"We buy businesses and build brands," says Reign Holdings Chairman

Can you walk us through your approach to transforming an ordinary business into a standout brand?

Absolutely. When we acquire a business, we’re not just looking at its current operations, we’re assessing its latent potential. Our first step is to identify the core truth of the business: what unmet need it can uniquely fulfill. From there, we craft a brand narrative that emotionally connects with the target audience. We invest heavily in identity visual design, voice, product architecture and we align every customer touchpoint to that story. We don’t just scale operations; we scale meaning. That’s how an ordinary business becomes a category-defining brand.

You’ve quietly built an ecosystem of high-impact brands without becoming the face of them. How has staying behind the brand helped you scale better?

I believe in building empires, not pedestals. Staying behind the brand allows the customer to form a direct relationship with the product or experience, not my personality. It creates scalability, removes ego from decision-making, and builds institutional equity rather than a personal celeb profile. Quiet leadership forces clarity of vision and puts the brand at the centre of the spotlight, where it belongs.

What qualities do you look for in a business before deciding it’s worth acquiring and scaling into a brand?

We look for under-leveraged assets: operationally sound businesses with poor branding, a fragmented customer experience, or untapped market potential. A scalable supply chain, a strong but mispositioned product, or a passionate niche customer base, these are green lights. Most importantly, we ask: can this business become meaningful in someone’s life? If the answer is yes, it’s a candidate for brand transformation.

Is there a unifying brand philosophy or strategy that ties together the businesses you’ve transformed, regardless of their sector?

Absolutely, it’s built on clarity, credibility, and consistency. We define a sharp, differentiated narrative. We build credibility through performance and transparency. Then we reinforce both across every customer touchpoint, consistently. Our brands are designed not just to compete, but to lead with identity systems and operational backbones that scale without losing soul.

How do you approach the emotional side of brand-building, the storytelling, identity, and audience connection, while maintaining commercial clarity and long-term growth?

I see emotion and commerce as deeply connected. The best-performing brands don’t just meet functional needs, they resonate on a psychological level. We craft identity systems and stories that evoke trust, aspiration, or belonging, but we anchor them in commercial logic. Every story we tell supports margin, retention, or expansion. We don’t build brands for likes, we build them for legacy.

When you acquire a struggling or unbranded business, what’s the first 90-day blueprint you typically follow to revive and rebrand it?

We focus on four phases: Diagnosis, strategy, brand build, and execution.

Diagnosis: We audit operations, culture, customer data, and product-market fit.

Strategy: We define the new brand vision, positioning, and identity.

Brand Build: Visual identity, tone, packaging, digital presence everything gets reimagined.

Execution: We relaunch with precision performance marketing, community-building, and internal alignment. The first 90 days lay the cultural and commercial foundation. After that, scale becomes inevitable.

Many founders operate businesses, but few successfully build brands. What insights can you share for those seeking to make that leap from managing to visionary brand building?

Don’t just ask “what are we selling?” ask why it matters. Visionary brand building requires shifting from operator to architect. Think about how your brand makes people feel, what promise it makes, and whether that promise is kept at every touchpoint. Build your brand from the inside out, not just a good marketing campaign, but a culture and customer journey that aligns with your core truth.

Operating behind the scenes yet leading major brand transformations, how has maintaining a low public profile become a strategic advantage for you?

Staying behind the scenes keeps the focus where it should be, on the product, the customer, and the mission. It also allows me to build multiple brands simultaneously without personality dependency. This gives our companies strategic autonomy and cultural authenticity. Influence doesn’t always require visibility. Sometimes the quietest hands build the strongest empires.

How do you balance the commercial side of brand building with the emotional storytelling that drives consumer connection?

They’re not opposites, they’re two sides of the same coin. Emotional storytelling drives commercial success. The deeper the brand resonates with the consumer’s values, the greater their lifetime value. We build with both in mind: logic drives the operations, emotion drives the story. Together, they compound into brand equity and market dominance.

Legacy appears to be a recurring theme in your work. How do you define the long-term impact you aim to leave through the brands you build, the industries you influence, or the entrepreneurs you quietly inspire?

Legacy, for me, is the ripple effect of not just what I build, but what others build because of it. If the brands I create continue to lead long after I’ve stepped away, if they shift standards in their industries, and if they inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to think bigger, then I’ve done my job. My goal isn’t just to leave behind companies, it’s to leave behind conviction, craft, and culture.