Almost a decade ago, while schmoozing at a Monocle conference in Lisbon, I met Jan Chipchase. I hosted Monocle’s podcast The Entrepreneurs back then, and my spidey sense was on high alert for ‘interesting people’. Quiet, thoughtful and hyper-smart, Jan stood out immediately. He was at the event with Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, for whom Jan was working on a fascinating project. The more I talked with Jan—and, serendipitously, again at the airport—the more I was intrigued.

Born in the UK and based in Japan, Jan runs a research, design & strategy consultancy called Studio D Radiodurans. Named after a type of bacteria that can survive extreme conditions, a run-of-the-mill business this is not. Billion-dollar companies hire Studio D to explore certain human behaviours, understand problems, and identify opportunities and threats. These projects involve Jan assembling temporary teams and ‘pop-up studios’ occasionally in highly remote locations, more Tajikistan than San Francisco. It’s design-meets-risk-analysis-meets-anthropology. Sort of.

If all this sounds a bit mysterious, well, Jan’s work isn’t something he tends to shout about. (Bloomberg profiled him in 2016, though he generally keeps quiet). We’ve stayed in touch since Lisbon and I’ve enjoyed following his adventures and projects, from raising $336,000 on Kickstarter to fund his superb Field Study Handbook, to launching SDR Traveller (and a bag that can hold $1m in cash), to leading expeditions in Afghanistan, involving brushes with the Taliban.

I’m so happy Jan agreed to talk with me for Desire Paths about his career and life—him from his beautiful home in Japan, and me from my new home in London.*

It’s a long one but a good one, so open this in a new browser tab, pour a big cup of coffee… and enjoy.

Subscribe now

Hello again, Jan! So… where are you from?

The UK. Wembley of all places. German mother, British father, and I moved to Brighton in my teenage years. Brighton is where I got the travel bug, seeing all the foreign tourists coming in. I was a terrible student, but at age 15 my school offered a small stipend for a project. I wanted to go to Egypt, so they gave me and a friend a tiny amount of money. That was my first solo trip abroad. We went right up to the Sudanese border. It lasted five weeks and we lived on a few dollars a day.

An incredible trip for a teenager.

It sparked things in me that have lasted a lifetime: being immersed in other cultures, being comfortable seeking out stimuli. And as part of that process, you tend to go through periods of discomfort, whether cultural, physical or mental.

What happened next in life?

I failed my university exams the first time I took them. Had to redo a year. I failed German and I’m half German. My parents were nudging me towards doing something that would take me out of whatever cycle I was in, so I went to Berlin and lived with my uncle and aunt. Got a job in a restaurant, then returned to the UK, redid my exams and got into one of the worst universities in the UK, which no longer exists.

It was only in my twenties, when I got a master’s degree, that I realised I might be good at something that I also enjoyed, which was design. I got a job developing software for teaching and moved to Bristol. I bought an apartment, which I still have, in the servant’s quarters of a 150 year-old building, and at a dinner party there, my flatmate brought a friend. That turned out to be the woman I’d marry. It took me on an entirely new and wonderful journey. It’s such a life force to be with someone who you amplify and who amplifies you.

Indeed. And it took you to Japan… 

Yes. In the early 2000s, Japan was more or less at the forefront of physical interaction of objects. Sony was producing these amazing, tangible UIs. And so we went to Japan, where I did remote consulting. After about nine months I would have had to leave the country and come back in to retain the visa. So I thought, fuck it, I’ll apply for a job instead. So I applied at Nokia. I didn’t even own a cell phone. I was hired as a usability engineer. I don’t want to say I was useless, but I was surrounded by so many other talented people who were patient and kind.

What was your real skillset as a designer at that point?

User interface design. And probably 70% of those skills today would appear in a UX design course. It’s not just about the layout of things—a lot of it is around psychology and interaction. Honestly, I’ve designed some things, but I don’t think of myself as a designer. When one is surrounded by people who are just so obviously better than one at a thing, one hesitates to call oneself that thing!

The word ‘design’ is a bit amorphous though: industrial design, graphic design, design thinking for businesses. So you were in Japan, at Nokia, with all these talented people around you...

And I learned how to do things in the way that the company did them. But in my spare time, I would go out and do field research. Nobody asked me to do it. I kind of got away with it in the beginning. And I started writing. This was when Movable Type was emerging. For the first three years I wrote complete rubbish. I tried different formats. I’d explore. The details of what I was doing in the research lab were highly confidential, but after about three years I started writing things like, So, I’m in India and here are the things I’m thinking about. Nokia was a vibrant, growing company. Someone on the inside, writing about it and engaging an audience, was attractive to many people. Learning how to write and what it means to build an audience that’s willing to engage in what one writes is such a great life skill.

And you’ve since written a few books, including Hidden in Plain Sight and The Field Study Handbook. Got any more up your sleeve? 

Yes, I’m working on a new book and I’m about two years in. I think it’s about organisational sensemaking and how humans make sense to the world. I’m writing this in a time of very rapid change, particularly with generative AI and other forms of AI and computational processing. As part of my research, I’ve been going back and looking at linguistics and a whole bunch of other things. One of the questions I circle back to every so often is Will we ever live in a post-literate world? There was a time before literacy, of course. There’s a fantastic book I’ve got here, called How Writing Came About by Denise Schmandt-Besserat.

We’re talking pre-cuneiform, pre-hieroglyphics?

Exactly that. It’s about how archeologists and anthropologists made the connection between what were essentially clay lumps that they would find scattered all around Iraq and Mesopotamia and linking them to clay envelopes which had scratchings on the outside. Essentially, a trader in one village would give a clay envelope to a trader in another village, and it was secret what was inside. The person would crack open the envelope, count the lumps, and would be, like, Okay, I’m getting everything that I should get. But that’s relatively inefficient, right? Instead, you could put markings on the outside. That was how cuneiform came about, and the first systematic use of writing, which became a language system. It’s a wonderfully unpretentious book. I would love to write an equivalent of that. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me.

So now you’re wondering if we’re dismantling all that literacy and devolving into a post-literate era. A world of emojis and grunts?

I’m interested in that, yes. At Nokia I was lucky enough to work with some fantastic researchers on projects that sought to answer the question: Should we design a phone for illiterate people? But we realised the question was wrong. The better question is: What level of competency is required to complete the things that you want to complete? Literacy is just one tool.

For example, you could have an illiterate person who could use a phone to make and receive calls, and even receive messages, but they can also go to a corner store or a neighbour to ask, Can you translate this for me? And so the binary idea of literate or illiterate is messy. You can have a kind of social literacy, which, in a community with high levels of illiteracy, is having a person who you can ask to translate something in the same way that you might 15 years ago ask someone the time.

And I imagine AI and voice recognition will completely change the game.

Yes. Is there a point where being able to make sense of words and letters and the skills that we associate with textual literacy—as opposed to some kind of technical literacy or literacy for a particular domain like marketing—is no longer required to survive or even thrive in society, because the tools enable us to move beyond that? Don’t get me wrong: I love words and books. But I think we might get to that point where literacy is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have. And yes, you could say, Is that really where we want to go? Think of what will be lost. But history has shown that other forms of creation exist and what we appreciate as societies changes as well. Anyway, it’s a big and fascinating topic!

I’d love to talk about your consultancy. How did you get from Nokia to setting up something of your own? What was the journey?

Sure. I eventually became a ‘principal scientist’ at Nokia, which sounds grand, but it’s a relatively junior position in the corporate hierarchy. But because I’d had a lot of media exposure for my research, I’d also been exposed to things like being on stage with the CEO. So I moved to LA, leaving Tokyo for the first time since starting my corporate career, and I was headhunted relatively quickly. I was asked by Mark Rolston of Frog if I would build a global insights organisation. I spent so much time travelling, learning how consultancy worked at that scale, and learning from so many talented colleagues. But I also burned out after four years. So I left. And I decided to take a year off as a sabbatical. 

And during that period, the seeds of Studio D were planted. How would you describe Studio D? What’s the mission statement?

We don’t have a mission statement. Actually, I don't think I’ve ever pitched in 10 years. All of the work has been pretty much inbound. When I left Frog, a colleague and really smart strategist said that when you start your own thing, you’ve got a window of about three years before you really need to figure out how to position it. And every year for a decade I remember that conversation and thinking This is the year!

Studio D’s sweet spot is a large tech client—often with billions of customers—that wants to understand something happening in multiple cultures that affects their business. For example, their platform is being abused by a particular thing or group of people, at scale. The work often involves standard ethnographic research, but we also look into things that stretch over into illegality or legal grey areas. We figure out how to do these projects in a way that’s respectful of the communities we’re in, and respectful of the people who are doing the illegal stuff as well, so that they’re willing to trust us and give us insight. It’s all grounded in a strong ethical stance. And then we deliver something of value to the client.

Are you pulling from different disciplines or inventing your own?

I don’t think anyone today is doing anything particularly unique. The question is just how long the practice has been going for. We do a lot of ethnographic research, so there’s obviously a few centuries or more of practice to draw on. What’s different is we’re working for large corporations. Think about how they function, the things they worry about, the things they do, and the things they can be seen doing. For example, if somebody is abusing a platform that has hundreds of millions or low billions of users and they acknowledge that there are problems on the platform, they can get a lot of political heat. So they need someone who can discreetly research it, recognizing that there are many legal grey areas. Just to be seen to be trying to address a thing, well, the blowback can be significant. 

How do you set up each project in a practical sense?

I’ll hire a core international team of 2-5 people and an equivalent number for each country we’re in. That wasn't so common when we started. At the time, the default was you build a studio and make a few hires. I didn’t know if you could build teams on a per-project basis. But it turns out, yes you can and still deliver world-class results, but with fewer headaches. We rent a large house for each project and everyone lives together. We call them pop-up studios. Is that unique? No. Is it unique in a corporate sense, bringing a cross-cultural team into a state of flow? I would say, resolutely, yes. And the model works very well.

What’s the pace at which you take on clients, normally?

We don't take on more than three projects in a year. And I love that. You can do that and still impact at meaningful scale. I’m thinking of a project for one of our tech clients. Within three months they had changed their regulatory stance on an issue worldwide, and changed the design of certain applications that affected more than a billion people.

Alright let’s talk Afghanistan. You’re leading expeditions there. Why?

I was lucky enough to work on various projects in Afghanistan, pre-Taliban takeover. And a while back, I did a 7,000km overland trip through China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, to the border of Afghanistan. I decided to get to know a region far better. A region I would invest in returning to many times. One that was personally interesting and potentially strongly misconstrued because of how it appears in the media. And to possibly support the socioeconomic development of a region in a way that aligns with my values and my skills.

When we put The Field Study Handbook on Kickstarter, the goal was $30,000. One of the stretch rewards was that if we hit $200,000 or so, I would offer an expedition: Come with me to Afghanistan! That reward cost $10,000—the maximum amount you could set on Kickstarter. I thought: Nobody’s going to sign up for this. Well, we ended up raising $336,000. The ‘risks’ section on that project was something else. And then I thought, Oh, okay, I’m guess I’m in the expedition business now…

Our first expedition was in 2018—there were five of us. In 2019 there were 8. In 2020 we had 35 people ready to go on six expeditions and a little thing called the pandemic hit, so we cancelled everything and refunded everyone. In 2022, I went to Pakistan and thought I’d cross the border, but that wasn’t possible for me. And we back last year—you probably saw our trip report.

What’s the purpose of going there, though? What are you trying to do?

There are brilliant companies, such as the British outfit Untamed Borders, that have been taking people into Afghanistan for years. It might sound exotic to go to somewhere like that on holiday, but there is actually a tourism industry that supports this, run by people with a lot of experience.

Our main aim is to support the socioeconomic development of the region by trying to encourage appropriate tourism in the region, which aligns broadly to what locals want. The money that one person spends is probably enough to support four or five families for a year in terms of what they spend locally, if the money is equitably distributed. And so when I talk of appropriate tourism, it's really about paying the people who do the work and spending locally. So we’re working on a trekking map where we’re logging trail routes. At some point, there could be too many people going into that region, but you are years away from even having to go down that route. I think in 2019 there was something like 500 people who went into that valley system. Most of them went in cars, probably maybe 40 went trekking. 

But there’s another aim, which is, at a higher level, that I want everyone who comes to understand what it takes to plan something like this. And this is where we differ from tour companies. We’ve got a WhatsApp group where we’re planning, spreadsheets and documents where everyone is contributing. I’d love for everyone that participates to be able to run a similar challenging expedition anywhere in the world. Not that they would know everything, but they would at least have a process in place.

‘Life-changing’ is thrown around a lot – i.e. backpacking around southeast Asia – but I imagine it’s particularly appropriate in Afghanistan.

The biggest takeaway for most people isn’t the trek or riding on a yak or watching buzkashi, the headless goat polo-esque game, or the physical exertion of being at high altitude, or all these fascinating conversations they have. The biggest thing people take away is internalising the idea that their life and wellbeing—and the wellbeing and life of the people around them—is their responsibility. There is nobody coming to rescue you. There’s no insurance that covers you when you’re there. Some people get really freaked out by the idea that you can't just call someone to figure a thing out. The beauty of being there is that you have to figure out how to manage that emotionally. I love seeing people go through a metamorphosis and emerging as something different. You should come, Danny! What are you doing in August?

I’d love to one day. Give me another year! Your last trip took place after the Taliban re-takeover. How did that work?

That was definitely a question: is it smart to continue doing this? If we finish the mapping this year, we’ll distribute printed maps gratis to the stakeholders so they can use it to generate revenue and encourage tourism. Once that’s done, I have to figure out what to do next year. Do I go back or explore another mountain range? I mean… I honestly have to see what the Taliban make of all of this. Last year there were a lot of questions, like Who's paying you to be here? I didn’t even tell them about the mapping project. Even pre-Taliban, the plan wasn’t to talk with the government, but just with the local communities. But at some point there will be an artefact and I’ll speak to an official and get their take on it. I’m curious how they’ll receive it. That will be the next big challenge. As a foreigner who’s a citizen of the country they were at war with, going up to borders and pottering around, there’s an inherent suspicion, as there would be in any country.

In our last trip, we went through about 27 checkpoints. At most of them they’ll wave you through. Sometimes they’ll ask lots of questions. Up in the Wakhan, there were two patrols and one of them had quite a senior Taliban official with them. Two technicals, big guns. Then an hour of suspicion, followed by tea, followed by We just killed a goat, do you want to join us for the evening?, followed by a two-hour conversation, kalashnikovs and RPGs against the wall. One of them leaned over, and said, through a translator, Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? What’s life like in Japan? Certainly a bizarre situation. I was expecting more dogma, yet so many of the interactions were driven by curiosity. It’s really difficult to square that with what we understand about Taliban policy such as female education and religious persecution.

One last one: been down any rabbit holes recently?

There’s a framework which I really enjoy, which is Armstrong’s 12 stages of life. I’m 54, though sometimes I feel 94, and occasionally I feel 24. But I have a 14-year-old daughter and I love seeing things through her eyes. She’s the most important thing in the world to me, and the researcher in me is constantly asking what mindset and ways of approaching things would be most useful to equip her with. How can I amplify the innate curiosity that’s within her and take it to the next level?

The 12 stages of life is a model that says there are certain life stages and as you get older, these stages get longer. I found this to be a useful model to reflect on motivations: what is important to me as a 54-year-old as opposed to a 44, 34, 24 or 14-year-old? I’m not suggesting this is the only model or it’s accurate for all cultures and people, but it’s interesting to recognize how motivations change over a lifetime. 

In what sense?

In my early twenties I had no idea what I wanted to do. In my thirties I discovered that I could be paid to do a thing. And in my forties I realised all of this chaotic travel that I did in my twenties—lots of long trips, to Nicaragua and other places—formed insights into how to go off the beaten path; to follow my own desire path in a way.

And now in my 50s, I’m working on my book. When you’re two years into writing a book, people think you're going to have an artefact at some point, and honestly I can’t even see that horizon. I’ll probably research and write for another three years and try and figure out what I want it to be. And that’s okay. I love being in this life stage and having the financial freedom from years of hard work to not have the pressure to figure that out. To be able to ask bigger, deeper, thornier, societal-level questions. 

You’ve arrived at Armstrong's 10th stage, benevolence! That's 50 to 80 years old. A mighty big span if you ask me…

While these models are lovely and they may work for a whole bunch of people in some places, every society has compressions and contractions. Like Japan—the model stops at 80 years old! Actually, I used this model on a project once, and since some of our cohort were Buddhists, we added a 13th stage: resurrection.

GO DEEPER… Jan’s site // Studio D // Masterclasses // The Field Study Handbook

Want to go on the next Afghanistan expedition in August?

—

*I began writing Desire Paths immediately after moving to LA, after 12 years in London, in the hopes of a fresh start. I’m writing this having just moved back to London, 18 months wiser and a lot tanner. Why? LA holds many wonders, but London’s more our speed. I regret nothing. If anything, this newsletter has proven that life is all about the twists in the journey.

