuilt as the Tiger Trading Co: a glass floor over clichéd fakes, holding 700 pieces of real Asian art, fashion and technology above it.

The Glue Society's James Dive designed the store, built in two weeks with 118 square metres of glass floor over stereotypical products sourced from Canal Street; entry was a Tiger Beer coaster from nearby bars, with Tiger samples and Singaporean hawker food inside.

Queues stretched around the block with people camping up to 12 hours; the store sold out one hour after opening every night of its June 6-9 run.

New York's Canal Street is world-renowned for discount stores filled floor to ceiling with cheaply made Asian clichés and counterfeit goods — exactly the baggage Tiger Beer faced launching its first New York campaign in 2016. With Marcel Sydney, the brand repurposed a Canal Street discount store into the Tiger Trading Co, 'by far the most exclusive Asian discount store New York's Chinatown has ever seen'.

Designed by James Dive of The Glue Society and built in two weeks by producer Will O'Rourke, the store's centrepiece was a 118-square-metre glass floor filled with stereotypical products sourced from Canal Street itself — 'to see what real Asian design is, you literally had to walk over what Asian design isn't'. Above it sat more than 700 products from Asian artists including Felix Tai of Pomch, Douglas Young of Goods of Desire and Kelly Lim of Kllylrck. Entry cost nothing but a Tiger Beer coaster from nearby bars, with Tiger and Singaporean hawker food inside.

The Tiger Trading Co ran June 6-9, 2016. Queues stretched around the block, some visitors camped out for up to 12 hours, and the store sold out one hour after opening every night — New York's Asian population, the largest outside Asia, meeting contemporary Asian design as global brand ambassador Mie-Leng Wong put it, to 'reset their perceptions'.

The glass floor made the argument spatial: the cliché is literally underfoot, the reality at eye level.

Entry via a coaster turned nearby bars into funnels and made the beer part of the discovery, not a sponsor of it.

Scarcity did the publicity — nightly sellouts and 12-hour camps outperformed any paid media plan.

Confront the stereotype physically: making visitors literally step over the cliché reframes the whole category better than any rebuttal ad.

The store ran June 6-9, 2016; the material records no lasting retail or sales outcome beyond the four-day sellout.