IN early 2011, Crystal Jade Culinary Holdings chairman and chief executive Ip Yiu Tung gathered some of his senior executives and headed for San Francisco. With help from the mayor's office, the team's mission was to scout for possible restaurant locations and suss out the competition and suppliers ahead of setting up Crystal Jade's first restaurant in the United States.
This, after the company having already set up more than 100 outlets in Singapore and Asia.
Opening a 1,300 sq m restaurant in the Four Embarcadero Center in city's downtown was to cost US$7 million - the company's biggest expense since it was founded in 1991.
As US consumer sentiment recovers to its highest level since before the onset of the financial crisis, the prospect of Americans' improved buying power spells opportunity for Singapore companies like Crystal Jade, which are willing to venture beyond their home markets.
The US market alone for Asian cuisine is expected to be S$36 billion by 2016, said a recent study by Euromonitor.
Mr Ip says: "It's not a gamble. But we are going to try.
"I feel comfortable with our location, with our food, and that we can offer better ambience than what is currently available."
Intensifying the renewed attention on the world's biggest economy is the growing perception among some investors that developing markets such as China are becoming too risky and too expensive in which to operate; rising wages, corruption and opaque laws have taken the shine off the country's perceived business prospects.
JCS-Echigo, which makes high-end cleaning equipment for electronic components such as hard disk drives, recently sold its business in China after three years, following difficulty in securing ownership title over a disputed piece of land there.
The company, which counts Hewlett Packard and hard-drive maker Western Digital among its clients, has sales teams and a research and development division in San Jose; it reported revenue of S$20 million last year.
Elise Hong, the general manager at JCS-Echigo, said: "These few years, I've had quite a few business friends leaving China. Closing businesses there is hard because labour laws are not in line with best practices elsewhere.
"I speak Mandarin. We have the same culture and still, it's hard."
Though still active inAsia, JCS-Echigo aims to increase its exposure to the US by developing heavy-duty dishwashers and washing machines for service providers which wash linens and cutlery for restaurants, hotels and even homes. The company expects sales of these devices to total as much as $20 million over the next five years - compared with $24 million in sales for the whole company last year.
"The US has always had a big impact because of its spending power."
US consumer sentiment unexpectedly rose to a six-year high last month. An index calculated by the University of Michigan put sentiment at 85.1 at the end of last month, up from 84.1 at the end of June, thanks to rising employment and equity prices.
But by many measures, the US is still an afterthought for some Singaporean companies, which tend to focus more on their own backyard than on markets across the Pacific.
The most recent tally for foreign direct investment as at the end of 2011, according to the Department of Statistics Singapore, indicates that US-bound capital halved to S$7.6 billion from the year-ago period. This compares with the S$82 billion invested in China, the biggest recipient of Singaporean investment; even Thailand was on the receiving end of some S$19 billion in the same period.
For new entrants to the US, such as Crystal Jade, learning about the local competition, local dining habits and tastes is key.
Posing as customers, Mr Ip's team visited as many as 10 Chinese restaurants during each of their five research trips to the US, sometimes packing in back-to-back lunches to take a measure of the competition.
They found San Francisco restaurant-goers receptive to cuisines from other parts of the world. They also found that these diners enjoy a drink before dinner and are likely to pay as much as US$50 a person - excluding alcohol.
The Crystal Jade team also found many Chinese restaurants in the US either decked out in old-fashioned décor or serving up inauthentic fusion cuisine.
Based on the intelligence gathered, decisions were taken to devote 30 per cent of the restaurant's floor space to a bar and lounge, to put the kitchen under the charge of one of the company's own chefs, and to serve up signature dishes such as wood-fired roasted Peking duck and chilli crab.
Mr Ip said: "I thought we can do better."
At FJ Benjamin, which manages luxury labels and distribution for clothing and jewellery, entry into the US was a needed "proving ground" before it branched across Asia. Four years ago, the company opened a showroom in New York for its Raoul clothing brand, with the aim of being already dug in when the recovery accelerated.
Chief operating officer Douglas Benjamin said: "We wanted to be well placed to take advantage of the upturn when it happened.
"Being an Asian brand and wanting to expand into Asia, we needed to do a kind of reverse engineering - become noticed in the West so that the East would notice us."
The label, which describes itself as accessible luxury, has met with some success. Mr Benjamin says its dresses retail for $300, not $3,000, and the short production lines give buyers a sense of exclusivity.
Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, has been photographed in a Raoul dress, as has Jennifer Lawrence, the star of the movie, Hunger Games.
The US economy being in the doldrums gave Crystal Jade an opportunity to seize on lower rents and to tap the assistance given by city officials hungry for business.
With the recovery now gathering steam, Mr Ip is betting more people are likely to eat out more and to spend on entertainment.
"People need to enjoy themselves and get out of the house," he says.