Bonia Brand Guidelines: The 1974 Leather Label Named After Giambologna

A Singapore leather business with an Italian name.

Bonia began in 1974 as a leather goods business founded by Chiang Sang Sem. The Edge Financial Daily, in a July 2011 profile, described him as a leather goods wholesaler at the time, and English Wikipedia, in a version revised in September 2026, says he started by designing, making and wholesaling leather goods in Singapore. The company’s investor profile gives the same picture: a business that designed and manufactured leather goods for wholesale before it became a retail brand.

The name has an Italian source. According to The Edge, Chiang was inspired by the sixteenth-century sculptor Giambologna on a trip to a leather trade fair in Bologna, and registered the name “Bonia” in tribute. The company’s own pages tell the story slightly differently: its founder’s-story page dates the Italian visit to 1974 and says three syllables emerged from the sculptor’s name, while its investor profile places the trade-fair visit in 1977.

Bonia then moved its centre to Malaysia. English Wikipedia says Chiang moved the headquarters from Singapore to Malaysia in 1978, and the company says that was the year Bonia products entered Malaysian department stores. Its timeline then records the first stand-alone boutiques, in Singapore and, in 1988, in Kuala Lumpur, although its two corporate pages give different years for the Singapore shop, 1979 and 1981.

The company grew into a listed group. Bonia says it was listed on the second board of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange on 23 August 1994 and transferred to the main board on 23 April 2007; English Wikipedia also gives 1994 for the listing. Today Bonia Corporation Berhad trades on Bursa Malaysia, with its head office in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, according to English Wikipedia.

Leather first, then a family of labels.

Leather is the core of the range. The Edge reported in 2011 that Bonia built its name on leather goods made mostly of calf hide, with nappa, ostrich and deer skin also used, and that it had relaunched a collection in Italian calf leather coloured with vegetable dyes. The range had by then spread to shoes, menswear, luggage and French-made perfumes, the paper said. The company’s timeline adds watches and eyewear from 1992 and a Bonia Monogram print from 1998.

Design links to Italy were formalised in 2011. The Edge reported that a Bonia Design Studio had been registered in Italy, with a team in Milan led by the designer Gaetano De Franceschi, who had worked on the label’s 2010 spring and summer collection.

Bonia also built a family of labels. The company says it launched Carlo Rino in 1986 and that Sembonia joined the group in 1994. In November 2018 the Carlo Rino business was demerged into a separate company, CRG, which was listed on Bursa Malaysia’s LEAP Market on 28 November 2018, according to Bonia’s investor profile. In late 2010 Bonia bought a 70 per cent stake in Singapore-based Jeco, then licensee of Pierre Cardin leather goods in Singapore, master licensee for Renoma and holder of the licence to the Braun Büffel brand in Asia Pacific, The Edge reported; English Wikipedia adds that in 2012 Jeco took a 49 per cent stake in the German leather goods maker Braun Büffel itself.

Regional expansion followed the brand. The company says it entered department stores in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Brunei and Taiwan in 1990 and Thailand in 2003, and The Edge reported operations in Oman and Saudi Arabia in 2011.

How the region’s fashion labels present themselves.

Southeast Asia’s fashion, bag, accessory and lifestyle brands mostly speak through their own channels: a wordmark over a shopfront, a seasonal campaign, a named collection and an online shop. Many began as small businesses (a leather wholesaler, a garment maker, a family shop) and only later built a retail identity, so the brand story is often told through a founding date, a first boutique and a list of markets reached.

Collections and collaborations do much of the visual work. Labels name their lines by occasion, material or season, and add licensed characters, local actors and regional pop stars as ambassadors or muses. These partnerships change from season to season, while the name, the lettering and the shop interior usually stay fixed.

Ownership is often layered. Several labels sit inside larger groups: in Malaysia, Padini Holdings runs Vincci alongside its own clothing labels and sells them together in its concept stores, and Bonia Corporation holds a family of leather goods brands. In the Philippines and Thailand, groups such as Golden ABC and Jaspal Group own more than one label each, and each guide in this series describes its group from that brand’s own sources. Some companies are listed on their home stock exchange and publish corporate pages on founders, directors, subsidiaries and shareholdings; others remain private.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it and when, who owns it now, where it sells and how it presents its name, with dated reporting from newspapers and trade press, and with the companies’ own claims marked as theirs. The palettes and type samples are our own interpretations, not official brand assets.

Faces, shops and a Bologna-inspired interior.

Since the 2000s Bonia has presented itself through regional faces. The company lists two Singaporean actresses as its brand ambassadors from 2007, the Taiwanese actress Sonia Sui in 2013, for whom it named its Sonia bag, and a 2021 collection with the Malaysian actress Scha Alyahya, Bonia x Scha; English Wikipedia dates that collaboration to 2022. In January 2024 Malay Mail reported that Nayeon of the South Korean group Twice had been named brand ambassador for the spring and summer 2024 campaign, “Daytime Reverie,” which opened the brand’s 50th-anniversary year.

The Kuala Lumpur shop carries the identity into architecture. In January 2026 Marketing-Interactive reported that Bonia had reopened its concept store at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur as the House of BONIA, designed with the architecture studio Linehouse and inspired by Bologna. The report described terracotta tones, clay brickwork and handcrafted textures, and a sequence of rooms: The Loggia, with leather panels and cabinetry modelled on 1970s luggage, a Pink Room for women’s collections and a Green Room for men’s leather goods. The same report said the Thai actor Joong Archen had been named brand muse for spring and summer 2026.

The company also says it rebranded in 2021 as a lifestyle label, adding lifestyle and tableware collections, and opened a flagship in the KLCC area in 2022 with a gallery concept. Its name is set in capitals, BONIA, on its own pages and shopfronts.

For a design guide, Bonia shows how a founder’s story can carry a brand: a name taken from a sculptor, a city that becomes a store interior, and leather colours that run from the product to the walls. Compare Vincci, the Malaysian shoe and bag label of the Padini group, and Jaspal, a Bangkok fashion house. For this guide we use terracotta, clay and saddle brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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