Closing the gap between ambition, plan and performance

Over a year, I met Tony Ren, one of Yimian's founders, in coffee shops and hotel lobbies across China, before he and I agreed that I would make the case to our board to buy it. In 2020 Yimian Data became Ascential's first acquisition in China, part of a plan I led to build a scaled ecommerce business across APAC. Yimian was growing fast but was sub-scale and loss-making, at around US$3m in revenue, up against entrenched competitors, and the board had real doubts. Bringing them with us took patience.

We integrated Yimian deeply into Flywheel's global data business, where it came to collect all Western ecommerce data from Amazon and hundreds of other platforms to underpin all of Flywheel's external ecommerce data. Flywheel's data collection became faster, more accurate and more efficient, at no extra unit cost. Growth came from three places. We cross-sold to existing clients. A switching programme moved six of our competitors' largest clients over in three months, painlessly and with their historical data intact, which no one else could offer. And from 2022 we took it into Southeast Asia, starting from nothing and building credibility with the right clients until the region was a fifth of the business two years later.

In three years Yimian grew seven-fold, to around US$21m, and moved into profit. Alongside the earn-out, I looked for bigger things for the founders and their teams to care about, and helped where I could. In 2026 I led its sale to NIQ. The founders now bring me into their next venture, and that means a lot.

In 2021 I identified Intrepid, a Southeast Asian ecommerce services business with more than 480 people in six markets. Over formal and informal video calls during Covid, I saw a tight, talented team with a vision: to be a regional partner for platforms and brands, with local execution for consumers. I led its acquisition for Flywheel, and within months the ground shifted: as Covid restrictions eased, growth slowed and the investment case came under pressure.

I stayed close to its leaders as we worked through some hard decisions together: a leaner organisation, tighter commercial thresholds on client deals and a renewed push for new business. Their team brought it back to credible growth quickly. After Omnicom bought Flywheel, I led Intrepid's sale to its management in 2024.

Its Chair and CEO kept me close, first on the board and now as an adviser, helping them think about scaling the business and the organisation for its next stage. In five years it has grown more than tenfold across six markets and become a leading pan-regional player. For me, the real test of a deal is never completion. It might be whether the people running the business still want you around years later.

WGSN announced it was buying Stylesight, its biggest competitor, three days before I joined to run Asia-Pacific. The first meetings I led for the company were the briefings to each team, and I went on to lead the integration in the region. The two teams had long been rivals, winning clients from each other rather than growing the market, and together they turned over around US$11m. The most important work came in the first three months: designing the growth plan and the organisation, and choosing the leaders to run it. It was a bumpy ride, but we got back to consistent forecasts and solid growth.

Then we launched the new WGSN locally and took it into beauty, tech, consumer insight and consulting, which made it relevant to a far bigger pool of clients. In Japan, Korea and India, where we were too small to go it alone, we grew through channel partners: Itochu Fashion System, ITD and Technopak. Over three years we nearly tripled the business, including the acquisition, on significantly better contribution margins, with net revenue retention up from under 80% to over 90%.

WGSN had been in China since 2005 and had more than 500 clients there by 2015, but the business was sub-scale, with weak net revenue retention, and depended on its channel partnership with CTIC, a government-linked company in textile industry innovation. The economics pointed one way, and I made the case to our executive team and board to commit fully: a JV, WGSN China, and a second company, Coloro, a colour business that needed WGSN's investment.

For us, the JV meant investment in a bigger team, better local content and access to local government partnerships. CTIC wanted credibility and a success story, through frequent changes in governance and policy. It took patience on both sides, and real curiosity about what each side needed and where its hard lines were. When China's investment rules blocked Coloro's planned structure, we faced a really difficult problem, and found a different contractual structure that worked for everyone.

WGSN China has grown more than threefold from US$2.5m and still gives stable income. Coloro became a profitable, multi-million-dollar business and a leading player in sportswear colour globally, with clients including PUMA, Arc'teryx and Dyson. I'm grateful to remain on both boards.

Ascential wanted to test events in China, the world's largest fintech market but a walled garden, where only a government partnership could deliver scale. In 2017 we announced Money20/20 China in Hangzhou. The government relationships that mattered most were with the Zhejiang provincial and Hangzhou municipal governments, while our contract was at Xiaoshan district level. The government partnership brought a venue, some funding and access to local businesses, and we also partnered with several national and regional industry associations. I led those relationships and our key partners, and hired and co-managed the local team.

The first edition, in November 2018, drew 3,000 people, with senior people flying in and strong speakers. It had its challenges, but it gave everyone confidence to keep going. Then peer-to-peer lending changed sharply and the partners never fully aligned. It became hard to hold the quality, and to reconcile what headquarters needed with what was workable in China. The 2019 edition was deferred, and 2018 was the only one.

What I took from it: speak up sooner when either side's expectations can't be met, and understand what a market is really built on.