—

Onwards and upwards,

I loved it. Loved their clothes. Loved their mission. Loved how Erik and Amanda had highly demanding day jobs, yet still found the energy and passion to put something exciting and creative into the universe. I loved it all so much that I interviewed them for Courier. We visited them at their house in Portland and did a full-blown photoshoot. We even put them and their cute dogs* on the cover of the magazine.

A lot has happened since then. A pandemic. The rise of work from home. A queen died. AI ascended. People lost their life savings on monkey JPEGs. And as for Erik and Amanda, they grew their family, moved from Portland to a farm with some goats and sheep, and launched even more projects and businesses.

Below, Erik and I reconnected for a deep talk about…

• balancing ambition with family life

• figuring out the things that matter most

• finding inspiration in your backyard

• and a whole lot more

As ever, I’d love if you subscribe, share with a friend, leave a comment, or let me know what you think. Enjoy.

—Danny

Subscribe now

Erik, you guys left Portland! Where are you now?

We moved out to the country! To a little town in the National Scenic Area along the Columbia River Gorge. We left Portland for a few reasons, mostly related to kids and safety and school districts. Now we’re literally in the country. We have mountain lions. We saw a big elk on our way to get fuel the other day.

Incredible. The first thing that drew me to you and Amanda is how you manage to run Ginew alongside incredibly demanding careers as doctors – and now also as parents. What’s changed?

Back then, we were still using the first level of our home as Ginew’s shipping area and office. One night, when Amanda was eight and a half months pregnant, we packed up over a hundred bandanas, because bandanas were selling like crazy in 2020. After, she was like, That’s the last time we do that. We had to get the business out of our home. So we rented a small portion of a warehouse space. It was a big shift because we couldn’t just go downstairs and work. We had to be more intentional. Then we had our first child, in a pandemic, and it was just wild. Our focus became more on being parents. Trying to navigate this path of guiding a new human in the world and preparing them for a future that we don’t even know yet.

This was also during Covid, and you were, and are, a doctor…

Yeah, I got repurposed as a Covid provider. People don’t really talk about this stuff as much anymore, but 2020, pre-vaccine, was really rough. We take it for granted that we have these protective measures now, but we didn’t really have them then. We were super isolated. But it reaffirmed in our own lives a focus on what’s most important to us. Family. Each other. Our community. 

So many business founders pay lip service to that stuff, but then prioritise other things.

Here’s the thing. I’m in a lot of spheres. I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with billionaires, people who have built big businesses and sold them. And the story is always the same. If they have kids, after they get successful they’ll say, Now I can make up for lost time with my spouse and children. But they’re telling themselves a lie. You can’t make up for lost time. It’s that intense founder energy where the idea, the brand, the business, the financial potential is all that matters, and everything else suffers. I don’t want to live like that. I never want to be that person.

When they’re 85, they’ll be happy they maximised shareholder value! No, but seriously… carpe diem. Don’t delay living your life.

Yes. At this point in our lives, nothing is worth the price of missing dinner and bedtime with my family. There’s an opportunity cost and I’ve made a value decision there, which will no doubt cost me from climbing some corporate ladder. But I’ve let it go, you know what I mean? Did I go to Paris this year for the shows? No. People will say, But this could be huge for your company! And I’m like, Sure, but let it be huge for somebody else. I’m okay with that.

You don’t always have to be on the cover of Forbes.

And many of those people are so unhappy, I’m telling you.

Sure. And that unhappiness is something people should talk more about. I've interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs and I’m always much more interested in their struggles and failures than happy success stories.

Everybody wants to focus on the successes, the geniuses, the lightning in a bottle. But those are weird narratives. Because the road to excellence is paved in failures and iterations. Michael Jordan spent a lot of time in the gym!

Did this perspective take time to develop? Earlier in your career did you want to conquer the world?

I just didn’t have so many people relying on me back then. At my day job, I now lead a team of around 55 people. They need me to be good at that. At Ginew, we’ve got a team of around 10. They also need me to be good at that. I don’t need to conquer the world. It’s funny, I was in my 20s when I realised I was never going to visit every country. I used to want to go everywhere, see and do everything. Then I realised I’d rather go deeper in the places and activities I enjoy. The spaces that impacted me and which I’ve impacted. Amanda and I are now some of the most well-known American Indian and Alaska Native health workforce development people in the world. That’s what we do. And we make a difference there.

And what difference are you trying to make with your brand, Ginew?

I’m pretty sure Ginew is the only American Indian or Alaska Native lifestyle brand in the world for both men and women. We’ve been doing this for 14 years. That’s crazy to say, man. Most brands last three seasons and they’re dead. I think the reason we’ve been able to hold onto this space is because there’s an impact to what we’re doing. It’s important for people to see that American Indian and Alaska Native people exist beyond 1887. That we’ve been a part of every major movement that has ever existed in this country. That’s not a preachy thing, it’s just reality.

Like, Jimi Hendrix was deeply immersed in the Native community that his family were leaders of in the Seattle area. Style icons like Brando, McQueen, James Dean, Janice Joplin, they were hanging out with Native people and their style was highly influenced by that wellspring of culture.

Do you know that popover shirt where the top third is cut or buttoned down? That’s a Native designed shirt and was the most popular top in North America, pre-1492. When European folks came over, they were like, Holy shit, look at that shirt. And then the Native people saw the fabrics the Europeans were using, and they merged it all together. Those sorts of things get lost on people. 

On the other side of that spectrum, there’s an obsession or fetishisation of Native American motifs in fashion – in workwear, western wear, some Japanese brands, etc.

For us, it’s important to just be authentic. We don’t go out there and pretend. We’re just contemporary American Indian people. Other people might paint big dramatic stories or whatever. But our stories are: farmer, logger, welder, homemaker, cook. It’s just very different. You see what I mean? 

And how has business been for Ginew these past four years?

My god, it’s changed so much.

In what sense?

In 2019, we were mostly a wholesale business. We had stores in Japan and Europe and a sprinkling in the US. The stores were ordering enough stuff that 80% of our business was wholesale and only 20% was direct. That’s completely flipped.

Wow, why?

So many shops are struggling at the moment, which is sad. It’s been a hard thing for us to swallow this year. Seven shops placed big orders with us, then said, We don’t have enough money to pay you. These are great shops, some of the best in the industry. So we’ve since gone more direct-to-consumer. The customer now gets to interact with us more and learn the Ginew story from us, rather than through a middleman.

How do you prioritise what you work on on any given day?

We don’t have it figured out. Every week we’re learning. Some weeks we do it better, and some weeks we’re like, That didn't go too well, let’s change it up. On Friday, I got back from a work trip. I wasn’t feeling great yet I had a bunch of work to do for my day job. But I called in sick and took time for myself. Both my kids were sick too. So I stayed home and took care of two sick kids, hung out with two dogs, and made sure the sheep and goats got in and out. That was our day. It may not sound sexy, but it’s about prioritising things. That’s where balance comes in. Either you can or can’t. If I just pushed through, I would have failed at everything.

The big difference between me five years ago and me right now is I’m not working nights and weekends. I’m not sending emails to my team at 11pm and again at 4am. I’m not squeezing in a quick trip to LA every four weeks. It’s better for everyone and it’s better for the brand. It’s just about working smarter, not harder.

This is a common outcome from the pandemic, too. Lots of people had a revelation that their life was unsustainable. Now they’re experimenting with new ways of living. You guys left Portland, were in the deep shit of Covid as doctors, and learned so much about who you are and what you want to do. These things change you.

As a doctor, you’re trained to help people. To give medicine to fix them. But there were moments I felt so helpless. There’s a lot of competing narratives out there about what Covid was like. I don’t care what any politician or conspiracy theorist says—those of us who were in the hospital system know what it was like. That feeling of, I trained for years but I just watched somebody melt away and die. They were just talking to me 45 minutes ago. I’d never experienced anything like that before. 

And here’s the real kicker. Portland has had real problems with fentanyl and drug overdoses. And since 2020, overdoses have accounted for more deaths than Covid. And I’m telling you, man, a lot of people died from Covid here. Yet more people are dying from overdoses on the street. That’s sobering shit.

Life is short. Instead of looking ahead all the time, don’t forget to savour the beauty of the moment you’re having right now, even if it’s not perfect. Because one day you might look back and be like, Wow, that was the best moment in time.

What are some of those moments of beauty that have stood out for you?

I’ve been soaking up the wonder on our children’s faces. The pure bliss and joy and excitement. Every morning and night, when we let the goats and sheep into the pasture, my daughter and son are so excited. It’s like they can’t contain themselves.

Alright, time to talk about these goats and sheep… 

Right. So we bought a farm. The goats and sheep had been on the land for nine years. They’re old-ass goats and sheep. They keep the meadow down. We don’t eat them or anything. Their job is to eat down the blackberry bushes and the fields.

Love it. But also… it's yet one more thing you have to look after every day.

Sure, but it’s a pause for intention, right? I’ll tell you what, the past year since we moved out to this farm, we’ve seen more sunrises and sunsets than in maybe the past 10 years. We watch the sunset every single night without fail.

I hear you. The west coast is special. The mountains and coastal drives and otherworldly deserts. I’ve been around the block but never experienced that sort of natural beauty before moving out here.

Before you move back to London, soak up those periwinkle blues. Those west coast sunsets—I’ve never seen anything like that anywhere in the world.

What inspires you right now in terms of things you’re doing, stuff you’re working on, places you’re traveling to?

Our existence used to be about going places. We were based in Portland and we’d go to Baja, the Caribbean, Japan, Finland, Vancouver, London. And that has completely shifted. Now we’re like, How do we bring that inspiration back here? So Amanda and I are actually building an experience center at our house that corporations and people can rent. We’re also going to be doing indigenous-themed agritourism in the Columbia River Gorge. We want to share our farm, food ideas, connections. And we started a speaking consultancy called Daybreak.

That’s fantastic. What else are you spending your brain time on? Any rabbit holes you’ve gone down?

I’m been thinking a lot about the connection between the inside and outside. By that, I mean, how can you have a continuum of what you’re feeling in your heart, with what’s coming out of your mouth? Those things should be in alignment and in sync. Does that resonate with you?

Yes, 100%.

There’s even architecture that complements this idea. Have you seen those homes where the connection between inside and outside is as seamless as possible? It’s not an abrupt, jarring thing. A room connects to the outside deck, and it’s a smooth transition. I want that smooth continuum of inside and outside in my life, too.

Erik, it’s always a pleasure talking with you.

You too, Danny. This conversation reminded me of a story. I’ve got two rugged biker dudes who are friends of mine. They built choppers during the pandemic and dreamed up a 6,000 mile road trip. On their way back, they stopped and stayed at our house. I saw that one of them had a sticker on the tank of his motorcycle. At first, I thought it was going to be one of those ultra-self-reliant Don’t tread on me things.

Instead, it said: 

If you value your life as much as I value this motorcycle, that’s beautiful, man. Namaste.

*In memory of their beloved dog, Stinky Francis Bruegl Brodt ❤️

—

GO DEEPER… Shop Ginew // Instagram // Erik

—

Until next time,

It’s been a minute here in Desire Paths world.

The radio silence is mostly because Kim and I have been prepping a big move from Los Angeles BACK to London. Wild times.*

(*To recap: my formative years on Long Island, 12 years—mid-20s to mid-30s—in the UK, and a sunny, surreal gap year, ~18 months, by the ocean in Santa Monica.)

Gonna write a proper post on all this soon. (Spoiler: ❤️ a walkable city more than 24/7 sun.)

Until then, we’ve got a fantastic interview here in LA this week. In fact, it’s someone I’ve been meaning to interview for a long time now…

Subscribe to get access to interviews with the world’s most fascinating people. It’s 100% free.

Subscribe now

Meymuna Hussein-Cattan is the CEO and founder of The Tiyya Foundation. Tiyya has helped thousands of immigrant families, refugees and displaced indigenous people here in Southern California with critical services like job placements, training and housing.

In 2020 (during the pandemic), Meymuna, a refugee herself who came to the US as a kid from Somalia, launched a restaurant in LA called Flavors from Afar, which serves up dishes from a rotating crew of amazing refugee chefs.

It got listed as one of the top restaurants in LA.

It even got a Bib Gourmand nod from Michelin.

Half a year ago, I found myself at an evening fundraiser slash supper club in a half-constructed shell of a new restaurant—the future combined home of Tiyya and Flavors From Afar. I was invited as a guest (Kim’s been doing some great work over the past year with Meymuna on the marketing front.)

The food was incredible. And Meymuna, dashing around the room, having won seemingly every award under the sun, still manages to stay humble, grounded and focused on what’s next.

Here’s what she’s got brewing…

Glad this is finally happening, Meymuna. So where are you from?

Hey! I was born on a refugee camp in Somalia. My parents were displaced from war in Ethiopia. They were only children at the time—my mom was 12, my dad 15. They met on the camp and got married, and I was born there. I can’t imagine being that young and raising a child alone on the camp, let alone all the complications that happens with childbirth in those settings. My dad was resettled in the US first, and then we reunited with him a year later. I grew up in Orange County. I became the first woman in my family to graduate from high school.

Growing up, did you know much about your family’s background? Or were you shielded from it?

Definitely shielded. And I appreciated that, because I don’t think I would have known how to navigate American culture, trying to make friends, while also learning about all the trauma on top of that. My parents protected me from it. It wasn’t until I was 18 or so, when I created an email account, SomaliQueen360. My dad’s like, You’re not Somali! I said, But my sisters say they’re American citizens! I thought that you are where you were born. He’s like, Let’s talk. That’s how it happened.

What did you talk about?

Being refugees, being displaced, why they never went back to Ethiopia. My relatives especially worked hard to assimilate into Somali culture and identity. One, because it’s a Muslim country, so there’s a lot of shared festivities and customs. And two, it’s this childhood trauma of not feeling protected by your own government.

Did you always have an inkling you’d one day work with refugees?

My undergrad at UC Irvine was in multicultural studies and social sciences, then I got my master’s in organizational management. So I thought maybe I’d work in a museum or nonprofit or HR setting. I wanted to keep my options open, because there’s a whole lot of debt for a master’s degree.

But one day, my mom was like, Hey, I wanna start a nonprofit. Can you help me fill out these forms? And then, I don’t understand these bylaws, can you help me? And soon enough, Can you visit these families with me? She slowly made me a stakeholder. Everything unfolded organically.

We ended up doing speaking rounds on college campuses, which eventually triggered her PTSD. People are educated and inspired by my story, I remember her saying, but I’m the one who walks away with the memories and nightmares. So I had to make a decision: Do I drop this? Or do I play the long game and transform what we were doing into a proper organization?

You chose door number two. What did you want to build?

The way that immigrants and refugees are talked about, and the way humanitarian work is done, there’s this otherness. We wanted to make the topic of refugees and displacement more tangible. This wouldn’t be the normal nonprofit model where you try to make a lot of money really fast by showing images and stories about the problem. And that works, right? Because people need to feel connected. But you can’t do that if the refugees involved are your neighbors, or the people standing at the bus stop next to you, or shopping at the same grocery store. Instead, we needed to show that they’re a part of the fabric of our society.

Was it tough to get Tiyya off the ground?

I was 29 or 30 at the time, with no real experience in board development, nonprofit management or program design. I would apply for grants and people would ask, How long have you been around? We’re committed to people who can make it past three years. It was like, okay, now I’ve gotta go three years without income. What am I doing? I wasn’t made for that world. My world was put your head down, work hard, get that check, save your money, buy that house. That’s what I knew. So this was a risk. I wondered how it was going to affect my livelihood. 

The scariest part was a few years ago, when I was close to shutting Tiyya down due to budget concerns. I decided to give myself one last try. Just try it once more and do it your way. And I ended up embarking on this amazing journey of catering with refugee chefs, which turned into a brick and mortar in LA’s Little Ethiopia neighborhood, which totally revitalized the nonprofit, despite the pandemic. It created trust with the public, because now I had a storefront people could interact with, where they could celebrate and support these refugees. It turns out that at my lowest point, I made the best decision.

Lo and behold, Flavors From Afar claimed a spot as one of the top 101 restaurants in LA. How familiar were you with the restaurant industry?

Ha… I had almost zero experience in the restaurant world. I had a cashier’s job at Carl's Jr. when I was like 15 years-old and got fired after three months.

Perfect. What did you do wrong?

Probably something stupid. Maybe I said a bad word. My boss was like, You gotta go!

You're not cut out for this, kid. We’ve all had those jobs.

So I was really taking a chance with Flavors. I thought, just hire the people who know what they’re doing and we’ll be all right. So I did that. I had job descriptions of my dream team. And then I realized I needed to step up my game, because after the pandemic, one restaurant after another kept shutting down. Last year was one of LA’s worst for restaurants. I remember in April or May last year, I had to dip into the savings to cover payroll. We weren’t thriving financially. I thought, Okay, I need to pull the brakes now—to figure out a way where everyone’s love for Tiyya and their love for Flavors from Afar could be housed in the same place. 

