A Singapore designer, a Taiwanese scientist and a shared mission to help people sleep better

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SG50 logo designer Jackson Tan and chemical engineer John Lee joined forces during the pandemic to create Another Land, a wellness brand bringing together fragrance, science,…

SG50 logo designer Jackson Tan and chemical engineer John Lee joined forces during the pandemic to create Another Land, a wellness brand bringing together fragrance, science, design and art.

Jackson Tan – the maverick Singaporean designer behind the SG50 identity and art and design collective Phunk – and his wife Talia Huang were at their home in Kaohsiung when the pandemic closed Taiwan’s borders. As luck would have it, their close friends, Taiwanese chemical engineer John Lee and his wife Ula Wang, lived just a few streets away. Both couples had spent years travelling and rarely saw one another. Now, “COVID grounded all of us and forced us to reset,” Tan said.

With time came conversation, and the conversation kept returning to bad sleep. The couples swapped self-care tips, and other friends reported the same trouble. When the Lees invited the Tans to visit Jolab, their shiny research and manufacturing facility, Tan was impressed by the scale and production quality. He also heard the worry behind the tour: With overseas clients unable to visit, how would they keep an operation that size going? Lee remembered Tan’s verdict: “Anyone who visits Jolab would immediately believe that the products coming out of this place must be safe and effective.” His reply came almost without thought: ‘Then why don’t we create a brand together?’

It was a creative match made in heaven. Lee holds a PhD in chemical engineering and had already built a skincare label, TTM, which reached Le Bon Marche and Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Selling in France taught him how exacting European standards are when it comes to cosmetics manufacturing and documentation. He came to see that a product has to be effective, safe and sustainable from the first day of development. The company he co-founded, Jola International, is a Taiwan-based biotechnology and manufacturing firm.

For Another Land, the founders began with a question: “How can we help the world sleep better and live well?” Everything else was…

The…

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