MPH Bookstores Brand Guidelines: An 1890 Mission Press and Three Names Behind MPH

A mission press in Singapore.

MPH began as a mission printing press in Singapore in 1890. Captain W. G. Shellabear, a former soldier in British Malaya who returned as a Methodist missionary, set up the Amelia Bishop Press to print Christian literature, according to Vulcan Post (2023) and the company’s own history. Mothership places that press in a shophouse where Selegie Road meets Sophia Road. In 1893 it moved to Raffles Place, closer to the business district, and was renamed the American Mission Press; by then it printed secular works as well, and MPH says a Book Room opened to sell the press’s publications, school books and supplies for mission schools.

The company’s own history opens earlier, with the missionary William Milne, who set up a printing press in Malacca in 1815. Hype noted in October 2024 that there is no direct link between Milne’s press and MPH; the firm’s line runs from Shellabear’s press of 1890.

The initials came in 1906. After the Reverend William T. Cherry arrived in 1900 and widened the business into printing, publishing, bookselling and distribution, the press became the Methodist Publishing House, the source of the acronym MPH. In 1908 it moved into a new three-storey building at the corner of Stamford Road and Armenian Street. Singapore’s National Heritage Board says the building was designed by the architects Swan and MacLaren in an Edwardian style, with red facing brick and alternating bays of semi-circular pediments, and that the shop there did so well that its original role of printing mission material was slowly eclipsed.

The business was then sold and incorporated as Malaya Publishing House Limited in December 1927, the Heritage Board says, keeping the letters MPH. MPH’s history says Frank Cooper Sands became managing director in 1928. Operations paused during the Japanese occupation of 1942–1945, and Sands reopened the business in 1945, according to Hype and the Heritage Board.

Three names, one set of initials.

With the formation of Malaysia, the company became Malaysia Publishing House in 1963, again keeping MPH. Its history says it then ran as a wholesale book department, while the retail side, trading as Malaysian Books Limited, opened bookshops at Selangor Mansion in Kuala Lumpur, on Beach Street in Penang and on Jalan Laksamana in Malacca. Mothership says the company was registered simply as “MPH Limited” in 1968; the company’s own history dates the name MPH Ltd to March 2000.

Ownership changed several times. A consortium headed by the Indonesian businessman Masagung bought the company in 1966, when Vulcan Post says it was in financial difficulty, and split it into four subsidiaries: MPH Books, MPH Printers, MPH Publications and Lian Tak MPH, which made exercise books and paper products. In 1972 the Hong Kong group Jack Chia Holdings bought MPH and ran it as Jack Chia-MPH Limited, the company says. In 1999 the listed company was bought by the Singaporean entrepreneur Simon Cheong. In 2002 the MPH brand, with its bookshop and distribution arms, passed to Jalinan Inspirasi Sdn Bhd, which English Wikipedia says made MPH wholly Malaysian-owned for the first time; the buyer later took the name MPH Group (M) Sdn Bhd.

The Stamford Road shop did not survive the changes. The National Heritage Board says the building was sold in 2001 and leased back to MPH until 2003, when the bookshop there closed. The building was gazetted for conservation that year and, as the Vanguard Building, was leased to Singapore Management University from 2014.

How bookshop chains present themselves.

Bookshop chains in Europe and Asia tend to present themselves through places before products. Many keep one older or larger shop at the centre of their story, a flagship on a named street that appears in their histories, their photographs and often their anniversaries. In Lisbon, Bertrand’s Chiado shop on Rua Garrett plays that part; in Madrid, Casa del Libro’s building on the Gran Vía does the same. For a design reader, the flagship is where a chain’s colours, signs and lettering are seen at their largest.

Inside the shops, the companies describe spaces for reading and meeting as much as shelves. Chains publish details of rooms for book launches and talks, children’s sections and floors given over to single subjects, and some describe places where visitors can sit with a book. These spaces are part of how a bookseller explains what it is for, and they usually carry the same signs and colours as the shop floor.

Most large chains now run loyalty or members’ programmes and an online shop alongside the physical stores. Membership cards, members’ areas on a website and online marketplaces are described by the companies themselves, and the scale of such programmes is checked in these guides against dated press reports rather than marketing pages. Store and imprint naming is usually plain: many chains carry a founder’s surname, a city, or a simple description of a house of books, and a publishing imprint may sit under the same group as the shops.

Corporate pages fill in the rest: founders, owners, listings and the publishing groups that sit behind many chains. Ownership often changes more often than the shop signs do, so the guides in this series date each change of owner to an independent source, describe each name and colour as documented, and treat the palettes shown here as unofficial interpretations.

From a megastore to a flagship at TRX.

Malaysia became MPH’s main market. The company says it opened a large store at Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur in 2000, with self-search terminals, reading lounges and a children’s corner, and launched its online shop, MPHOnline.com, in the early 2000s; English Wikipedia dates the online store to 2000. In early 2019 MPH had 29 bookshops in Malaysia and three in Singapore, English Wikipedia says.

In 2020 the company closed a large number of shops. Hype listed closures including Subang Parade, Sunway GEO and Kinta City, and quoted MPH Group’s 2020 statement that it was moving to a “digitalised e-commerce ecosystem.” Vulcan Post reported in 2023 that the move had been in the works before 2020 and that the loyalty programme continued online. The Mid Valley megastore closed on 31 January 2024, and on 16 May 2024 MPH opened a new flagship at The Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur, Options, the lifestyle section of The Edge Malaysia, reported in June 2024. The paper described natural wood tones, bronze detailing, gold-and-glass doors and a pharaonic-style mural above the tills, with three areas set aside for events. As of June 2024 MPH had eight outlets in the Klang Valley and one each in Alor Setar and Kuching, against more than 30 before 2020, the paper said; Hype counted about nine outlets nationwide in October 2024. The company’s website now gives The Exchange TRX as its address.

For a design guide, MPH Bookstores shows how a set of initials can outlast every name behind it. Compare Gramedia, the Indonesian chain founded in a Jakarta shophouse in 1970, and Eslite, one of the newer bookshop names in Malaysia that The Edge Malaysia mentioned in 2024. For this guide we use a brick red, a bronze and a warm paper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep MPH Bookstores’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.