And that’s resulted in you moving locations. You're now building out a new site in East Hollywood.

Yeah, when we were in Little Ethiopia, I actually didn’t have a restroom. If you needed the restroom as a guest, you had to go next door. Also, the parking was complicated...

Classic LA.

And I couldn’t get a beer and wine license because I didn’t have that restroom. I started off subleasing the kitchen for catering, then acquired front of house, but eventually realized I needed a bigger space. A space to build roots in LA, where I could host Tiyya’s program by day and be available for catering, private events or indoor dining. So I took the risk. And it’s good timing, because I’m wrapping up culinary school soon! Just a few more weeks left…

Wait, you’re in culinary school?

I’m all in.

Obviously. But… why are you doing that?

I didn’t know anything about nonprofits—so I jumped in and learned. Then I didn’t know anything about restaurants—so let’s learn what I need to learn. I want to be the boss who can go into the back and help with prep work. Who you can call on if you need support with grocery shopping. So part of my training now is in restaurant management. The restaurant world has its own mathematics—what you think is the market rate should not be your price if your rent is different from your neighbor’s, for instance. I’m learning all these things I just wasn’t privy to.

What else are you learning?

Part of graduation is doing an internship, so that’s been taking up a lot of time—25 hours a week on top of getting the restaurant ready and managing Tiyya. I’m with a catering company and the woman who runs it is so streamlined. My first assignment was helping out with a 900-guest event for a movie premiere. I put olives on sticks. It was great.

Like an assembly line? You're the olive person, then it moves to the cheddar cube guy?

Yeah, it was four days of prep, but the first day she made us do all the hard stuff. It got progressively easier. On the day of the event, you’re just assembling stuff. I thought catering for 900 people was impossible, but I watched it get done.

The classic immigrant stereotype is of a hard worker. Refugees even more so, because of what they’ve endured to build a new life…

Refugees are just doers. If somebody points us in the right direction, we’ll go, we’ll make it happen. Seeing people who were inspired by Flavors who now want to create their own business, their own catering service, who feel proud and celebrated and seen through the cuisines that we curate in partnership with them—that’s been awesome to witness. 

We’ll be running an 8-week course, 16 classes, onsite. The idea is to help folks who are passionate about cooking and the culinary world but who don’t really understand the business side of it. Helping with their food handling license, balance sheet, punctuality, communication, branding, social media. We’re inviting professionals in the culinary world to come in and do workshops to elevate the experience and to let people know they’re not alone. Often you’re in your head and you think something is harder than it really is. I do it all the time.

How do you balance everything? Work life, family life, personal life. 

I’m really lucky because my husband Shukry and I work together full time. We can still have walks with the kids in the morning, take our daughter to school, have lunch together, then chit-chat about work and game-plan our weekly schedule. That freedom is really helpful. 

How did you two meet?

At LAX, helping refugees! He was a case manager at a resettlement agency at the time, and he needed help resettling a family to Orange County. He had this itty bitty little car. My mom and I were still applying for our articles of incorporation back then, and we published a tiny website letting people know how to contact us. Through a referral, he heard about Tiyya. We met at the airport. Then he asked me out to lunch. I was convinced it was a work meeting! I brought my notebook and my pen. Now we’ve got two kids…

That’s funny. 

So from the outside, it looks like I’m doing a whole lot, but I’m supported. I have a cousin that helps with the kids, a husband I work with full time, a fantastic team, and a remarkable board of directors that helps with strategy, guidance and moral support.

Where do you see Tiyya and Flavors five years from now? What message do you want to share?

My big goal is to spread to other major cities. If we could make it in LA, we could do well in Chicago. We could do well in Miami. Just bringing that vibe of cultural celebration, food, and skills-sharing. Do you want to be helpful? Well, what do people need? Find housing for a refugee. Go to landlords and the owners of these properties and vouch for them. Wanna help a refugee? Give them a job!

❤️ MEYMUNA’S PICKS ❤️

1. Kids of Immigrants. They’re super cool. I love their apparel and that they’re making a conversation around immigration and refugees—and being a child of these environments—very tangible. Things like honoring your parents and commemorating how hard they’ve worked. They do it in a way that feels cool and authentic. I did a campaign with them, too. It was on my wishlist forever.

2. Issa Rae. Issa writes, produces, and has her own brand and TV show, Insecure. She’s phenomenal. I like how she makes being half-Senegalese seamless. Her approach is more, I’m in Senegal, I’m at the beach. Just like someone would be at the beach in Hawaii. There’s a normalcy to her travels and identity that I appreciate. 

3. East LA. My favorite LA neighborhoods are Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Los Feliz. I’m stoked our restaurant is now much closer to that side of town. Our supporters kept telling us that we’re moving closer to them, which makes me happy to know that the food scene here was paying attention to Flavors which was in Mid City. I’m also a big fan of Thai Town. There are a lot of mom and pop shops that have been there since the 70s and 80s. I call them old money because they’ve got the old leases. They’re super authentic. You always know the food is going to be good!

Go deeper… Meymuna // Tiyya Foundation // Flavors From Afar

Until next time…

Peter Buchanan-Smith has lived a wildly Desire Paths-worthy life.

He’s had jobs planting trees in Ontario and artificially inseminating sows (!) in Scotland. He was art director of the New York Times’ Op-Ed page on September 11th. Creative director of Paper magazine. Design director of fashion house Isaac Mizrahi. He, along with the great Maira Kalman, designed the illustrated re-issue of Strunk & White’s classic grammar book, The Elements of Style. Peter even won a Grammy for the design of A Ghost is Born, the best-selling (and excellent) album of Wilco.

But because careers tend to be unfairly distilled to a single project or gig, Peter’s probably best known for his company Best Made—which, if you know anything about it, you’ll probably remember as ‘the nice axe brand’.

But that’s being ungenerous. Because Best Made was so much more.

Founded in New York City in 2009, Best Made arrived at a time when 20-something city-dwellers were rediscovering age-old trades and pursuits. Gin-distilling, fly-fishing, workwear, beautiful tools. You probably remember this time well. I do. Having graduated college in New York in 2008, I was a sitting duck for this sort of stuff. It was a time when J.Crew turned an old bar in Tribeca into a cozy boutique called the Liquor Store. When Freemans Sporting Club on the Lower East Side was a mecca for a new kind of style. And mixed neatly into this cauldron of quality stuff was Best Made.

The spark for the company came when Peter and friends were hunting for a small axe to chop wood and could only find cheap plastic-handled ones. That market gap led to research, and obsession, and soon, a business.

Peter was gunning for Best Made to be a modern L.L.Bean—a new type of outfitter-slash-lifestyle brand. The products were beautiful, cat nip to a certain demographic, and its catalog was eclectic. Hand-painted axes made from American steel and Appalachian hickory? Yes, please. Thick totes and beautiful pocket knives? Sure. Enamel cookware? Haven’t camped, but why not?

I wasn’t the only fan. The company gained widespread support, a strong e-commerce presence, and opened brick-and-mortar stores in New York and in LA.

And that was its story for years.

And then… here’s what went down. In 2016, Peter sold Best Made to a curious company called Bolt Threads. The exit turned heads. (Bolt was then known for next-gen materials like spider silk). Peter eventually left the company for good, moving to a cabin in the woods. And Bolt soon sold Best Made to Duluth Trading, a gear company that’s more Target than Filson, where it remained a forgotten sub-brand and shell of its former self.

That is, until recently, when Peter announced he bought back Best Made:

Wait, what?

I gave Peter a ring to get the inside story. Enjoy!

—Danny

Hey Peter, let’s rewind a bit. Best Made was your baby. Why’d you leave?

Hey. I sold the business to Bolt Threads in 2016, and my contract essentially was to stay on for three years, at which point we would renegotiate it. I got to the end of those three years feeling like I’d never been more burnt out and ready for a change. 

Sometimes you can make those changes in the same place, but for me, and from conversations I had with Bolt, it became clear those changes weren’t going to be able to take place there. They were a Silicon Valley company that had completely different expectations for growth, which was to scale a lot faster and bigger than I think you can even possibly do in retail. I hear this a lot from more traditional companies that partner with, or were bought by, west coast companies. There were things I wanted to do that just didn’t make sense for them. And so I just took that as a cue.

I wasn’t planning on leaving New York City at that point. I didn’t really have a strategy for my life post-Best Made. But my girlfriend ended up leaving her job shortly after I left. We looked at each other and were like, What are we going to do? Why are we here? We’d both been in the city for a long time. We were paying a lot to be there. So we decided to move to the Catskills, where we’d been coming quite a bit. We had a cabin up here. So that’s where we moved. That was our life change.

And that’s where you wrote your book?

Best Made signed a book deal in the last six months I was at the company. And so I met with the publisher and gave them an option to cancel the deal—or to keep going with it, but it would be just me. Luckily they had faith in me. I don’t even think we’d finalized what the book was going to be, which made it a bit easier. But it became my love letter—or my thesis—on the axe. 

As you can imagine, when you start a company with an axe, you accumulate an axe library! And so there were a few books I loved, but I’d never found a book that was all-encompassing. A lot of them were quite old, and not many were told from a newer point of view. That’s the book I set out to write. It took about a year to do it. It came out at the height of the pandemic and sort of got lost in the shuffle. I wasn’t able to really promote it properly—not only because of the pandemic, but also it was harder than I thought not having the Best Made platform.

Yeah, in many ways your personal brand was tied up in the company you built.

Totally. When I left Best Made, I moved to the countryside, grew my hair long, grew a beard, and it felt like I was disappearing. It was like going into what I called witness relocation. In hindsight, that was a blessing and a curse.

As an entrepreneur I always have a thousand ideas, but throughout most of the pandemic my ideas stopped flowing. I was almost paralyzed: Where is the world going? Where do I belong in this? Are my ideas still relevant? It was like writer’s block—you don't even know where to begin.

But the pandemic was also a reset for many of us. It gave permission to unplug from a lot of ways of thinking and gain perspective. I lived in New York City my whole adult life, 25 years. And when I moved to the country, I realized those 25 years were spent just hustling and going all-out, full tilt. Just doing, doing, doing. I never really had the opportunity to just be. To get off that treadmill.

The irony is that as you were getting off the treadmill, the products that Best Made popularized were more relevant than ever. People were going into the wilderness. Slowing down. Using handmade things.

That’s true. That’s obviously a really good thing. It’s kind of weird that I wasn’t able to be there to be part of that conversation and continue fostering it.

When you left Best Made, you said “Who’s to say that somehow I’m not going to end up back there someday? Stranger things have happened.” Was that an offhand comment or can you somehow predict the future?

I’m definitely prone to never saying never! When we closed the deal, the lawyer who helped me sell to Bolt said you wouldn’t believe how many times he’s seen someone sell their company only to buy it back—and then even sell it again and buy it back again. I was really rooting for Duluth. I didn’t want to see it squandered or run into the ground or any of that. I wanted it to succeed. I can’t blame Duluth, but I don’t think Best Made could have ever really succeeded under the umbrella of a large corporation like that.

So when Duluth called you and said they were looking to sell it back to you, was that completely out of left field?

Completely. When I was at Best Made, Duluth wasn’t in the picture. I left Best Made, then maybe 6 months later Bolt sold it to Duluth, so I had no overlap with Duluth. When Duluth bought the company, it kind of went into dormancy for another six months. And then it was rereleased. I sat on the sidelines for a while, watching, and then eventually I put it all behind me. I started working on my vest project, learning to sew, and focusing on apparel.

I was literally in production on the vest this past summer when I got the call from Duluth. They wanted to know if I was interested in bidding on Best Made. And I said… yes! To make a long story short, I got it. The deal closed in November.

I'd love to know who else they approached…

I would be so curious. I don’t know if you or I will ever find that out.

So you’ve got it back now. It's been a few months. I know you're not trying to rush into churning out products for the sake of it. So what are you thinking about? Does it change every day?

It was changing every day for a bit, but now it’s go-time. I don’t want to give too much away yet, other than it’s going to be a small start. I’m not bringing on investors or big money or anything like that. It’s going to be organic, self-funded. I’m so convinced that’s the only path to success with Best Made. Unless something big changes, then I need to be at the helm. If I have to hand over the reigns too quickly, it’s just not going to work.

In terms of product, I haven’t finalized a plan. We’re sort of waiting on bids and things from vendors. I don’t think there are going to be any surprises—maybe some—but my goal is just to get the plane airborne. To get the business back up on its feet in the healthiest possible way.

Any other hints?

Some big questions for me would be, for example, apparel. We did some amazing apparel at Best Made, but starting apparel alongside hard goods and accessories is almost like starting an entire second business. I’m oversimplifying, but it’s so hard to do. I also think there are some really exciting models of how apparel is sold and marketed online nowadays that enable us to do apparel differently than we did before. I want to do all products well, but to me, there’s no product that demands you take a further step back to reevaluate how you do it than apparel.

I imagine learning how to sew during Covid really gave you a better perspective, too. Just like making a chair would allow you to appreciate carpentry better.

Yeah, oh my god. Sewing was so transformative for me. My mom is a master seamstress. And because she’s so good, it always intimidated me. If you’d asked me a few years ago what is the hardest thing I could imagine doing, it would probably be sewing. A really good friend of mine was a designer at Best Made, and he and I were in touch throughout the pandemic. This is a guy who always has so many incredible projects going at once. And many of them are sewing. I got kind of envious, especially of his sewing machine, which he would wax on about endlessly… 

Was it like a hundred year old Singer?

Exactly. And that’s what I ended up getting. That was my entry to sewing—almost falling in love with the machine first. Sewing machines are such incredible, crazy devices. And from there I realized hey, wait a second, I’m actually not bad at this! But more importantly, I really enjoy it and have patience for it. So I kept making things. That’s the beauty of any kind of handcraft—it ultimately just shuts your brain down on a certain level. You go into a flow state and before you know it, your problems just work themselves out. That’s something I’d lost touch with at Best Made. My job became very cerebral. I lost touch with my hands, ironically, at a brand that really prided itself on using your hands and reconnecting with them. And so sewing was my entryway back, which I feel like will be a very big part of the next Best Made.

Do you think of Best Made as the same company it once was? Or are you doing mental gymnastics where you're like, OK, it's called Best Made, it's still me, it's still the same spirit and philosophy, but it's somehow new.

It’s tricky. I certainly don’t want to be nostalgic. But the hard part is that we now have this legacy, even though it’s not even 15 years old. We have this incredible back catalog and tradition that I feel has to be respected. But at the same time, it’s like, I need to evolve this. Doing something relevant is my priority. What’s the point otherwise? And I think relevance implies something that is new to a certain extent. For me, it’s all about being a good storyteller. Not about keeping people on the edge of their seat, but being honest and true to what’s happening and giving people the transparency they deserve.

That's why you’ve got your new email newsletter. And why you're posting more on social?

I was always intimidated by social media, especially putting myself in front of the camera. I was much happier as the guy behind the curtain. But when I was negotiating to get Best Made again, I had to accept that my role was going to have to be very different because times had changed. I’m not in a position where I can outsource my social media. I knew it was something I had to personally take on and become that public-facing figure. I was terrified going into it. But now I feel much more comfortable about putting myself out there. That’s something I never really had at Best Made. It’s so incredibly valuable in these early stages to have that connection with my customers and the community.

In the months since you bought it back, Best Made's Instagram feed has gone from lifestyle images to very personal videos and photos from you. It's not workshopped to death. It's more human.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. It’s real.

And you have the luxury of having already built a community over the years. You're not starting from scratch, per se. People know Best Made. Does that give you some comfort?

We’re starting from scratch in terms of inventory, but yes, our community is there. And in fact, I would say the community is almost there more than ever. Because we all, myself included, feel like we lost Best Made for a minute, and now that it’s back, we’re going to clutch onto it even closer. 

This is my lifelong project now. I’m not building this to sell it in five or ten years. This is it. And so I have the luxury of time, in a sense. Everything will get done in its own good time.

It reminds me of a patch you sewed onto the inside of your vest that says All Good Things Must Start.

That was a mantra I loved when I was creating my vest. It goes back to that sort of writer’s block I spoke about. When you’re sitting with an idea in your head for long enough, it can easily get overwhelming. But if you step back, you’ll realize nothing else matters unless you actually just start the thing.

Go deeper… Peter’s IG // Best Made’s IG // Peter’s archive site // Best Made’s site // Sign up to Peter’s newsletter

—

Until next time…

I first met Raihan Anwar, as so many friendships begin these days, on the internet. Where? I don’t remember. (Instagram friend-of-a-friend? Comments section of an obscure forum?). Since then, I’ve been astounded by all the projects, businesses and communities Raihan’s launched or grown. He’s a guy with his finger in 50 pies. Artist manager. Strings-puller of the hugely popular web3 community Friends With Benefits (profiled in The New Yorker, New York Times, GQ, and Courier). Coffee expert. Fragrance designer. E-comm man-about-town. Co-founder (with his mom!) of an incense import-export business located—literally—on LA’s Skid Row.

