SINGAPORE. Lightfoot, the specialist travel retail marketing and design agency, unveiled its brand new Singapore office this week with an event attended by executives from the travel retail industry.
Located in the heart of the Kampong Glam heritage area of Singapore, next to the Sultan Mosque and Arab Quarter, Lightfoot’s new office at 54 Kandahar Street is regularly featured in guidebooks and walking tours as one of the best preserved buildings of its kind in Singapore.
The three-storey traditional Singaporean shop-house features an open-plan design studio for the agency’s graphic, web and interior designers, a giant “˜idea wall’, a sample room, breakout areas and a sun-deck with stunning views of the Singapore skyline. Lightfoot has also created an experiential installation site on its shop-front veranda to delight and engage with passersby at street level.
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Jonathan Holland & Associates Managing Director Jonathan Holland (left) congratulates Lightfoot Marketing Asia CEO Alex Cook on the new creative space |
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Mondelez World Travel Retail Regional Director – Middle East & Asia Pacific and APTRA President Jaya Singh with Alex Cook |
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The wall of fame showcasing Lightfoot’s various projects and media coverage |
Lightfoot Marketing Asia CEO Alex Cook commented: “The opening of our new office at 54 Kandahar Street readies us for the next chapter of growth for Lightfoot in Asia. With our flourishing interior design business, Lightfoot Space, we wanted to live up to our mantra of creative, engaging space in our own environment. It sets the right tone for our business, and also helps create an inspirational workspace to attract and retain the best talent.”
Cook continued: “We’re delighted to welcome so many of our clients and friends to the opening party, which in part is to thank them for their fantastic support of our business over the three and a half years we have been in Singapore. Without them, none of this would have been possible.”
Lightfoot was established in 1995 as a hybrid marketing and design agency specialising in the global travel retail industry. A new Asia division, based in Singapore, was created in 2011. With offices in the UK and Singapore, the company handles business and consumer marketing communications projects for clients including Heathrow Airport, World Duty Free Group, Abu Dhabi Airport Company, Dubai Airports, Network Rail, Mondelez World Travel Retail, Luxottica Travel Retail, Puig, Remy Cointreau Global Travel Retail, Lotte Duty Free, TFWA, and Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association (APTRA). In 2012, Lightfoot established its retail and interior design division, Lightfoot Space.
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Jonathan Holland and Lightfoot Marketing Asia’s Gerri Goh and Alex Cook strap in for an evening of fun and games |
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Lightfoot Marketing Asia Account Director Nick Sutton shows how it’s done during the Wii Golf challenge, one of the highlights of the evening |
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The evening concludes on a high note with Puig Asia Pacific Travel Retail Area Manager Kelly Liu and Jonathan Holland as the winners of the darts and Wii Golf challenges respectively |
Lightfoot Marketing Asia CEO Alex Cook shares with The Moodie Report below the company’s high points and plans for the near future.
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“The opening of our new office at 54 Kandahar Street readies us for the next chapter of growth for Lightfoot in Asia “ |
Alex Cook CEO Lightfoot Marketing Asia |
The Moodie Report: It’s been three and a half years since Lightfoot’s establishment in Singapore/Asia. What were the key highlights over this period?
Alex Cook: In our business, it’s all about the clients – since we established our business here we’ve managed to retain some fantastic clients that have been with us since day one, such as Remy Cointreau, while also winning some great new clients, such as Mondelez WTR, China International Duty Free (CIDF), APTRA and Lotte Duty Free. We want to work with the best, most ambitious companies, be they established industry leaders or disruptive, innovative challengers.
Another major highlight has been the growth of our interior design business – Lightfoot Space. We have built a really skilled and experienced design team and are working on some incredibly exciting projects ranging from wall bay and fixture design, through to experiential promotions and major store design projects. In terms of a standout project, our work with Lotte Duty Free at Guam Airport has been hugely exciting for us and a real statement about the scope of our ambition and our capabilities.
It must be heartening to see how the team has grown. What’s the headcount currently, and are you planning to expand it further?
We’re now eight full-time people in our Singapore office, as well as a strong stable of freelancers. We take a very step-by-step approach, but if our business continues to grow as we expect then we will certainly be growing the team. The new office has been deliberately designed with space for us grow into.
Tell us about the significance of the significance of the new office opening to you. What kind of new beginnings does it herald, and what can we expect from the company for the rest of 2014 and 2015?
The significance was really two-fold – firstly it highlights how we have grown as an outfit and secondly it underscores our ambition and gives us a great platform for our next wave of growth. In terms of what we can expect for the rest of 2014 and 2015 – further expansion or our team and client base and hopefully a lot of interesting projects that give us an opportunity to showcase our creativity.
We’re working with a number of companies from whom we are expecting big things in this industry over the next couple of years – CIDF being a great example as specialists in Chinese tobacco and liquor brands.
