This entrepreneur has a penchant for lifestyle projects

Jeremy Tan is proud to be branded as an underdog.

Despite not having a head start in business, Jeremy Tan set out to be the businessman that he was always meant to be. "I see myself representing the underdog...as I did not get a headstart in business be it through education, family business or having a business mentor," he says. Tan was a show producer for Audi Fashion Festival/Singapore Fashion Week, and he was also the Managing Director of Mercury Events Pte Ltd from 2012 to 2016. By the end of 2016, Mercury Events registered S$7.2m in revenue.

Backed by his experience and expertise in the past years, in 2017, Tan started the AXIS GROUP ASIA, with a focus to create more lifestyle projects beyond the usual luxury and consumer lifestyle segments.

"This is also a reflection of my belief that through passion, perseverance and tenacity, anything is possible," he notes.

AXIS GROUP ASIA offers brand activation, live events and events creation. The 360° brand experiential agency, as it describes itself, is a multi-disciplinary think-tank that brings marketing campaigns to life through creative communications, visionary implementation and ingenious campaign activations.

AXIS GROUP ASIA operates on a collaborative model and advocates co-creation through powerful partnerships to push across ingenious solutions for innovative experiences.

Tan, who himself is a leading Event and Creative Director in Singapore over the last 18 years, is joined by Ms Jamie Lee, Ms Cherine Yap, Mr Goh Giap Cheong and Mr Dominic Shimin. Together, they form the creative think tank of the new agency with the assortment of expertise that they bring to the table.

Since February 2017, AXIS GROUP Asia has completed projects for CHANEL, IWC Schaffhausen, Mercedes-Benz Singapore, and Tiffany & Co. as well as retaining Jaguar Land Rover and Pernod Ricard Singapore.

With AXIS GROUP Asia at the core, two other creative companies, RITUAL and HABITUAL, form the multi-level organisation. RITUAL is a content generation and curation syndicate to engineer and produce AXIS GROUP’S own proprietary events and providing a platform for artists, talents and young brands a stage to showcase their work.

Meanwhile, HABITUAL is a street culture collective for fusing street fashion and collaborative art agitators into a curated retail environment.

Tan says that in his career, along the way, he has built a passion to bring people together and inspire partnerships with like-minded individuals to create bigger things and scale greater heights. "It has also taught me more patience and the ability to respect and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of others and even myself," he shares.

Tan can speak seven different languages, which include Japanese, Malay and Thai. He also loves surfing. "I am quite addicted to it, so I try to travel to go surfing at least several times a year," he shares. Aside from this, Tan also started going for meditation trips to Thailand three years ago. "Once, my longest meditation was for 90 minutes straight."

Quoting best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell, Tan says: “The fact of being an underdog changes people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It opens doors and creates opportunities and enlightens and permits things that might otherwise have seemed unthinkable."