A Desire Paths-worthy guy if there ever was one.

Raihan and I met up at Neuehouse Venice, in LA, for lunch and a winding chat about…

• his fascinating career

• his current obsessions

• his favorite brands

• why he’s forever curious

Enjoy 🚀

Also: Sorry for the giant gap between posts. Life’s been BUSY. Changed jobs—left Courier and am now officially & happily at Mailchimp as editorial director. Spent time with the in-laws in Paris. Attended a pow-wow and drove ATVs in the desert. Explored Atlanta. Other minor dramas and life logistics. I promise, though: there is a timeline in this universe where I’m good at staying on track with this newsletter. And I’ll find it.

Raihan, my friend. Let’s start at the beginning. Where’d you grow up?

My folks moved here from Bangladesh. My dad was in his mid-twenties and my mom was in her late teens or early twenties. They’ve been here since the eighties. A lot of the Bengali diaspora in the US, especially in California, starts in Koreatown. It’s really interesting to see a certain socioeconomic verticality. Some Bengali folks in the 70s bought apartment buildings and, as a result, made it easier for people to have affordable rents when they first moved here. It’s the typical immigrant experience: people help people find jobs: gas stations, 7-11, whatever. And they go from there. My folks worked their way into doing administration for a law office, and running kind of a nascent web 0.5 startup in the 90s. I remember running around and bugging everyone: What’s this? What’s that? 4-year-old Raihan asking about computers.

Is that what got you interested in tech?

Yeah, that was the start. It became my thing. Music, too. Growing up in Koreatown around then was delightful, because a lot of my friends were Korean and K-pop has always been in my life. Early, mid- and late-90s K-Pop... I remember all of that. I’ll talk to Korean people and be like, I really love H.O.T. and they’re like, Wait, what do you know about this stuff? If you know how to do LA you get immersed in this stuff hard.

And you ended up going deep into the music scene here...

Oh, one hundred percent. I grew up Muslim, so my folks would be really mad if they heard swear words in music. But guess what genre doesn’t have that problem? Electronic music! So I went hardcore into it. Drum and bass, dubstep, instrumental, hip hop, all of that. I spent all of middle school and high school going to shows, getting into that world. In high school, there was a club night called Low End Theory. I literally still have the membership card in my wallet. That was one of the best sounding rooms, in my opinion, anywhere in the world.

Low End Theory launched careers for people like Flying Lotus. This beat-driven, instrumental hip hop scene was super popular, super hot. You had everyone playing at this place on the outskirts of Chinatown and Lincoln Heights. James Blake, Thom Yorke. I would go there all the time throughout high school and undergrad. I built my rep just by being in the room with a lot of these people and being a huge nerd. 

And you turned it into a job. That’s cool.

Yeah, I went to undergrad at UC San Diego and I just kept booking my friends. At some point, my friends became relatively well-known; like, nominated for Grammys well-known. It was a right-time, right-place sort of thing. And once I graduated—with a degree in public policy and economics—I immediately came back up to LA and got back into the music scene. One of the first things I did involved tours. Booking agents we worked with were like, How should we route tours? Normally there’s a certain way of doing it: LA, New York, Chicago, and then secondary and tertiary markets. And I was like, What if we flipped it? What if we took illegal download data—this was pre-Spotify—then mapped all of it, then booked tours based on where people were actually downloading stuff? And it actually worked out alright!

You were also working in artist management too, right?

Yeah, I worked with clients like Shepard Fairey for a solid five or six years. My closet is probably the world's most unkempt art museum. We took care of the business side of things, matchmaking and dealmaking, taking care of whatever they need. You’re kind of the captain of the artistic ship in that way. I did that for a very long time. But my mom was like, So are you going to do something that makes money now?

That’s how you got into e-commerce.

I’d been doing it for my artists and I was comfortable enough with it. So I did a quick stint doing some coffee things for Go Get Em Tiger, then a recruiter from Breville reached out with an opening for a junior e-commerce role. I worked my way up extremely quickly and basically led e-commerce there for three years into the pandemic. But then I was like, Oh, I have a desk job. I don't know if I want to do this. So I applied to USC for my MBA, and that’s when the Friends With Benefits (FWB) stuff kicked off…

So at business school you witnessed all this crazy stuff happening in crypto – and saw a gap?

It actually comes back to music more than crypto. My buddy Trevor, who I’d known through music, was like, Yo, if you have a wallet, send me your address, I got you. He sent me 50 FWB. I was like, What’s FWB? Is this a sex thing? I hop into the Discord and there were like 10 people in there, and I knew six of them already from music. I was like, Oh, okay. Cool.

Our early mandate was: If you’re a creative person going through this pandemic, you couldn’t tour, artists couldn't put food on the table. So we were just like, if you’re curious about how DeFi—decentralized finance—works, holler at us, and we’ll take care of you. It’s almost half chat room, half consultancy. We’ll guide you into the unknown. Even as technology shifts, we’re there, right alongside you, making sure the biggest nerds can connect with the biggest artists and make cool stuff happen. 

Coming from the intersection of corporate and culture, if you let things go unchecked, all you get is boring stuff. Generally speaking, you’re in 25 meetings and someone’s web3 strategy is like, ‘We’re going to do a major televised event and people are going to scan their phones at this thing’. But no one’s going to see it and no one’s happy. Instead, we were like, we already know you as an artist, a musician, a painter, a sculptor. Come rock with us. We didn't think of it as a business in the first place.

But it quickly got a lot of media attention.

Oh yeah.

Did that make you think about it more as a business? Or did you still want to keep the community natural? Sometimes attention can kill things.

I mean, for me personally—and I’m not speaking for the rest of the team—at the time I still had a day job, I was still in school, and we were getting this heat. We thought we should have someone who can step in and function as a COO-type person, just to make sure that the momentum was there. That helped us take it more serious.

A lot of the tech world is forgetting about web3. VCs have taken their eye off the crypto ball a bit. NFT projects are down. AI is the sexy new thing. Thoughts?

I’ve always had very contrarian thoughts about web3 writ large. I don’t necessarily think it’s the future, insomuch as the future shouldn’t be hardcore financialized. If the only innovation we’ve added is this layer of ‘you can make more money off these things’, well, unfortunately money is a scarce and finite resource concentrated in the hands of the few. So is that really what we want? No. To use your expression, the eye being taken off the ball forces people to reckon with the fact that fewer people are now obsessed over this, so… what are we actually building?

And what are people building that you’re excited about?

ArtBlocks, a generative art platform, have been doing a yearly meet-up in Marfa and for anyone who’s art focused, you know why they’re there. I think they’ve done this for three years now. And it’s actually been growing. We’ve also done FWB Fest and had artists like James Blake, Caroline Polachek, some pretty heavy hitters. And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that this isn't just a simple paycheck for a lot of these folks. It isn’t that way for us, either. Because if you’re optimizing for attention, you start doing stupid shit. And we’re not in the business of doing stupid shit.

Okay – and you’re also, somehow, heavily involved in a fragrance business. How’d that happen?

Ha. The fragrance thing started immediately after undergrad. My mom was teaching at Cal State Northridge at the time. She’s no slouch, smart as heck, and was feeling burnt out. So in the few months before I got into the artist management stuff, we built this whole business doing importing and exporting of aroma chemicals and compounds, in Skid Row.

Why Skid Row, of all places?

My uncle helped us find a place and it was affordable! We didn’t realize it was going to be that much in the cut, but it was. I also didn't realize that 95% of my clientele would be Spanish-speaking. I took a year of Spanish in elementary school. So basically this was my education in learning how to speak Spanish. It was nuts.

And the business is basically importing fragrance chemicals?

Just all the stuff you would need to make fragrance, yeah. We didn’t buy or sell perfume or cologne or finished products. But if you needed limonene or a toner or an acetate, we got you.

You sell that to big brands and factories?

Factories or even people doing it locally. A lot of people want to make incense or candles. In the beginning, I’d walk down to the Macy’s on Seventh Street, or to the Aesop that had just opened, and I’d just kind of hang out and befriend all the clerks and take home a thousand dollars worth of free samples. Then I’d reverse engineer every single one. That’s how I got good at it.

So now you're really good at detecting patchouli and vetiver in things.

Oh, absolutely. If you’ve ever spent time at a good restaurant, every chef working there has taken produce off the truck and bit into it without washing it. Like, this is what it is. You have to have that level of familiarity. I think I can generally do that with perfume. There are obviously a billion exceptions.

I find fragrance fascinating. I generally want to smell like the Mojave Desert…

You’re a dry herbal kind of guy.

I happened to find myself in a few fragrance classes recently – one with Linda at Capsule Parfumerie in Chinatown in LA. And another in London with Maya Njie. They’re tons of fun. Your fragrance business is still going?

Yup, still going. Nothing stops. It’s been nice to devote a bit more time and energy to thinking about what direction I want to take it in.

What’s your next project? You gonna start a band? Move to Costa Rica? Launch a coffee business?

I have no idea. My time at Breville, oddly enough, has been one of the most grounding things for me. Because those folks are in the business of making stuff that people actually want. And if you’re not making something people give a shit about, hang it up. So, how can I make something that people want? How can I do so in a way that hopefully is fulfilling? A lot of the FWB stuff, thankfully, is still phenomenally fulfilling. It’s gone through a lot of ups and downs, but that energy has never changed. 

In terms of coffee, every once in a while someone will slide into my DMs and be like, Yo, I want to start the next big coffee brand. And I’ll say: coffee hardware or beans? They’ll say beans. I’m like, Oh, you’ve got to get SO good at this. Because it’s literally a matter of taste. My one flaming hot opinion is that most people running coffee brands today literally don't have a sense of taste. They’re just looking at unit economics and thinking it could be a business. And it could be! Just not a good one. Most people don’t make it past year two.

Your website name – constant.coffee – now makes sense.

That’s it. It goes back to growing up religious, too. I don’t really drink. As soon as I found good coffee, I was like, I’m going to make this my personality now. And I did.

What's your favorite cafe in LA?

Mandarin in Pasadena. Absolutely great.

And what about coffee hardware? How’s that different than basing a company on beans?

Hardware is even more difficult. The people I knew at Breville who were in charge of supply chain are some of the toughest motherfuckers you’ll ever meet. For them, the rejection rate for parts is really high. They take only the best. And so what happens when you have a really high rejection rate for parts, but you also need to manufacture units? Either sacrifices get made or you win them over. That’s why Breville is a brand with longevity. They were just in Businessweek, which is crazy.

I’d love to make something physical one day. Something that’s not esoteric or hard to explain to my grandma. Like… a camera bag company. 

One fun touch point I have is when things get too in the weeds about the spec sheet. A camera, for instance, can get so geeky. But does it take good photos? Often a person’s not interested in answering that question. Instead, they’re like, Here's our stats. Watches, too. People are like, ‘Oh my god, my watch movement.’ So many industries suffer from that spec sheet paralysis. The next thing I want to do, in whatever industry, is undo a little bit of that and just make something people want.

I don't know if it’s an age thing, but I'm increasingly obsessed with well-constructed physical objects. Shirts. Pocket knives. Ceramic mugs. Cameras. Objects that do a job incredibly well. Fewer better things.

At some point in your life, you hopefully know what better is. Because if you don't, you’re just throwing money around for no reason. You need to know why. I forget where I read this, but everything has two prices: there’s the literal price you pay and there’s the time-cost of learning why. I’ve been obsessed with that framework lately. 

I like that. You’ve called yourself a sensory maximalist. What’s that?

I obsess over how things feel. I love medical journals, where they look at how playing a certain sound or frequency will alter your taste buds, or alter your pain tolerance. Things are constantly changing in your body because of how your body reacts to other things. I love it because I’ll always take that back to my fragrance activities.

Have you watched the Grant Achatz episode of Chef's Table on Netflix? World-class chef, runs this restaurant called Alinea, multiple Michelin stars, yada, yada, yada. He gets cancer and they have to biopsy his tongue. And as a result of that, he can’t taste for six months. But he’s basically the Michael Jordan of flavors. So he, along with his team, made a quadrant, a grid, of flavors. He couldn’t taste, but he knew what was what. He basically made a generative engine of his own brain to come up with different flavor combinations. And he would give that to his sous chef to make a dish.

Like a map.

Yeah, like a map. I think about that a lot. Anyone working in perfumery sort of has a similar map in their head. Not all of us have the same classification for any given piece of raw material or aroma compound, but we can come to similar conclusions.

I guess it’s like wine, too.

Yup. The way people describe coffee is the way people describe weed, wine, fragrance, color to a degree. It’s interlinked. You need a vocabulary, otherwise you’ll have a hard time. Take Trent Reznor, one of my favorites. He’s basically classically trained—not formally, but I’ve seen him in the studio, and he’s not just like, Play that note. Instead, he’s like, Let that resolve to an A5. He’s very specific. And you have to know how to do that, otherwise the people you’re working with have a bad time.

That old Picasso maxim of ‘Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.’

A hundred percent. Whenever I’m back at the shop, I have to leave with one new thing I’ve made. Every once in a while I’ll hit random on Wikipedia until I get to something and I’ll be like, This is today's mystery ingredient.

Petrichor. The smell of ozone.

That’s a fun one. The smell of books is another. And people really love campfire. Campfire is delightful for me, as someone who specializes in incense. People say, I want to smell woodsy. And I'm like, Yo, guess what? You're burning wood right now! So we don't need to worry about that. You can do stuff to make it more prominent, but you never want to go hardcore. Like, no one is ever making a chicken dish and says, I want to make this taste more chicken-y.

If I work with a musician on a fragrance, I say, Think about this as an EQ curve. You have your lows here, your mids here, your highs here. Musicians won't be like, My bass synth is only going to be at the bottom of the spectrum. Because it’s not. You can push that anywhere you want. You have some people who play overtones to feel closer to your chest. You have people who drive it super low so you feel it in your toes and feet, like a rattle. You can do this with fragrance, too. It’s the same exact thing.

And coffee?

Less so. Coffee is fascinating because it’s two spectrums basically. You have origin characteristics and roast characteristics. Origin characteristics are, like: I’m using the best beans from the highest elevation of a certain country. And you can taste that. You can taste a country-to-country difference. Some people can even taste a region-to-region difference within a particular country. And then it’s how you roast it that brings out the rest. Also, the thing no one wants to explain is that water makes a huge difference. If you're using a different minerality due to where you are in the world, you’re not going to get the same exact coffee experience. Have you been to endorffeine in Chinatown?

Yeah, across from Howlin' Ray's.

Jack Benchakul, the owner, is fascinating in this regard. He was literally a chemist. Jack’s the kind of guy who, for every new coffee he gets in, will redo the entire water filter at the shop. He’ll be like, Alright, I've increased the amount of calcium chloride, and I've decreased the amount of magnesium in the water. All of that to, first, mimic the characteristics of the coffee, but then to push it in his own direction. To make it taste the best.

Have you ever tasted the civet poop coffee?

Kopi luwak. Yeah, I’ve had it. It’s just hype. You should avoid it. But I’ve legitimately had a $50 cup of coffee and I understood exactly why it was $50. I really want to start a coffee shop where you’re like, This is phenomenal coffee, and here’s 2 ounces of it.

Just a sip. There's a place in London called The Sampler that does that with wine. You can get a tiny glass of a $500 bottle of wine or whatever.

It would be phenomenal if I could do that with coffee. I don’t want to have 12 ounces of a Panamanian geisha coffee. It’s like drinking really nice Riesling—you literally can’t use your tongue after a while. Your taste buds will be maxed out. You never want that to happen.

Sounds like hell.

You can easily push your body to extremes. There have been weeks where I might’ve built the wrong flavor or fragrance combination, and I can’t smell anything. One really crazy time was during early Covid. Thankfully I never lost my smell or taste. I was, and am, very strict about it…

I did. It was terrifying. Because smell and taste are directly related to appetite and your enjoyment of things.

Oh man. Yeah, I had people come in and they’d be like, Yo, I can't smell this bottle! It would be a bottle of pure fragrance concentrate. And my my mom and I were like, Is our stuff bad?! But then we understood. Oh, Covid!

You were the canary in the coal mine!

Yeah. If you look at Amazon reviews for Yankee Candle back then, you’ll literally see the graph go crazy in March of 2020. What a wild time.

❤️ 4 BRANDS RAIHAN LOVES ❤️

1. 3sixteen. ‘I’ve been a huge fan of the brand since it started 20 years ago. They were dudes who pivoted. They started at the same time as The Hundreds, and you can imagine coming out of streetwear being the du jour thing. These guys were like, okay, we’re going to do menswear instead and keep reiterating on patterns, making solid clothes, and experimenting here and there. When I was in New York recently, they opened up a month-long coffee pop-up with one of my friends and mentors, Jaymie Lao, who’s phenomenal. Because of how long they’ve been in business and the relationships they’ve made, they’re able to have custom roasts and a really nice service setup within their shop on the Lower East side. These guys have really influenced how I run a lot of the business stuff in my life.’

