Sean founded LeasAsia in 2022 as a continuum of his investments and experience gained in building global brands. Sean started his first business T Global Incorporated in 1988, focussed on automotive, retail, and financial services. In 1992 Sean joined Woolworths South Africa, gaining corporate retail experience, and become the youngest senior manager at Woolworths South Africa, with leadership positions in operations, sales, merchandise procurement and planning. Being extremely curious and a lifetime student of consumer behaviour and understanding the relationship between brands and building market positions, Sean cofounded Ikineo, an innovator of digital marketing in 1998.
In 2000, Sean was a cofounder of the first ecommerce retail business in South Africa that serviced both B2B and B2C consumers. In addition, he built a financial services business focussed on international business VAT reclaim solutions for corporates. Both these businesses were successful sold to larger corporations.
In 2002 Sean was invited to join the global Smollan Group as an Executive Director, and over 20 years was instrumental to the Smollan Groups growth across services, new business development, technology solutions and geographic expansion. From 2014 to 2022, Sean led the joint venture with the Swiss listed DKSH organisation and the Smollan Group, as the Chief Executive Officer Asia Pacific. During his time as the CEO APAC, Sean successfully led the growth of the business from 3 countries to 12 countries, built a powerful new business growth and client service capability, acquired and retained over 400 active blue-chip clients, and guided a strong values-based organisation of over 8,000 full time employees, achieving unprecedented engagement scores across both clients and staff in each successive year of his leadership of the DKSH Smollan organisation.
In August 2022 LeasAsia was incorporated to house Sean’s investments in Evolution APAC, a subsidiary of the 20-year-old USA Evolution Group, and numerous other Asian centric retail and consumer building investments. LeasAsia’s domain focuses on building Trusted Brands by owning the sales process, brand management and data enabled decision making, as a master brand curated distributor for brands wishing to enter and / or expand their presence across Asia.
Sean holds an MBA from Oxford Brooks university (2002) and successfully completed a PLD at Harvard Business School (2007). Sean has a deep sense of purpose and is an active member of Rotary and supports both the VSC and ISC committees in Singapore, in addition to a number of charities that he has supported over many years. Sean is regularly asked to speak at graduate programmes and industry conferences across topics that include leadership, brand curatorship and market performance.
Sean is a devoted husband and father, and active wannabe athlete.