Full Transcript

‘Reinvention is our lifeblood’
January 2022 Announcement

Good morning and welcome back again. This is a bit unconventional as we have transitioned to realizing our four contact points with company exhibitions throughout the year in the spring, summer, fall and winter. However, this isn’t one of those. Today, we have some exciting things to talk about as we look forward to our future.

The Mediums Group of Companies and its family of brands has come a long way from when I dreamt up the company vision in my bedroom and from when the door first opened at Mediums Sukhumvit 42. We’ve grown from a team of 3 to 30 to now over 50 working on the floors of retail, f&b, software engineering, operations, education, marketing and much more.

When answering the question of what the future holds at our company, there are some big changes, some adjustments and some transformations waiting for us in this year’s expansion.

Reinvention is our lifeblood and so we adhere to our core values but look to change and transform our vision, mission and structure that allows for wider growth, focus and allow us to tread lightly in nature and be mindful of our social impact. The future looks different, to say the least. As a start-up company, we move as quickly as possible from a fail smart learn fast mentality to striving to hold and grow a business model that excels.

Let’s first talk about Mediums, the holding group’s primary business. As a brand built on the grounds of the sentence 'built by artists for artists' we're going to likewise be transparent on the change happening for the mediums brand. It's not easy to say, but a change is being formed to the brand for it to grow exponentially. Our promises of trying to sustain the lowest prices possible, a great customer experience and a business based off from empathy has been held up in most aspects and are why our name has spread so fast - at this stage, it’s now our intention to grow this same operations core based off understanding to more people than ever before.

Mediums is being reinvented to something of a scale we’ve only been able to dream of when the doors first opened. Announcing today, our direction moving forward is to develop mediums into a creative lifestyle products brand. Growing into more sectors and becoming essential to the lives of so many more than our initial target market. Our mission for the brand moving forward is to have at least one of our products make it into the hands of millions’ everyday carry, home or offices.

We’re here to prove that art is truly engrained in everyone’s daily lives no matter who or where they are. It’s been fine trying to inform people about art but this time instead of bringing people’s lives to art, we’re bringing art into people’s lives. Art shouldn’t be another different thing. We’ve said it from the start, what we want to do is make when we ask ‘what do you like to do in your spare time’, add ‘painting’ ‘drawing’ or just ‘creating’ to the usual list of ‘listening to music, cooking, taking photos, etc.’

Mediums started with the mission of making the creation of art and design as frictionless as possible, with goals of round the clock operations, wide choices of materials and as low prices as possible. As the brand has grown, in 2022, we’re slowly reinventing the brand to focus more on making art and design as open as possible amongst other things. We asked ourselves, how do we as people work better, live better and have a more simple, sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle - this is what we are looking to adapt to serving this year. We hope that in the coming months, people will come to realise what the ‘new’ Mediums we are trying to build is and come to fall in love with the brand all over again. How do we describe the new mediums in a phrase? - ‘living well’. Let’s focus on you, how can you work better, live better and through the process completely love every step of the journey.

With this, make[space] (our creative education brand) and NMBR, is transforming and collating into ‘meet at mediums’ with a wider service than ever before. Growing from just workshops – into events, business partnerships, exhibitions, customized products and more. Our customers will learn more about this in the coming weeks and develop a deeper understanding and hopefully ‘fondness’ for the ‘meet at mediums’ program in the coming months.

The charm of Mediums is in the brand and service, not the products yet - that's what we're looking to change and we hope that one day with enough support from our future ventures we'll be able to revisit the dream that started it all. In the meanwhile, we will use our capabilities of education, paired with our brand new own art products to initiate an outreach program that will hopefully go on to inspire and change the lives of many in the years to come.

Our food and beverage venture, ve/la, has grown at an unprecedented rate and has formed unbelievable customer engagement and sales over the last 10 months of operations, serving tens of thousands of customers with their favourite handcrafted drinks and desserts every single day. With that, we’re not looking to slow down at any point. To support our push for ve/la to grow at an even more flowing rate than last year, we’re merging our talent and assets from CUPS into ve/la to develop a snack and to-go line for the cafe. While we couldn’t go into detail just yet, we’re in talks with many partners to help us bring ve/la closer to your doors this year and make it as easy as possible for you to enjoy your everyday coffee, tea, or other handcrafted refreshments from the comfort of your own home.

And finally, to better align us with our direction and vision for the future. The holding company is distancing its identity from the mediums brand to convey our stance for business diversification and enhanced focus on both the mediums™ and ve/la™ brands with supporting services of meet at mediums and our rewards program.

Mediums Group is now, Apostofi.

We wanted a whole new refresh, a new name, word-mark and overall identity to present our dedication and expertise in more than just retail. Apostofi stands as a holding company that will propel our family of brands forward for optimized expansion and growth.

Inspired from the word originating in the roots of literature, ‘Apostrophe’ speaks to both heritage and craftsmanship. We evolved the spelling into a new name that had an impressionable and unique look and sound. The intended misspelling of ‘Apostofi’ perfectly binds with what we’re trying to convey - we make your already essential products and services in our own unique way.

Our new Vision Statement is ‘To make sustainable and enjoyable living – simple.’ Morphed from the start, our new vision statement represents our dreams for the future. Our goal as a company is to construct a way for people to adopt a simpler, more eco-friendly and more enjoyable lifestyle with alternatives to their existing products and services.

In terms of our corporate responsibility, we’re not straying away either. Promises are what drive mankind forward, and we hold ourselves to them. With our new reinstated CR pillars of sustainability, equality and transparency, we’re hoping that as we transition mediums to becoming a products brand more than a multi brand retailer and as ve/la grows and flourishes, we will be able to give back to the community and support the creative industry as we have always dreamt of doing.

No matter the changes, reinventions and our adaptations for the future - it looks bright here at Apostofi. We’re not straying away from our original values or company pillars - but we’re just changing, for us to be able to do what we do best at a scale as large as possible and for our products and services to help put a smile on as many people’s faces as possible. The Apostofi team of executives and wider employee body brings together the brightest minds from all over to dream and create something amazing along the process.

So that’s our reinvention for the future. From Apostofi Holdings and its family of brands, mediums and ve/la, we hope you have a great rest of your day and thank you for joining us for this pivotal moment in our company’s history