2. Acronym. ‘The Berlin-based techwear company. The author William Gibson is a huge fan. They’re like, ‘Alright, we’re going to make a tuxedo, but we're going to make it using Schoeller 4-way stretch.’ Everything looks right. It’s fascinating. I think about Acronym a lot.’

3. Outlier. ‘I’m wearing their pants right now actually. I think at this point, my closet’s probably a third Outlier, a third Acronym, and third 3sixteen.’

4. Strietman. ‘I fell back into an espresso machine wormhole recently. There’s a German company called Strietman that makes beautiful manual espresso machines that look like works of art. It’s a nice solid brass cylinder, a proper lever on top. I got to play with one recently and it felt good. Solid stuff!’

Go deeper… Raihan’s website // Twitter // IG // Fragrance work

—

Until next time…

In 2017, Kim and I took a big trip to Vietnam, and on one swelteringly hot day in Ho Chi Minh City, we decided to look for some chocolate. But not just any chocolate. We learned that two crazy French guys had moved to Vietnam, started crafting unbelievably tasty bars entirely in-country, and were selling it under the name Marou. Word-of-mouth was growing that this stuff was divine. And it just so happened that they’d recently opened their first shop-slash-cafe. Off we went.

When we landed at Maison Marou, past the heat and bikes and commerce on the streets, it was an oasis. The smell of freshly-roasted cacao. Ice-cold chocolate drinks. Air conditioning! And the chocolate itself was next-level.

In the years since launching the business, Sam Maruta and Vincent Mourou have grown Marou into an influential chocolate powerhouse. Below, Vincent opens up about the passions and challenges of his adventurous life—from his years as a filmmaker, to searching for meaning on a motorbike in Vietnam, to his business partner Sam’s tragic passing in 2021—and what he’s learned on the journey.

Buckle up.

—DG

Got a map?

Where I’m from isn’t so simple. I’m French, but I was born in Quebec, where my father was studying physics. Then we moved back to France, before heading to Rochester, New York, where we lived for 10 years. We eventually landed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I decided to stay for school. I studied pre-med at the University of Michigan and finished with a degree in science and neuropsychology.

Anyway, I didn’t want to pursue any of those paths. I’d always been interested in films. My father was a film nut and I saw Citizen Kane when I was like seven years old. Film was this whole world with so much for me to learn. So I started working on student films with friends at Michigan. Then I bought a motorcycle and drove cross-country to LA. I thought it would only be for the summer, but I ended up not leaving!

Finding a groove in filmmaking

In LA, I had an opportunity to get into editing, which I thought would be the best place to learn filmmaking. With films, you’re translating something from the page into a visual and audio format, and editing is where everything comes together. I was really into it. But I never saw myself as an editor. I didn’t have the personality type, nor did I want to live in a dark room for the entire day and only see three people.

So I thought, why not try directing? I started doing my own projects and realized I was really interested in short-form films. Which drew me to commercial films. But this was 2003 and a time of budget cutting. There was a recession in the ad world. It was feast or famine. No one wanted new directors. It was really tough. And then I got headhunted…

Life in 3D

I moved to London to work at an agency that specialized in super high-end 3D visualizations. This was the genesis of creating photo-real images from CGI. It was pioneering. The company was doing work for Sony, Nikon and Apple, but they didn’t really know how to make content. When I came onboard, I really pushed the medium. But even though I was at the top of my game, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. I’d been so focused on career-building for years that I hadn’t taken the time to see the world. So I eventually resigned. An old friend was living in Ho Chi Minh City at the time. He said, “Come on over, it’s awesome here”. So I did.

Pack your bags

Vietnam is such a youthful and dynamic place with so much potential. I just felt there was something there for me, even if I wasn’t sure what yet. I met the expat community through my friend, and everyone was so welcoming. No one cared who I was or what I had done in my career. I was just Vincent Mourou. I said I wanted to reinvent myself, to discover and try something new.

I’ve always been drawn to what’s good for people, natural things. So in Vietnam I started researching different plants and botanicals and taking trips to see them firsthand. But nothing was really sticking. I felt like I was forcing it. I was trying a bit too hard.

Nine months later, I did a weekend survival trek in the jungle led by a former French Foreign Legion commando guy. I saw it on Facebook and I signed up for it. I knew no one. There were 10 of us. And I met a guy named Sam. 

“There’s cacao in Vietnam?”

Sam had recently taken a sabbatical from the French bank Société Générale. Over the course of some weeks we’d run into each other here and there. I had signed up for intensive Vietnamese classes at the local university and I bumped into him there, too. We quickly struck up a friendship.

Around this time I was involved in kite surfing and a friend brought some chocolate with him to the beach. “Vincent, you're looking for ideas,” he said. “Why don’t you do something with cacao in Vietnam?” I said, “There’s cacao in Vietnam?” 

I love chocolate. I’ve always loved chocolate. It just fills with goodness. It reminds me of my childhood. I had one grandmother who was really into dark chocolate and another who was into milk chocolate. My mom would always find a way to get good chocolate into the house. It was a staple for me. So I started researching this path.

Plotting and planning

I ran into Sam again a few weeks later. I asked him what he was up to, and he told me he was helping a Vietnamese friend who was selling cacao powder. That’s funny, I said, because I just found out that cacao grows in Vietnam! 

Two months go by. It’s now February 2011. Sam said, “Why don’t you come over for a beer tonight, meet my wife, and we’ll continue our conversation?” That night, I explained my frustrations, how I’d been trying to visit cacao farms and meet farmers but, as a foreigner in Vietnam, I wanted to do things by the book, through official channels. Yet I wasn't getting anywhere with that strategy. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I’m going to get on my motorbike and go to the countryside and find some cacao.” Sam’s wife said, “Sam, you should join him. You need to get out of the house!”

“Let’s make chocolate!”

The next day, with a map, we headed to the province of Bà Rịa, about two hours away, on a mission to find cacao. And we eventually did. On the side of the road, we actually saw a sign that said Selling cacao. We pulled in, met the farmer and his son, and tasted his cacao. As a thank-you for the impromptu tour, we bought a few kilos. Then we got back on the motorbike and continued exploring.

At the end of that day, it was time to head home. On the ferry crossing the Đồng Nai River to go back to Ho Chi Minh City, I turned to Sam and said, “So, what’s next?” 

He looked at me and said, “Let’s start a company!” 

“Doing what? Trading cacao?” 

“No, forget trading. That’s a volume game. Too capital intensive.” 

“So, what should we do? Wanna… make chocolate?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Let’s make chocolate!”

Not bad. Not bad at all…

There was a website called Chocolate Alchemy written by a guy named John Nance. He shows you how to start with some very basic equipment in your kitchen. So we went back to Sam’s house with our three kilos of cacao. We put the beans on a baking tin in Sam’s oven, roasted them, pulled them out, and then started grinding them in a little cocktail grinder. We soon burned the motor completely. 

But we ended up with a paste. It was extremely raw, powerful and intense… but not foul! It was a eureka moment. With some time, tools and technique, we could get somewhere. It was possible.

Are your values my values?

Sam said, “Let's meet tomorrow and talk about how we want to do business.” I said, “Great, let’s do that, but I also want to have a conversation about our values.”

We met the next day and had a conversation about what we wanted to get out of this. What’s really pushing us to do this? We realized that our values were aligned. And then we put those values into Marou. It was the most important conversation that Sam and I ever had. Because through all the challenges and success that you’ll experience, you have to make decisions. And if you make decisions based on your values, you can get through pretty much anything.

Sam and I wanted to grow a passion project. We weren’t going to build this thing up in five years and sell it off. Our goal was to make a difference, while also making the best chocolate possible—natural, authentic, local. To be a company that provides for the community. To pay farmers well. We realized very few people were making quality chocolate in the country of origin. There were four or five companies in the world that were able to export from the producing country. We wanted to prove it was possible to bring value to the country where the chocolate is produced. That was our quest.

Back of the napkin

Our original 3-year business plan was to set up in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, with a shop up front, a workshop in the back, and export overseas to get the chocolate known abroad. But as we looked for locations in the center of the city and worked on the legal side of things, we were quickly confronted with the fact that the authorities wouldn’t allow us to manufacture in the city, even on a very small scale. We weren’t able to do something like Dandelion does in San Francisco, for instance. 

What we wanted to do, it turns out, was risky. To create something in Vietnam, you’re either a factory out in the industrial zone and have a license to export, or you do something in the city, but then you’re not allowed to export. So we said, let’s forget the shop for now. We’ll just manufacture. We went out to the edge of the city, found a 300 square meter warehouse, got the paperwork for manufacturing, and we began. 

I got a guy in Cambodia… 

At the time, the bean-to-bar movement wasn’t big enough for machines like chocolate grinders to really be on the market. But we needed some desperately. So I went down the street to an Indian restaurant and asked if they had any. I knew they use them to make dosas. They had one, but not any to sell to us. Instead, the owner gave me the contact of a guy he knew in Cambodia who apparently had some. But he didn’t. The guy in Cambodia told me I’ve gotta visit Mustafa’s in Singapore, which is this huge, sprawling market. And finally, there at Mustafa Center, I found these little grinders, which we brought back to Vietnam. It was amazing, because all of a sudden we were starting to get the texture and taste right. 

Enter Mr Hoa

Alright, so we learned how to start a company and how to make chocolate. Now we had to find some cacao. We got in touch with a guide who we’d met during our jungle trek, Mr. Hoa. He lived out in the countryside and on weekends he was free, so we paid him to scout cacao for us. He would travel out to all these different provinces, find cacao fermenters, get a small sample of their beans, and then ship it back to us by bus. After every weekend, we would end up with samples from all over Vietnam. It was really exciting. Hoa would send us a sample, we would make a test with it, and if we found it interesting, then we’d go out to meet the fermenter and get a good sense of the place and build a relationship.

Nailing the brand

Meanwhile, we knew we needed to develop a strong brand identity. There was a lot of competition out there, so why would people choose this bar of chocolate from an origin they’d never heard of? We had everything going against us. We weren’t from the chocolate world, we were producing in a country not known for cacao. So the chocolate quality had to be great, but we needed a brand that looked great on the shelf, too. We met some designers who had recently quit working for an agency and were starting their own company. We shared our idea and they said they’d deliver an award-winning design. We were like, Wow, these guys are confident. Let’s do it!

Standing out from the crowd

We also needed an approach people would connect with. For us, that was making authentic chocolate by working directly with farmers and fermenters in Vietnam. 

I remember it was August and we were at Sam’s place. It was a tropical house, really hot and damp. We were waiting for our business license. We were waiting for machines. And we were dealing with the brand identity. But we still had no idea what we were going to release. What will we offer as an experience? What will our first line of chocolate be? 

Well, we were getting cacao from all these different provinces, each of which has distinct differences in taste, just like the terroir of wine. The notes went from very fruity and acidulated to rounder and spicier. It was so interesting. We realized that no one had really taken a producing country and presented the variety of its cacao that’s discernible through taste. People could actually experience this. It wasn’t BS. We were getting cacao from five provinces, so we decided to make five dark chocolates!

State of play

We found two investors that were crazy enough to believe in this. We put our own money in, too. We had just enough funds for a year. Everything started coming together. The machines started arriving. We had our cacao. We were in our space at the edge of town. And we started making chocolate at the end of November 2011, only 9 months after coming up with the idea! A very, very intense (and fun) nine months. 

We started selling to a few shops in Ho Chi Minh City. All our friends thought we were crazy. No one thought we would get this off the ground. People were like, Chocolate? You're gonna make chocolate in Vietnam? But when we launched, they were excited. The chocolate was good. There was nothing like it on the market. The only other products here were industrial chocolates, not artisanal.

A few big breaks

One of our investors went back to London and had dinner with the editor of Wallpaper magazine. He had our little gold bars with a little sticker and Sam had written on them with calligraphy. It was simple but sharp. And she was like, “I love this! Can these guys make something for Wallpaper?” We had only been in business for a few weeks! He writes to us, “Guys, Wallpaper wants you to make a chocolate for them.” So we did. They wanted to release it in Milan for Design Week, which they did. Soon our chocolate went viral on design blogs and websites. We started getting contacted by distributors, journalists, designers, everybody. It was incredible, and helped us to build momentum for export.

My sister-in-law was distributing us at first in the US. We didn’t have a distributor, so she just set up a company and started importing it! Our first export was to the US, to a friend of my sister's who had started a specialty coffee shop in Detroit called Astro Coffee. We were also connected to Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, which is well-known in the food world. Those were our first two customers.

The early years were extraordinary. Going from zero to the best stores in France, the UK, the US, Japan. A breakthrough for Marou was the article about us in the New York Times. The journalist they sent was the novelist Lawrence Osborne. A real character. We took him around the countryside and had a lot of fun. All of a sudden we were getting contacted from people in Peru, Pakistan, Kazakhstan. That was a great moment for us as a brand. 

Going physical

The wonderful thing about the bean-to-bar community is there’s a lot of sharing. One insight was from a company in the US. They told us that by having their own retail and workshop in the same space, they were making three times the revenue we were making, by producing by three times less chocolate!

We were seeing that in Vietnam, the middle class had really started spending. This was early 2015. They were starting to buy small cars. Franchising arrived. Starbucks came, McDonald’s came. The country was changing. So we said, okay, let’s open a shop in Ho Chi Minh City.

But we wanted more than just products on the shelf. We wanted to create an experience. We knew that Vietnamese wouldn’t really be drawn to just the chocolate bar. But if we had chocolate, drinks, ice cream, pastries and all these other things, all in one place, we’d be bean-to-bar and beyond. It would be a complete 360-degree experience. That was really exciting. If only we could find the right people to help us put it together…

Bean-to-bar-to-beyond

We contacted a former customer of ours, Stéphanie Aubriot. She had started as the pastry chef of Michel Roux, the 3-star Michelin chef, at La Maison 1888 in the InterContinental Danang. It’s one of the best restaurants in Vietnam. Stéphanie had been using our chocolate. We told her, “Hey, we have this concept. We don't know if you're available, but if you know someone who would be good to work with us, let us know.” And she replied, “I’d love to come in as a consultant and help you start up.” Stéphanie helped us get everything together for all the areas we had no experience in. We knew how to do the bean-to bar-side, but she took care of the beyond. 

In May 2016, we opened Maison Marou—the House of Marou—smack in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, on Calmette Street. The area had a bad reputation. People were like, Ehh, do we go over there? But we couldn’t afford the fancier, more touristy areas. The rent was affordable, which was very important because we were taking a big risk. It was a big investment. We needed it to work. But within three months we were doing more than break even. The shop is now a hit.

The company today is growing. We’re expanding our stores. And we’re doing things that frankly don’t exist elsewhere. There’s still a space for that in chocolate. There's still an unknown and a spirit of adventure. That’s who we are as a brand. It’s who I am. And it’s who Sam was as a person.

Cherish good people

In January 2021, Sam passed away. He was under treatment for cancer and was immune-deprived. He had gone back to France for treatment, and he died from Covid, essentially. It was a really long fight. 

Sam and I had a unique business relationship from the very beginning. He wasn’t just my business partner—he was also a dear, dear friend of mine for many years. Our relationship was critical to the Marou story. Much more important than the business concept. If you’re going to start a business, it’s important not to fall in love with your concept. Focus more on your values, your mission, and the people who go on the journey with you.

It’s like what Steve Jobs said:

“Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.”

And it’s so true. 

If you’re with the wrong people, you get pulled down. 

But with the right people, with amazing people like Sam and the rest of the Marou team, you can really achieve incredible things.

Go deeper… Marou’s website / On IG / Maison Marou / NYT article

—

Until next time…

• Today, Ilya Milstein is an internationally respected illustrator. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Below, Ilya shares his journey from Melbourne to Brooklyn, from a childhood comics-lover to a professional illustrator with clients like the New Yorker and Red Bull, and from the depths of mental health crises to the sustainable life he’s building today.

• PLUS: Six hard-won lessons from his—and for your—creative career.

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer and small business fan. Desire Paths is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, and cross oceans to start something new. I go deep with them—business owners, designers, shopkeepers, farmers, billionaires, hermits, maybe even you—and share everything I learn. I’d love if you’d subscribe!

Subscribe now

Path #11: Ilya Milstein

I’ve admired Ilya Milstein’s intricate, playful, incredibly detailed illustrations for many years. Whenever I see his work in the wild—on Instagram, in the pages of The New York Times, in the campaign of a friend’s clothing label—I smile. There’s just something about them that makes me happy.

When I launched Desire Paths, I thought, Man, one day I’d love to know more about this Ilya guy. What’s his story? His process? His inspirations? And, dear reader, one of the joys of doing this newsletter is that I can actually answer those questions.

