Bite Communications Acquires Upstream Asia

Since we founded Bite back in 1995, we’ve always been anxious to build a business that was global in nature. Given we now have 7 offices in London, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Stockholm and Beijing, we’ve certainly made some progress in achieving our objective. But I’m delighted to announce that today we will be making a giant leap forward in our global ambitions. Through our parent company, Next Fifteen, we have completed the acquisition of Upstream Asia, a marketing and communications company with more than 50 people in five locations in Asia Pacific. Upstream’s offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney will now start the re-branding process to become Bite. Bite’s existing Beijing team members are in the process of joining Upstream’s Beijing office.

Completing a deal of this nature is, to say the least, complex and hard work. But I’m convinced all the hard work will be worth it because I firmly believe that by bringing the Upstream team into Bite, we are adding a world class team of communicators to our organization. The Upstream reputation in the Asia marketplace is incredibly strong and I’ve been impressed with every point of contact I’ve had with the team. Much of the enjoyment and satisfaction that I derive from my work comes from being surrounded by smart, capable people. I’m delighted that we’ve just added 50 such people in Asia.

So what does this really mean for Bite? Well, quite simply, it allows us to offer clients a much broader global footprint. And feedback from our client base towards this news is that they are excited about the possibilities that it offers them. In addition, for our people, it gives them the chance to work on truly global campaigns and to learn from and exchange ideas with colleagues in new offices. In short, growth creates opportunities and we see plenty of opportunities through the acquisition of Upstream.

Our global story is not quite yet complete though—we know there are one or two more dots that we would like to put on the map and we’re focused on achieving that. We also know that the really hard work starts now as we begin the process of integrating Upstream into our business. But, for a moment, we’ll take a deep breath and reflect that we’ve just taken a huge step forward as a business. The future looks incredibly exciting—we can’t wait to make it happen.

Tagged as: APAC, Asia Pacific, Bite Communications, Upstream Asia