The Power of Purpose

The recipients of the inaugural Tatler Impact Awards 2024, presented at the 42nd Tatler Ball in October, have made positive and significant impact in Asia and beyond By Hashirin Nurin Hashimi, Sabrina Low and Nafeesa Saini. Photography by Frenchescar Lim

In 2014, the co-founders of Secretlab, Ian Ang, who is chief executive officer, and Alaric Choo, chief strategy officer, set out to redefine gaming chairs. Ang, frustrated by the lack of suitable options, recalls, “I was looking for a new chair, and there was no option out there that checked all the boxes for me—superbly comfortable for long hours, made with only the highest quality materials, and direct-to-consumer.”

The two, who met through professional gaming, were well-acquainted with the aches and pains that come with sitting for long hours without proper support. Armed with this insight, Ang proposed the idea of building the “best gaming chairs”. And Secretlab was born.

What began as a bootstrapped business with a single gaming chair, the Secretlab Throne V1, has blossomed into an award-winning powerhouse serving over three million global users. But the journey has not always been a bed of roses.

Secretlab faced one of its most challenging periods in the past two years, particularly between 2022 and 2023, when cash flow issues, coupled with global compliance issues and batch-wide manufacturing defects, brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy. “[Those] were probably the darkest and most nerve-racking 24 months, and every week was anxiety-inducing,” Ang recalls. Unprofitable for the first time in its history and carrying a significant debt load, the company confronted what Ang describes as a “no-solution problem”.

Rather than opting for quick fixes, Ang and Choo took a calculated approach to preserve their team and mission. “Any conventional short-term solutions, such as running fire sales, would harm us in the long run. Similarly, cutting fixed costs with layoffs ... would mean losing many talented individuals that we will need after we’ve recovered. All these merely alleviate the short term issues; they don’t outright resolve them.”