Here’s Ilya’s story, from the horse’s mouth. He shares his life journey, early big breaks in his career, challenges with mental health, and useful tips for young creatives. Enjoy.

—DG

Ciao Melbourne!

My grandparents were Russian and Polish Jews who emigrated to Australia after WWII. Although they were trained in other things, they ended up making a living, as a lot of Jewish immigrants did, by importing fabrics, weaving textiles and making garments. They did quite well—they furnished outfits for the Australian Olympic winter team for many years, had stores all over Melbourne, and were stocked nationwide. Because they had relationships with Italian mills, my father grew up going on work trips with his parents in the 1950s and 60s. He fell in love with Italy and eventually ended up moving there. That’s where I was born: in Milan, 1990. Although we moved back to Australia in 1993, and my memories of Italy are very faint, they still loomed large in my imagination as a kid.

From comics to architecture

I lived in Melbourne for the next 25 years. Growing up, I was very passionate about drawing and comics. By the time I was 18, I had drawn around 2,000 pages of comics. Melbourne had a booming zine culture then, so I broke into that when I was 15 or 16. I became something of a figure in that world by the time I finished high school. I loved it. I had a community of likeminded people who saw me in the terms I wanted to be seen.

But illustration in Australia was a nascent career path back then. The graphic culture wasn’t advanced, Australian comics were generally poor, and illustration just didn’t really exist. I wasn’t aware that in Japan and America and France, there were tons of opportunities to make a living doing drawings. So I never thought I’d be able to actually study art. Instead, I tried to be clever and study architecture, which I thought would be a middle ground between art and commerce. But of course, that’s not true. It’s its own thing entirely. And I learned after a year of studying that whatever it was, it wasn't for me. So I dropped out. I was 19.

Let’s go to art school

After that, I applied to study drawing at the Victoria College of the Arts, with a very full portfolio… and they didn't let me in. I probably had the wrong attitude. Young people often have an ego that goes unchecked and unchallenged. And that was one of the first times it was challenged. It sent me into a bit of a tailspin. Instead of studying that year, I ended up traveling and working and thinking about what to do next. I eventually applied again, this time to study sculpture and spatial practice, a conceptually-driven department. It wasn’t what I set out to do before, but it’s what I ended up doing for the next three years… 

Aimless and confused

By the time I entered art school, I was 20 or 21, older than the other students, sheepish, and pretty confused. That whole period of my life—my late teens through my mid twenties—was defined mostly by aimlessness. I wasn’t keeping a healthy lifestyle. I was partying a lot and doing drugs, which wasn’t helping my mental state. At the same time, my work got some attention. I was included in a few museum exhibitions. And I exhibited externally and won a few international awards. But I just didn’t have satisfaction or conviction in what I was doing.

Is this it?

Graduating art school is terrifying. Unless, of course, you’re approached by galleries for representation or someone buys your work. I was making videos at that time, so selling wasn’t really an option. It wasn’t like London or New York where gallerists actually go to these shows. In Australia, the art market is very, very small. Of the 120 students in my year, I believe only two of them are still making a living as an artist full time right now. I saw what life was like for my older artist friends: constant grant applications, teaching gigs, residencies. It seemed chaotic. I have nothing against that, but I didn’t have the stomach for it or the conviction in what I was doing. So I was freaking out, wondering what I was going to do next.

Hitting rock bottom

In the two years after graduation, living in Melbourne, I worked a series of part time jobs, I exhibited my work, I had partners, friends and adventures. But there was a sense that I wasn’t laying the groundwork for a sustainable future. It gave me anxiety and fed an ongoing depressive cycle, which at that time was undiagnosed. Things came to a head when, in the period of a week, I had a messy breakup, I had a huge falling out with my best friend who was also my roommate, I was fired from one of my jobs, and I was in a position where, for the first time since my first year at school, I had no plans to exhibit my work. Things had dried up. It was a moment of crisis.

I’d always wanted to move overseas and I felt the years ticking away. So I thought I’d leave the house I shared with friends, move back to my dad’s place to save some money, then move overseas when the time was right. But the moment I moved back to my dad’s, I had a mental breakdown. I was unemployed, unemployable, making esoteric work for which there was clearly a very small audience, if at all. I felt undateable, unlovable. And there was no way I would be able to move to London or New York and build a life. 

Everything had gone belly up. And, in hindsight, not without reason. These were all products of mistakes that I’d made. Reaching that low point, in which I was unable to sleep and completely suicidal, was also a blessing in a way, because it was the first time I got help. I found a therapist I liked. I started taking medication. And I gained clarity. At the age of 26, I realized I needed to build my life from scratch. Melbourne was too populated with ghosts. So I booked a ticket to New York!

A fresh start in New York

In New York City, I hit the ground running. I called in every favor to find a job of any kind. And I ended up taking a job as a sort of aide de camp for a creative director who had his own practice. I was contracted to do his dirty work. In art school I’d learned lots of skills—I can shoot and edit video pretty proficiently and I’m decent with Photoshop. Which ended up making me really useful for this guy. He asked me if I knew how to code. I didn’t. So I taught myself.

I was living above Union Square then, and while taking the train from there I noticed all of these ads using illustrations. Since I was a sponge and open to any opportunity, I realized how ubiquitous illustration was here, not just in advertising but in editorial. It seemed serious and had authority. It really appealed to me. So, as I was working for this guy, I decided to build up my skills properly again. To make myself available for illustration work. To put myself out there. To transform my social media from irreverence to a shockingly earnest portfolio. And after about a year of this, I was able to work as an illustrator full time.

‘My first gig? The New York Times’

Before I moved here, the idea of working for the New York Times or the New Yorker was completely inconceivable. They’re these titans and I’m a kid from Melbourne. Only gods could contribute to them. But of course, when you move here, you realize they take a lot of chances on young artists.

T, The New York Times Style Magazine, which is edited by Hanya Yanagihara—who’s since been a consistent champion of my work—had hired a very experienced artist, one of my heroes, to do an extremely detailed two-page spread for an issue about NYC in the 1980s. It was the centerpiece of the issue. But a week before print, this artist informed them he could no longer do it. So they were in a panic figuring out a plan B. 

During late nights after I’d finished work on the Lower East Side, I used to make party invitations for friends. It was psychotic how much work I put into them, entirely with the philosophy that I didn't know who was going to see them. And one of those invitations ended up with someone who worked at the Times! Because I made these detailed drawings that seemed to translate well into print, I was ID’d as someone who could potentially step in to handle the job. They probably knew I was young and hungry enough to take it on despite the tight timeline. I had six days to do five complex and rigorously researched drawings. Now I’m a lot faster, but still not that fast. If someone approached me with the project now, I’d say absolutely not!

Career liftoff

The story blew up and within a week or two I had three offers for US representation. So, while it had all been a very gradual, long road and a pretty shaky one, I can definitely point to this project as the moment it became serious. And I’ve been on that road ever since. One of the highlights since then was a campaign I did for Red Bull that was actually showcased in Union Square Station. They did a whole takeover and printed these enormous things. It felt very wonderful and circular!

Creating something real

In an ideal world, I’d love to just focus on books and exhibitions. I’m currently negotiating two children’s books, which I’ve never done before. And I have a museum show in Seoul opening in September, which has been keeping me busy! I’m showing around 300 works in seven rooms.

Although the world has changed a lot, kids still love picture books. And people still love seeing physical work, made by hand, on walls. These are the things that remind us of being human. I hope my work encourages a slightly slower consumption. There’s a notion that young people no longer have the attention span for this stuff, or don't have the appetite to spend their time this way. But I don't think that’s true. 

The perils and promise of AI

If I were a cynic, I’d say we're all f*cked, but I don’t have the time or inclination to entertain that sort of thing. Because, if you believe that, why go on? The optimist in me thinks that the existential threat posed by our potential robot overlords is something that will encourage community and thoughtfulness rather than abandoning with humanity altogether.

I mean, mass manufacture has existed for a very long time, but people still enjoy handmade things. I hope that AI will encourage people to become more thoughtful viewers and think more about the labor behind art. Will AI replace artists? I’m not convinced. Will artists need to adapt? Absolutely. Artists will increasingly need to remind their audiences that there is a real person behind their images. That’s not necessarily the worst thing in the world.

What I’ll be doing 20 years from now

I’ve always been fascinated when artists have unrelated ventures. Like the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who opened a cafe-restaurant in Manhattan in the 1970s, which was, by many accounts, the first place in New York where many people tried sushi. Or the Italian artist Alighiero Boetti, one of my all-time favorites, who ran a small hotel in Kabul in the 70s and 80s before the Soviet invasion.

Then there are artists who stop making work altogether. Marcel Duchamp announced he had done everything with art that could be done; that he’d spend the rest of his days focusing on chess. A lot of people lionize that. A lot of people don’t. Yet Duchamp was secretly assembling an installation artwork, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, that’s not only one of his most remarkable works, but one of the most remarkable works of art in the world!

What am I going to be doing in 20 years? It’s important to be a thermometer of your needs and desires. If I run out of things to say or lose love for what I do, that’s something to listen to. But those feelings come and go. There are days when I’m completely fed up and days when I’m in love again. But whether I’m still drawing or if I’ve moved on to painting or filmmaking or something else, I still want to be making images and telling stories of what it feels like to be alive.

ILYA’S 6 BIG LESSONS

1. Be self aware

Recognize your limits. Mine are significant. I’m pretty good at some things, but technically I’m a complete hack compared to the great artists of previous eras and artists today who are capable of a degree of precision I’ll just never have. I still draw everything by hand, even though it's inefficient. And I use pretty poor tools. Literally every drawing I've done has been with a $3 Fineliner, which I’ve loved since I was twelve or thirteen.

2. Consistency is key

When I started, I looked closely at what other illustrators were doing. Some were really adaptable and had different styles. That didn’t really appeal to me. I’m a huge fan of the French filmmaker Robert Bresson. He wrote a book I love called Notes on the Cinematographer and he shot all of his later films using a 50 millimeter lens. Bresson wrote something like, ‘A filmmaker constantly changing their lens is like someone constantly changing their glasses.’ I feel this way about my style.

Consistency matters. You don't want to be a pendulum swinging with trends. It’s better to stick with what you do. Your thing might come in and out of favor, but that’s okay. There’s that Picasso study of a bull. I’d hope that if I’m drawing a bull from a certain angle twelve times, I’ll have twelve identical drawings. Because I’m trying to describe a consistent and coherent world and for it to be its own reality.

3. Think of the long-term

For anyone starting something new, there’s an initial period of excitement. When I got my first email from the New Yorker asking if I wanted to illustrate an article, which had been my dream for a very long time, I got up from my desk—without answering the email—walked the four flights of stairs from my studio to Elizabeth Street in Chinatown, and circled the block a few times, just to clear my head and exert energy. It was such an out-of-body experience. But of course, with time, it’s hard to be that excited by new things. So where else can you go from that point? For me, it’s about long term sustainability.

4. Passion above all

The credo I’ve heard from a lot of creative people is that you can put in 80% of the effort and get 95% of the results. While I understand that, it’s also a really easy way to completely fall out of love with what you’re doing. Maintaining your passion is absolutely critical. If you get too tied up in making money, it will never feel like enough. You’ll end up resenting people who took different career paths. And if you get too tied up in being prolific when it’s not in your nature, you’ll burn out and the quality of your work will suffer.

5. Learn from the lows

The lows in my life ended up being hugely instructive. Insecurity made me a much better judge of my own work and pushed me to be better. Financial stress and bleakness about my future forced me to make more informed decisions about how I approach my career. I really needed hard knocks to get to where I am. And if you survive them… well, like the cliche, what doesn’t kill you...

6. Slow is better

A couple of years ago, I was taking on more work than I could handle and churning out work that was of a lower quality than I would have liked. During that period, I really didn’t enjoy drawing. But for the past year or two I’ve slowed down and I’ve been more selective about what I work on. I try to commit more energy and thought to each major project. The result? My drawing has improved significantly. And my joy for the process is higher than at any point since I was a kid. I really love working right now. When I have moments of fluency—and the longer they last, the better—I’m at my happiest.

Go deeper… Ilya’s website / Ilya on IG

—

Until next time,

• Sarah Ben Romdane was a journalist in Paris when the pandemic guided her back to Tunisia—where she spent glorious summers as a kid and where her family produced olive oil for generations. Today, Tunisian olive oil is a hidden workhorse in the industry and often mixed with oil from other countries. But Sarah saw an opportunity to create a new-generation brand that proudly shouts its Tunisian terroir origins. It’s called KAÏA. Here’s her story.

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editorial director, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I tell stories for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths. It’s based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, and cross oceans to start something new. I go deep with them—small business owners, designers, shopkeepers, farmers, billionaires, hermits, maybe even you—and share everything I learn.

Subscribe now

Path #10: Sarah Ben Romdane

Where does your olive oil come from? Italy? Greece? Spain? If so, there’s a chance that a portion of your olive oil is actually Tunisian, too.

The Tunisian olive oil industry is ancient and also one of the world’s largest. But it’s always faded into the background in terms of prestige and awareness, compared to Europe’s more well-known exporters.

Journalist Sarah Ben Romdane was raised in Paris and spent summers in Tunisia, where her family maintained olive estates for generations. In 2020, at the beginning of Covid, Sarah moved to Tunisia for what she thought would be a brief stint. It’s a story we’re probably all familiar with. (How long can this Covid thing possibly last? Two months, tops?). In Sarah’s case, the pandemic didn’t turn her into a sourdough-baking whiz or a board games fanatic—instead, it provided the opportunity for her to pivot away from journalism and launch her own Tunisian olive oil brand, KAÏA.

Last year, Courier ran a short, great case study on KAÏA, digging into business challenges and learnings. (Definitely read that piece if you want some actionable insights.) Learning about Sarah’s business made me want to know even more about her own personal life journey, her decisions, motivations and inspirations. So… I gave her a ring to find out.

Maybe there’s an overlooked industry back in your home city or country? An underinvested craft, an intriguing and potentially lucrative market gap, a professional calling practically shouting your name…

—DG

The makings of a journalist

I was born in Paris and I lived there until I was 13, then I moved to London and lived there until I was 24. I know I don’t really sound British, but I was there for quite a long time! My father is from Tunisia and my mother is from Syria, so I grew up in a very multicultural family, feeling very much integrated into French culture, but also attached to my roots.

As a kid, I always wanted to do something that had meaning and a purpose. I wanted to change the world. My great grandfather from my paternal side was in politics and was exiled from Tunisia. And my grandfather from my mother’s side was in diplomacy. So I’ve always had a curiosity for global politics and I studied political science. Eventually, I realized a career in politics wasn’t for me, but I still wanted to make a difference and create more fair relationships between countries—maybe even the countries where I came from and the countries where I grew up.

I realized I could be a journalist. I could tell stories and bring more representation on a global scale. So I studied for a master’s in journalism after my bachelor’s in international politics. I’ve always had a passion for storytelling and representation and a commitment to social justice and activism. These have driven my choices and my vision—and also my brand today.

But what makes me truly happy?

My first and only job prior to launching KAÏA was for a young media startup called MILLE that’s based in Dubai. I was working for them from Paris for three years. Then Covid happened—and I was miserable, isolating in Paris alone, and feeling very anxious, like many people. This period made realize that what I really wanted to do in life is make a difference. I felt that what I was doing back then—although I had a lot of fun, made amazing friendships and developed new skills—was actually bringing me further away from my first intentions for my life and career. I think I had to feel miserable to remember what it is that makes me happy and fulfilled.

Booking a one-way ticket to Tunisia

To find that inspiration and happiness and joy again, I booked a ticket to Tunisia for the summer as soon as borders reopened. I’ve always spent my summers in Tunisia. When I think of Tunisia, I think of joy and abundance and memories of summer with my friends and cousins. I needed that setting to feel inspired and rejuvenated. And that’s what happened. My family has a house by the sea. And to put it simply, I realized that this place where I come from had the power to heal me. Being there felt like a big hug. I realized that Tunisia could be more than just a place where I spent my holidays. Maybe it was a place that held deeper meaning for me. A place of opportunities and inspiration. I’ve been conditioned to think that a life in Europe is better than a life in Tunisia. That having studied in London, I had to think of a career only in London or Paris or NYC. But maybe a career in Tunisia was actually possible.

Olive oil is my family’s past… and my future

That’s when I began connecting the dots. My family has been cultivating trees for five generations. They started producing and exporting in the 1850s and did so until the second half of the 20th century. For various reasons, they stopped producing and exporting olive oil as a branded family business. People started disconnecting from the region and globally people disconnected from agriculture and rurality and began reorienting themselves into new industries. Tunisia started to shift to mass tourism and new jobs developed, the demography changed, and my family started doing other things. My father actually left Tunisia because his father was exiled, so we grew up abroad. When I moved back, I slowly saw that: 1) Tunisia was a big producer of olive oil but wasn’t getting enough recognition, and 2) I loved spending time there and wanted a good excuse to spend more time there. And that was it! I decided right then to produce olive oil and launch a business from it.

