Singapore-based sustainability life-style occasions and media firm Inexperienced Is The New Black (GITNB) has been acquired by Sean Lee-Davies, founding father of affect and enterprise studio Awethentic Group, for an undisclosed sum.
Inexperienced Is The New Black was based by occasions and advertising skilled Stephanie Dickson and former GA Round challenge supervisor Paula Miquelis in 2015. The corporate is finest identified for its sustainable life-style occasion The Aware Competition, which was held for the seventh time in Singapore earlier this month.
Lee-Davies will tackle the function of chief govt of each GITNB and The Aware Competition, which has held festivals in Paris and Hong Kong in addition to Singapore, the corporate’s headquarters.
Dickson and Miquelis have an 18-month earn-out interval, though each executives plan to remain on on the firm. “It’s indefinite for us now,” Dickson informed Eco-Enterprise.
Lee-Davies, the previous editorial director for Tatler Asia, based Awethentic Studio in 2016, and has overseen the launch of meals tech model GOOD Meat in Singapore in 2020. He is at present supporting the expansion of Singapore-based meals tech firm What If Meals in the US.
Awethentic has a presence in Hong Kong, the UK, and US. The acquistion will prolong the corporate’s footprint into Singapore.
The acquisition displays Awethentic’s “dedication to delivering transformational experiences and merchandise selling sustainable existence,” the corporate stated in a press release.
Dickson stated that she and Miquelis had taken the corporate as far they might on their very own, and had been promoting the enterprise because the time was proper to “take it to new heights”.
She shared that the corporate “barely survived” through the Covid-19 pandemic, when its plans to carry The Aware Competition in London, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2020 needed to be shelved, and the occasion was placed on just about with simply seven weeks’ preparation time.
Dickson stated the plan was to pivot GITNB into extra of an eco-wellness platform and develop the “aware management” aspect of the enterprise, which was trialled at The Aware Competition with companions corresponding to automobile maker Mercedez-Benz, airline Lufthansa and beauty manufacturers L’Oreal.
Dickson stated she could be trying to launch The Aware Competition in Lisbon as the following step for constructing the model in Europe, and doubtlessly later within the US.
Launching The Aware Competition elsewhere in Southeast Asia past Singapore shouldn’t be a part of the expansion plan for now, because the occasion is run in English, and the language barrier and discovering a powerful native associate introduced challenges, she stated.
Dickson, who additionally hosts the Reside Huge Awake podcast and co-founded ladies’s Web3.0 affect platform initially launched GITNB as a result of she couldn’t discover a house for sustainability-minded folks in Singapore, and noticed the necessity to construct a neighborhood for “aware” folks.
“It’s [GITNB] not nearly sustainability – it’s aware dwelling. We have to take care of ourselves so we are able to contribute positively to the world,” she informed Eco-Enterprise.
“Greater than ever, folks want sacred areas. There’s a lot doom and gloom and negativity across the surroundings and sustainability. We acknowledge deeply and respect what is occurring round us, however positivity is essential – it’s nonetheless attainable to take pleasure in life,” she stated.
“It’s essential to acknowledge that each [mindsets] can exist on the identical time,” she stated.
