Norbreeze Pte Ltd, the sole distributor of Skagen watches in Singapore, made top 14 finalists in the of the Emerging Enterprises 2012 award organised by OCBC Bank and Business Times.
The winners of the award supported by RSM Chio Lim, SPRING Singapore, NUS Extension, ACORN Marketing & Research Consultants and SingTel, will be announced at a Gala Night soon to be held on 1 June 2012.
The inaugural Emerging Enterprise Award in 2008 was first launched to recognise outstanding small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore. Winners receive attractive prizes to support their growth and development.
This year, up to 3 top SMEs will each receive S$150,000 interest-free loan, S$90,000 worth of professional services and training programmes as well as support from Spring, Singapore in capability development.
In addition to that, two finalists will each win a “Best Innovation Award”, comprising S$30,000 worth of Information and Communication Technology prizes from SingTel.
The Danish founders of Norbreeze Singapore first came to Singapore in 1998 to pursue their studies and noticed that watches then were rather big and bulky.
So, being fans of slim and classic watch designs, Anders Peter Juel Sauerberg and his wife, Anne Trads Hansen, decided to bring in Danish watch brand Skagen Designs to fill the gap in the market in 2004.
But it was an uphill task introducing a new brand, and Mr Sauerberg had to knock on many doors with a suitcase full of Skagen watches before someone finally gave him a chance.
Norbreeze Singapore is now just part of the bigger Norbreeze Group that has offices in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
