The story of Dream Runner has its origins in our founder, Delano Ruan’s, concern about the hopelessness that is so prevalent in the world. As someone who starte...
The story of Dream Runner has its origins in our founder, Delano Ruan’s, concern about the hopelessness that is so prevalent in the world. As someone who started with very little and who has had to fight adversity, Delano understands the power of hope and the tremendous value of dreams. Because of this, he founded Dream Runner not simply to be a business, but to evolve into a platform that would uplift and inspire people to follow their goals.
Out of this vision came Dream Runner in 2023.
At the time, Delano was already raising his children and running a successful barber shop, so you can imagine that launching another venture completely by himself was a heavy load to carry. And that is something that Delano remembers. Apart from everything else in his life, Delano was trying to do literally everything in the business, from marketing to design to procurement… Anything you can think of, he had to do himself.
Unfortunately, the business did not achieve the success that Delano was hoping for, especially considering the heavy load he was carrying.
But that does not mean his efforts were a failure. Setbacks are not failure unless you stop trying and allow them to become permanent and there are always lessons to be learnt when we suffer a setback. This is something we believe in whole-heartedly. It’s what we’re all about. No matter the circumstances, we push on for success relentlessly.
That does not mean, however, that you keep doing the same thing repeatedly. Delano’s vision was clear, but he recognised that he couldn’t do it alone. He needed help, and he got
that support from some shareholders he brought in from Mega Nursing & Care who helped set up a team who could pull the load collectively.
The lesson was clear, and Delano took it: success for Dream Runner was only going to come from trusting others and letting go of certain things while focussing on his core role and tasks. There is only so much you can do alone, and having a good, hardworking team with you always beats individual hard work.
With that lesson learnt, the formation of a solid team, a clear vision and an obsession with chasing after the dream, Dream Runner relaunched, reborn, earlier in 2026, and it has been growing ever since.
Of course, a lot of that growing and development took place before the relaunch and a huge amount of work went into building on the foundations of what Delano had et up. That work continues, and the immediate goals are to continue developing the business by scaling it up, setting up and improving the systems upon which the business is founded and expanding the product lineup. This work isn’t something that is obvious from the outside (at least not yet), but in business, as in the rest of life, it’s so often the really hard, teeth-gritting work that no-one sees that makes all the difference. We’re testimony to that.
So for now, the story is one of consolidation and slow, steady growth, but that does not mean that we’re satisfied simply by existing. Dream Runner lives on the principle that you’ve got to happen to life, rather than letting life happen to you.
We have grander dreams for the future, and we’re chasing them.
We want our brand to go beyond the UK and extend to the furthest expanses of the globe. It’s a large, intimidating dream, but it’s our dream and it’s worth chasing. And so, we run after that dream, armed with the lessons that we’ve picked up along the way, and stronger together than alone.
Consider this your invitation to focus on your dream, to pick yourself up if you’ve suffered a setback, put one foot forward, then another, and another, and join us to run after our dreams.
The Dream Runner Team