The ‘Made in Tunisia’ brand

For many years, the status quo in Tunisia has disadvantaged Tunisians economically and also in the perceptions they’ve had of themselves. Tunisia was colonized by France and the post-independence years haven’t been easy. We’ve experienced a revolution too, which brought many challenges. Our economy is more fragile and vulnerable. For all those reasons, the big European industrial players saw an opportunity to buy olive oil from Tunisia at a cheaper price than they would elsewhere, blend it with other oils, resell it under their brand names, and assume nobody would know. And, in fact, nobody knew for a long time! But now we're starting to hear stories like mine and there are more brands emerging. This is a great thing, but it’s fairly recent.

All of this has had an impact on Tunisians’ mentality. People have been conditioned to think that because Tunisia is a poorer country, maybe their culture is less worthy. When you’ve been colonized, you internalize that inferiority. So I don’t think many Tunisians thought Tunisian olive oil would be appreciated abroad. There are more concrete obstacles, of course. Exporting and importing to Europe is expensive, transport and customs duties are high, and traveling can be challenging. So even if there was a vision, someone might not have the means or resources to make it happen.

I want to help create a better system where we can exchange with Europe and the world in a more reciprocal way—one that makes our culture valued and celebrated abroad, and brings more money home so people can feel prouder about themselves.

Learning the ropes

So right when I began brainstorming the idea of launching an olive oil brand, I quit my job in a very abrupt way. I had the privilege of being twenty-six and my family were already in Tunisia. I thought, I’m young and I can take a risk. So I moved back in with my family and I spent the entire summer geeking out online about olive oil. I had no academic knowledge in olive oil production. So I researched, contacted Tunisians who were already making and exporting good olive oil, and contacted governmental agricultural offices and private institutions that work in the sector. I spent almost 5 months doing this. And, although my family no longer had an olive oil brand, the estate was still alive. It wasn't abandoned. There were fantastic people there that I’ve known my entire life, people who have deep expertise that I don’t have. Eventually I said, I think we’re ready to do a first harvest. Let’s see how this goes.

The recipe for great olive oil

You don't need a Ph.D. in chemistry to produce olive oil. But you need to be very rigorous about your practice. To make olive oil, you need:

• Healthy olives. Our trees are centennial now. They’re an amazing local heirloom variety called Chemlali that are purely Tunisian and climate-resilient.

• To harvest them at a good maturity. There’s not a perfect maturity, as it’s more a personal preference, but there’s an optimal maturity: mid-season when the olives turn from green to purple. This is when the polyphenols reach their highest levels.

• A mill with clean machines.

• To extract your oil at the right temperature. At the mill, a temperature below 27 degrees is mandatory to produce extra virgin olive oil.

• To stock it in good stainless steel tanks.

That’s pretty much it. Not rocket science, but a lot of hard work and super long days.

Business owner vs ambassador

I was never a ‘business person’. I remember when I applied to university, my older brother was like, Maybe you should study business. I looked at him like, Business? Why would I ever do that? But now that I have a business (and more maturity), I understand that ‘business’ isn’t only this or that. I can define what being a business owner means. I also see it as my duty to spread the message about Tunisia. This is how I feel most useful and how I find purpose in my life. It’s what fulfills me much more than just the pure money aspect aspect of it.

The weight on your shoulders

I don’t think we speak enough about the mental health dimension of owning a business. My days are overwhelmed with communicating with suppliers, overseeing the brand, micromanaging exports. Every time something big happens, I need to be on it. My sleep has become worse. The food I eat is less healthy. I’m more stressed. It’s sometimes hard to disconnect. When you’re young, when you’re a woman, and when you don't really know what you’re doing at first and just trying to figure it out… it’s not easy. And it’s a big sacrifice. I know I could have been in a more stable situation if I was working at a company with a regular salary. I’m not as safe as my friends who have a typical 9-to-5. I don’t know what could happen to me or the business.

From control freak…

In Tunisia things are often a bit messy. There’s a fair bit of micromanaging on my part because so many people are involved. I have to micromanage customs, micromanage the transport companies. A single piece of wrong paperwork can make a whole export canceled. Sometimes they’ll write KAÏA with the Y, for instance—if you don't make sure small things are right, it can cost you thousands of euros. So you need to be on it. No little detail can be ignored.

…to zen master (well, eventually)

I’m proud because I've learned a lot of complicated things in a very short period of time. So while it’s brought stress, I’m slowly learning to detach myself more and accept that I can’t control everything. If something is meant to happen, it’s meant to happen! I’m just really happy and excited to be doing what I’m doing right now. What I ultimately want to do.

I see it as a lifelong project.

And it’s just the beginning.

Go deeper… Sarah on IG / KAÏA on IG / Buy a bottle of KAÏA / Courier case study

—

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

• David McGillivray bartended, stocked shelves, and worked in an insurance call center before discovering his life’s passion: design. After a successful freelance career, the British-born, New York-based designer has moved to the small Catskills town of Livingston Manor to sell beautiful art and objects. Sounds dreamy. Let’s find out why he’s doing it—and how he’s getting on…

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I’m Editor-at-Large for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths. It’s based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, and cross oceans to start something new. I go deep with them—small business owners, designers, shopkeepers, farmers, billionaires, hermits, maybe even you—and share everything I learn.

Subscribe now

Path #9: David McGillivray

I’ve followed David on Twitter for a while, so I was intrigued when I saw his post about opening an art and design shop in the Catskills. For many of us, moving to the country and opening a small, curated shop is a dream. Here’s a guy actually doing it.

So we hopped on a call a few weeks later and ended up talking for two hours. The conversation went deep. Below are the highlights—David’s story, in his own words.

I hope you enjoy it. (And time to pack your bags for Livingston Manor…)

—DG

A smart kid hunting for a passion

I grew up in Hastings, England. Now it’s full of cool spots, but back then there was nothing at all. I went to a very bad, rough school where the teachers were doing what they could to hang on. I took a career guidance quiz once and it said I should be a van driver. I remember getting the results and being like, ‘Oh. I don't think I want to do that.’ That was the only career guidance I ever had. But I was always interested in “business”. In primary school I had a pencil case of stuff and I’d go around to everyone’s desk trying to sell them random things. My mom asked me, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to be a businessman.’ I didn't really understand what that meant, but I understood the spirit.

I didn't do great in school. I was a good kid and well-behaved, but I didn't apply myself. And yet… I had a computer and was coding websites in flash at the age of 12 and putting them on bulletin boards pretending to be a professional. People were like, ‘I don't think this guy has clients!’ ‘Damn!’ I thought. ‘Didn't fool them...’ There was this weird duality where I was really advanced for a kid, but I was failing geography class thinking, like… what is this? What am I doing?

From stacking shelves to discovering design

Fast forward some years and I found myself working at an old pub in Hastings. I started as a waiter when I was 16, then eventually worked behind the bar. I was also making music with friends. At the time I was earning like five grand a year and only like £10 or £20 in tips a week. Not sure how that was all legal! I thought, maybe I should find a way to earn more money. 

So I got a job at an insurance company in the call center of the claims department and I doubled my salary to ten grand a year. I was really good at it, but it was soul destroying. So I quit and tried to start a music technology company—while making some cash by stacking shelves with retirees at B&Q during the 5am shift. I'd work until midday, go home, take a quick nap, then work on my business in the afternoon.

And through the process of setting up this business, I discovered graphic design and realized what I actually enjoyed was the development of the brand itself. Like, ‘Wow, this is a job?’ So I dropped everything and went back to school to study design. As soon as I got there, I said ‘This is my world’. It clicked. It was one of the best times in my life.

Launching his career…

I ended up in New York and worked in-house for a few small and fast-growing companies. My last in-house job before going off on my own was a womenswear brand called AYR. It was incubated by Bonobos. I basically designed everything but the clothes. Then I went freelance. I’ve been a freelance designer now for 15 years. Most people who operate at the level I’m at are creative directors at an agency or have their own startup. There’s not a ton of people who are still freelance at this level and as hands-on as I am. That’s been my value prop. I work on only one project at a time, producing work to a high standard and on tight timelines. At this stage in my career, I’m not really compared to other freelancers. Instead people are often, like, ‘We're speaking to you, we're speaking to Red Antler, and this other studio or agency.’ So I became an expensive freelancer, but a cheaper alternative to a big studio.

…and then rebalancing it

The last few years, I’ve been trying to reengineer my practice so that I enjoy it more. It’s a well-oiled machine that’s making me good, reliable money, for work that I’m interested in. Except… I still wasn't really enjoying the process. I wasn't hating the projects at all, but I was definitely looking forward to wrapping them up. I’m knocking on forty now and it’s taken me this long to realize some things. You can understand something hypothetically for decades, but often it takes a certain event to really understand with your whole being what it means. And it took me a long time to realize that I need to actually enjoy the process. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Let’s go upstate

I realized I needed to take a step back from this type of work as my primary source of income and energy expenditure. And a few things came together simultaneously, including my wife Rebecca having increased flexibility and more geographic freedom. So in 2017 we had a bit of money saved and we bought a house in Livingston Manor in the Catskills. This was way ahead of the Covid curve and upstate rush. We weren't big ‘upstate people’—we’d maybe been up there only three times before we bought the house!—but we've always been interested in architecture and liked the idea of having a place of our own. Properties were much more affordable back then and there was so much more inventory. We started looking on Zillow, scrolling through with a search radius of basically the entire Catskills. And we found a fantastic place.

‘What if we settled in the Catskills?’

We still had our apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, so we’d go up on weekends and renovate the house. In 2020, obviously, things changed. We came up here in March 2020 when everything was kicking off, and ended up in the house for a full year. It was a very weird and scary time, but we were lucky. By March 2021, we got an apartment back in the city, but we were still spending a lot of time upstate. We would always think about where we want to settle and eventually start a family, if not Brooklyn? At a certain point, we said, ‘What if we settled in the Catskills?’

Livingston Manor is the answer

This area is changing a lot. What excites us is that the area has its own energy, community and culture, but it’s also welcoming of newness. When we bought the house in 2017, there was Main Street Farm, and that was the only kind of ‘new generation’ of things in Livingston Manor. Now it’s buzzing. The Art Space on Main Street just renovated, there’s an amazing chef who’s working through permits to open a sake distillery and sushi restaurant, and there are tons of creative people moving here. Rebecca and I have also changed. We appreciate the upstate life and the slightly slower pace. We’ve made friends here and have had friends move here. We could see ourselves living here full time, so we made the decision earlier this year to make the move. We’re incredibly excited about it.

‘The vegan cheese shop is for rent!’

We were hanging out in the Catskill Art Space and talking to the director, Sally. Just gossiping about things. She mentioned that the building directly opposite the Art Space was possibly on the market. It was going to be turned into a vegan cheese shop, but the tenant who was working on the renovation actually passed away mid-renovation a while back. Which is incredibly sad. The place was just sitting empty. It’s the only mid-century modern building on Main Street, big aluminum frame floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and next to a great new wine bar, Sunshine Colony. For a while I’d been toying with opening a shop up here, but it was never doable until I was living here full time. Now there was a real opportunity…

‘Maybe I can open a boutique?’

For years I’ve been sourcing, buying and framing art of all kinds. I enjoy doing it so much. And I thought, what if I open an art and design shop but done in an accessible way? Not a fine art space where we’re selling ten, twenty, thirty grand works of art, but a place where you can say ‘I love this and want it on my wall’, spend a couple hundred bucks and walk away with framed art. I felt there would be a demand and excitement for that sort of thing. And then it developed—OK, so ready-to-hang art. What about a concept store? How would I build that? What overlapping products and objects can I add? How can this make sense conceptually? And how can I do something that’s original to the area?

Introducing Corners…

I have a vision of who I think will enjoy the shop. And it’s sort of like... If you enjoy this, you're also going to enjoy this, this and this. It’s going to be high design and feel very fresh, but I don't want it to feel like a gallery or stuffy. There will be art. It might be for local collectors, people renovating a house, or for art and design kids coming up from Brooklyn for the weekend—there are a lot of those during the summer. They might pick up a cool 8x10 litho print selling for $300. I’m definitely trying to be accessible and hit all the audiences. I also want sculptures and design objects, art and design books, and a tight curation of stationery and paper goods, like precision Japanese pens and notebooks. All tasteful. Nothing novelty or cheesy. 

‘I want to create a space that’s alive’

I don't want it to feel like a store you only visit once a month. I want locals to feel like they can visit every weekend. That's why we’re redoing the patio out front. We’ll have bistro tables outside and seating inside, with soft drinks and magazines. I want it to feel alive and interactive and a dynamic space. It's very important that it doesn't feel precious. Instead, you’ll roll up on a Saturday morning, pick up The New York Times, and sit out front with an iced coffee. That's the vibe I'm trying to create.

Challenges & opportunities

Opening a design boutique in Brooklyn would have led to more foot traffic but also probably 5X the buildout costs and 5X the rent. Upstate, we’re in a race against time to capture as much of summer as we can. But nothing is scaring me yet. There’s pressure, but it's fun. I was talking to my old design professor who recently retired and is oil painting every day. I told him it would be fun to sell a couple of his pieces in the store. I have an amazing artist friend and I visited his studio in Gowanus last week. The fact that part of my job will be connecting with these creators and sourcing their work is incredible. I feel the most energized I've felt in years!

Creating a feeling

If I sweat the details and labor every aspect in a thoughtful, soulful way, I think it will all come together and make people excited to be here. These days, most people take a picture of something in a store and then buy it on Amazon. That fact burrowed deep into my brain. If that happens in my store then I failed to hit the brief. Because the type of store I want to create is one in which you're looking for an excuse to buy something. You’re like, ‘This place is really cool’—the music, products, how it smells, how the owner is friendly and helpful. You buy into everything about it. You identify with it and support it and feel enriched just for visiting. That’s what I’m trying to do.

Corners hasn’t yet opened its doors, but you can follow its journey on Instagram.

Go deeper… David on Twitter / David’s website / Corners’ website

—

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

Share Desire Paths

• Born in South Korea and raised in South Carolina by an adopted family with a lineage of Appalachian moonshiners and Florida cowboys, Kelly Wright was destined to have a unique perspective on life. The New York-based brand strategist now runs YUNS, a new kind of hardware store.

• PLUS: Kelly’s favorite tools, brands & hardware stores.

—

Other stuff before we get started…

• This newsletter is growing fast. Huge thanks for your continued support. And as ever, I’d appreciate you sharing with any friends.

• I’m heading to New York next week for a bit—for Courier events in NYC, a 4th of July family BBQ on Long Island, trekking around Storm King & other fun stuff. Posts over the next 2 weeks might be slightly haphazard. Back on track soon.

• And look out for my Desire Paths interview with designer David McGillivray about why he’s building an art and design shop called Corners in the small upstate NY town of Livingston Manor. You won’t want to miss this one…

Subscribe now

Share Desire Paths

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I’m Editor-at-Large for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

Desire Paths is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, and cross oceans to start something new. I go deep with them—small business owners, designers, shopkeepers, farmers, billionaires, hermits, maybe even you—and share everything I learn.

Path #8: Kelly Wright of YUNS

Danny here. While I wouldn’t dare to ever call myself handy, I love tinkering and trying (the key word) to fix things. I likely get this from my dad and grandfather—the former is an electrical engineer, the latter was an army pilot and genius fixer of all things.

I’ve come to appreciate tools that mix function and design in beautiful, almost metaphysical ways. I’m hardly alone. It’s why people mount hand-painted axes on their wall like art, instead of using them to chop wood. The best tools—a hammer, knife, wrench—can almost transcend their intended use and become timeless objects.

All of this is why I was personally drawn to YUNS, Kelly Wright’s online hardware store, where she sells high-quality everyday tools and household objects. It’s simply a treasure trove of great stuff. From the elegant, to the…

…well, others are just fun.

As I learned more about Kelly’s story, I became even more intrigued about why she got into the tool-selling trade. Below is her story in her own words. And make sure to stick around at the end for Kelly’s all-time favorite tools, hardware shops and brands (from tofu and bath mats to hot sauce and puppets).

Enjoy.

—DG

A family of moonshiners & ‘crackers’

I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and was adopted as a baby. I ended up in Greenville County, South Carolina, in a super rural town called Travelers Rest. Nothing was going on back then, but now it’s exploded into this cute area that’s on all of these must-visit travel lists, which is hilarious.

My dad’s side are from the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. They were all farmers and moonshiners. My great-grandfather owned the operation and my grandfather and his brothers ran it. This was Prohibition era, so they had stills in the woods where no one could see them, and they literally put moonshine in the back of their pickups and raced it around the backwoods. They were really fast drivers so they could skirt away from the police. Deep Appalachian vibes! My mom’s side are from central Florida. Super rural as well. My grandfather worked in the orange groves as a ‘Florida cracker’—what Florida calls their cowboys—while my grandmother cleaned oranges in the factories and put them into boxes.

Years later, my parents met in college in South Carolina. They weren’t able to have kids, but my grandma saw a slideshow at church about adopting from Asian countries, and she told my mom to adopt a baby from Korea. So they adopted me! My brother was also adopted, but he was born in South Carolina. He’s white and seven feet tall. We couldn’t be more opposite.

Finding herself & fitting in

So I grew up in this small town where everybody knew each other. The main street had two hardware stores, a feed & seed store, and a car wash. That was pretty much it. My best friend lived next to me and we would play around on his family’s farm and in the woods. In many ways it was a cute, idyllic childhood. There was a dark side, of course. A Lynchian underbelly. It could be racist and small-minded, in that super small town kind of way. And generally, I always felt like a weirdo. Everyone said I didn’t fit in. But I embraced that—especially as I got older. I valued this weird amalgamation of backgrounds and different facets of my identity.

By high school, I got to know myself more and what my interests were. I started going to a great magnet art school. It changed my life. It was a bunch of artistic weirdos and freaks, all taught by amazing visual artists, writers and musicians. They celebrated your weirdness and uniqueness. It’s how I embraced the arts and creativity. And it’s the reason I moved to New York.

Falling in love with NYC

For my 16th birthday, I begged my parents to bring me to New York. When I got here, I knew immediately that I needed to be here. So after college in South Carolina, I got a job in advertising in NYC. I was an account executive…but I had no idea what that meant. I just needed to get out of South Carolina. I was not good at that job. My boss was a great mentor and essentially said, “You suck at this job, but you should do this other thing in advertising called brand strategy.” He knew I was more creative. He saw what I was good at and how my mind worked. That unlocked everything for me.

Back then, life in New York was a playground. It was amazing. Williamsburg had already become a thing and popped off by the time I got there, but you could still feel that rawness, the DIY spirit that had built it over the years. You could still feel the last parts of it. And eating Korean BBQ for the first time in my life blew my mind. I went with a Korean friend from work who told me how it works. It was life changing and something I wish I’d been able to embrace about myself beforehand.

Life as a brand strategist

So I became a brand strategist in advertising. And what I really liked about it was that it was grounded in social sciences—anthropology, sociology, psychology—and involved talking to people and understanding them. One of the first pitches I worked on was for IKEA. It was seen as a ‘city brand’ and we wanted to position it as a brand for middle America, too. My boss was like, “You're from a small town, right? What if we sent you to live down there for a month and shoot a documentary with a crew?” I’d take people to IKEA, transform a room in their home, and document what happens. So I did. I picked a friend who lived in a double-wide trailer and friends of my parents who were grandparents raising their grandkids. It was amazing.

So many companies see people as numbers or lines on a spreadsheet. But the driving job of strategy was to get companies to understand people in a deeper way, for who they are deep down. There’s beauty in that. And yet…

Thinking about starting her own thing

Despite loving what the job could be, I couldn’t help feeling unsatisfied. Strategy once meant getting out into the field, but it had become more about sitting behind a computer screen and making slide after slide and presentation after presentation.

I remembered growing up, being a scrappy kid, playing in the dirt and running around. And I realized I wanted to make something with my hands, something physical, and feel that interaction with people again. What would that look like to create my own job, do my own thing? Well, it would be a hardware store!

Why open a hardware store?

The idea came from the pool of experiences swimming around my subconscious that I’d never really tapped into—and for a long time wanted to run away from. It has such a symbolic, meaningful place in my family's livelihood and the way I grew up. Every few years in NYC I’d move to a new place and my parents would come up to visit me. And the first thing my dad always did was visit my local hardware store. “I need to meet the owner,” he’d say. “I want to know he's going to look after you!”

A hardware store is a central place where people cross paths. A platform for conversation and building community. When I travelled, the first place I’d always go in a new city was a hardware store. In Japan they’re so different than Jamaica, and in the farming community where I grew up they’re so different than in Brooklyn. You can tell so much about a place based on what's on the shelves and the tools people need to live their lives.

The joy of sharing skills

I wouldn’t say I’m Bob Vila, but my dad, brother and grandfathers have shown me how to do certain things over the years—how to use tools and be handy. My dad thought it was important: I’m going to teach you this and this and this.

When I got to New York, I realized a lot of people didn’t have that experience. Many people didn’t even have tools! Friends would ask me, “Hey, can you help me do this? I don't have screwdrivers.” I'm like, what!? So I would help them. That's also what convinced me that a hardware store was what I should be doing. Creating a more accessible entry point into tools, hardware, and learning how to do things yourself felt like such an interesting gap.

Can a hardware store be online only?

My dream was to open a brick and mortar shop. The thing is, a lot of independent hardware stores, especially in cities, actually belong to a co-op like Ace, True Value or Do It Best. You get access to their catalog of tools, they help you with POS and marketing, and they set you up for success. You can be fully franchised, as it were, or a mom-and-pop that’s powered by them. I looked at these options, but the numbers were insane. I just didn’t have the money. I’d also need to take out loans on top of it. So I put away the idea for a while. But a few years later I still really want to do it and I wrote a business plan… and then COVID happened.

I had a friend who lived upstate. And as soon as it was safe to travel, I went up to visit her. We were just walking around and she was like, “Have you ever thought about selling online?” I told her it wasn’t really what I had in mind. I wanted to build a real community, a space where conversations happen. I didn’t want to be an e-commerce site. But she was like, “You really should reconsider. I don't think you have to just be one or the other. Use it as a test to see if the concept works before you invest all your money or give up on it altogether.” She was right. I just needed to open my mind.

Introducing YUNS

I thought, what if I did a curation of the basic things everybody should have in their toolbox? The differentiator being super high-quality, amazing design and a great story or brand connected to it. Tools that are respected, heirloom pieces, things you’ll have forever. ‘Tool’ for me has a broader definition—it’s really anything that’s useful, helpful, practical or utilitarian. So I also now have fun and quirky items that people might be interested in if they don’t just want tools with a capital T.

I thought maybe my friends and family would support me and that’ll be it. But it’s exceeded my expectations. It’s been a real surprise and so exciting. People are coming to me for recommendations on things like mallets or beautiful tape measurers. They ask me for classes and how-to videos. It’s become a diverse community—younger, older, creatives, non-creatives. There are 20-something women emailing me and older men in Iowa, too. Such a spectrum. And that's what’s blown my mind. All of these people can cross paths. And that’s exactly what a modern hardware store should be.

*KELLY’S FAV THINGS*

FAVORITE TOOLS…

• Chapman Mfg. Pocket Ratchet Screwdriver: ‘Made by one of the rare woman-owned tool companies in the US and also a green-certified manufacturer. They only make screwdrivers. This one is perfect for small awkward spaces or just to keep in your bag or glove box just in case.’

• Klein Glow-in-the-Dark Long Nose Pliers: ‘My brother introduced me to Klein and to the hi-viz/glow series that included these pliers. The reason they glow is because Klein is used by electricians/linesworkers who work in the dark a lot and can't see their tools if they drop them. I always found the design to be amazing, but fell in love with them later on when I used them for camping—so useful.’

• Stabila Magnetic Level: ‘Everyone needs a reliable level. Most apartment renters especially just need something for hanging art or shelving or shower tension rods... and this does the trick.  Stabila is a highly-respected German brand known for their precision and durability.’

FAVORITE HARDWARE STORES…

• Ferreteria Llanza: Barcelona, Spain. ‘Since 1928. The proprietor is the grandson of the original owner and runs it exactly like his grandfather. Everything is stored in boxes labeled in old calligraphy and sold in bulk—no plastic bags or containers. Mr. Llanza memorized the catalog of 4,000+ boxes and climbs a huge ladder to retrieve what you want to buy. It's special, feels like a history museum.’

• Anzen Hardware: Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. ‘I lived in LA years ago and stumbled upon this spot after getting noodles one day. It’s been around for 75+ years and specializes in Japanese tools & household items. I love that it’s super focused on its point-of-view and carries beautifully designed everyday items.’

FAVORITE BRANDS…

• BCD Tofu House: ‘The original and definitive. My favorite tofu spot that I learned about in LA, but thankfully there are 2 in NYC. Nothing better than boiling mini cauldrons of spicy red tofu that burns your mouth and gets all over your face and clothes. Plus, right when you sit down they hand you a small, whole fried fish as an amuse bouche of sorts.’

• Sasawashi Bath Mats by Morihata: ‘I don’t like most bathmats, I have an aversion to them. They’re always kind of gross? But these are so good. Made with kumazasa plant found in Japan, the fibers are strong and naturally antibacterial, which prevents mildew and deterioration. They feel unlike any bath mat I’ve ever used and I like the simplicity of the design and materials.’

• Bob Baker’s Marionettes: ‘Iconic marionette puppet theatre in Los Angeles that I've been obsessed with for a long time. During COVID I would watch their Instagram Live one-puppet shows they would do regularly every week, and it always made me feel a little better during all of those hard weeks and months.  Now I have a kid and I’m really excited to eventually take him to a show. Marionettes are inherently a little creepy, which I think is cool, so I hope he enjoys it and isn't freaked out.’

• Jah Mama Hot Sauce: ‘I’m not really a hot sauce person, but my husband has loved this since it first came out a couple of years ago and for some reason I’ve recently started to eat it on everything. Literally, everything. I thought about putting it on a brownie last week. I didn’t, but I thought about it for 5 seconds longer than I should have. The founder based it on the last jar of homemade scotch bonnet hot sauce his mom sent him before she passed; apparently he still has a tiny bit left in the original jar and has preserved it.’

Go deeper… YUNS shop // YUNS on IG

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

• Your Friendly Runners is a wildly popular East London running crew that’s exploded in size & ambition. Co-founder Matt Horrocks explains the plans for turning YFR into a proper business while retaining the magic of the community.

—

Other stuff before we get started…

• I’d love if you subscribe or share this edition with a friend who loves running, community-building or just good biz stories. The more the merrier 🤠

Share

• And HELLO to all the new subscribers who found their way here via Paynter’s latest newsletter. Super grateful to have you join us! (Also very grateful to Becky and Huw for the mention. They’re the best—buy everything from them.)

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I’m Editor-at-Large for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

Desire Paths is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, and cross oceans to start something new. I go deep with them—small business owners, designers, shopkeepers, farmers, billionaires, hermits, maybe even you—and share everything I learn.

Path #7: Matt Horrocks

I first met Matt at Courier in 2019, when he joined our (then) small but mighty mag and spent a few years doing awesome work on advertising & brand partnerships.

Back then, I knew Matt organized fun weekend runs around east London for a growing crew of people. I knew he had an Instagram page for the crew, a name and a logo, and a growing word-of-mouth following. But I wasn’t quite sure of just how big this ‘little’ side-hustle was becoming. (Sorry Matt…you know I don’t run for fun. I walk a lot. And now I sort of hike, but that’s another story.)

This carried on for a few years—me being aware that Matt was doing cool running stuff but not entirely sure of the specifics.

Then last year I opened the FT and read this piece by Grace Cook:

‘It’s 9am on a winter Saturday in east London and the sky is blue, the air crisp. Gathered outside a Scandi-style café is a large crowd of young urbanites clad in caps and sports gear. Some sidle up to newcomers, inducting them into the fold with easy, early-morning chatter. More than 40 people stand in front of me – and every single one is embroiled in conversation. This is the scene that begins my weekend, and has done since November, when I started making a 50-minute pilgrimage to jog 10km with Friendly Runners—a casual run club that has swiftly become my Saturday-morning mainstay…

In the past six months, the group—informally established three years ago by Oliver Hooson, a photographer, and Matt Horrocks, a marketing manager—has seen its numbers more than quadruple. “Every week it’s popping off,” says Hooson. “New people keep showing up. And they never come just once.”’

Oh. I should have been paying more attention.

After his gig at Courier and a stint at The Modern House, Matt has now gone full-time with Your Friendly Runners—a community of people united by an urge to hang out with likeminded people, have fun and, of course, run. And it’s ballooned in size.

As Matt explained to me over coffee at Ozone, YFR now hosts ~130 people for runs every Saturday (130!), plus additional runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. They’ve formed brand partnerships with the likes of Hoka, On and Selfridges. And they’ve found an investor who’s backing their move into e-commerce and even a physical clubhouse.

Super exciting stuff and it couldn’t be happening to a nicer dude. Below, the highlights of our chat. A sort of oral history of YFR.

Enjoy.

—DG

Matt on growing up with sports

‘I’ve always been really active growing up and enjoyed investing myself in the culture of different sports. Skateboarding became a bit of an obsession. I loved the geekery of it, building your skateboard, and how close it felt to art and design, in a way that most sports at the time didn't, you know? My football team wouldn't hang around and listen to music and chat about design. Whereas my skateboarding friends would.’

How he got into running

‘I'm a newbie to running! Well, relatively speaking. I got into running late in life. It all started when I moved to Australia. Before we got married, Becca and I wanted to experience living on the other side of the world. So we travelled in New Zealand, Fiji, Asia, then got a working holiday visa and moved to Melbourne. I had no mates there, no community. I was rattling around our flat, trying to find work, friends and things to do. And I thought I’d give running a go. Everyone talks about the running bug—let's see if I could find it. I started going out once a week, then twice. It killed time and energy, and helped me learn the city. From there, it just stuck. I eventually got a knee injury and had to stop running for a month. At that point I realized I’d really struggle without this routine I've built: lacing up my shoes and running. That was my awakening. Like, shit, I need running in my life!’

On looking for running friends in London

‘When I came back to London, I wanted to find people to run with. I had that hunger—not to necessarily set up a crew, but to run and enjoy the experience with others. I’d spent eight or nine months running by myself. Sometimes running by yourself is lovely. But I wanted to find some likeminded people. And it's harder than you think! Despite the fact that 40,000 to 50,000 people run the London Marathon every year, it’s often hard to just find a buddy to run and train with.’

The origins of the crew

‘Okay, here’s the story. By chance, I followed this guy Oliver on Instagram. I saw he was selling some running shoes on Depop and I was looking for an extra pair. I bought them. He messaged me and said, Hey man, I’ve just seen your address and you're around the corner, I'll bring them around. An hour later, there's a knock at the door. It was Oliver on his bike with the shoes. We had a 20 minute chat on my doorstep and he had a very similar story to me. He'd recently gotten into running, really enjoyed it, but none of his mates were runners. We were just like, Should we meet up and invite a few other people to run? This was December 2018. And on 10 Jan 2019 we made a poster and put it on Instagram.’

On the name ‘Your Friendly Runners’

‘We never really said, Let's call this crew Your Friendly Running Club. It was just a tagline or stamp that evolved into a logo and then from a logo into a name. It’s pretty funny. I spent my entire life saying I need to build a brand and come up with a name, even before I had an idea. And it turns out the thing that finally gets traction is the idea that was never really an idea, and the name that was never a name!’

The difference between a ‘club’ and ‘crew’

‘It's totally open to interpretation. Those two words are completely interchangeable. A running club is a group of people running. So is a crew. For me, a club is just a little more traditional, structured, disciplined, and closely connected to the history of the sport, which is about performance, racing and competing. A crew, though, is a bunch of people from all walks of life who just want to hang out and have a run. It's not so much about time and performance, though there's an aspect of what we do that lends itself to that. It’s closer to skateboarding: hanging out, sharing ideas and experiences, geeking out about kit and style. It's not about running around the track really fast.’

The early years… 

‘At the first run, there were four of us. We had an amazing time. If everyone's on the same wavelength, you don't need 100 people. We said, if it's four people forever, cool. And it was 4 people for a really long time! We'd spend the first 15 or 20 minutes just catching up, then we'd go off on our run. After we'd stop for coffee and breakfast. It's a format we still do today. It's not rocket science. We keep it simple and consistent. For the first two years, I might have missed only 2 or 3 runs. The idea of turning it into something ‘serious’ didn't even cross our minds for those first years. Genuinely didn't even occur to us. At one point we got sent some kit from a brand and we were like, Whoa! But we were just like, This is fun, it's getting bigger, let's keep going. And I honestly think that's part of why we've been able to have some success.’

Surviving & growing during Covid

‘When the pandemic happened we stopped for a while. But as soon as we had a ticket to go outside to exercise, and groups were allowed to get bigger… well, we were in Hackney already, with a community of people, and everyone was so desperate to get out again. Gyms were closed. We were like, come and run with us! We did our best to be really respectful. We kept our distance as best we could. By then, we were the go-to East London running community. We doubled in size in the space of a few months.  We had around 35 people running with us every Saturday. And it felt big.’

On getting MUCH bigger…

‘At the beginning of last year, our community had grown, our Instagram had grown, and we hit a critical mass. We got really, really busy. We increased our schedule from just Saturdays, to Fridays, Saturdays and Tuesdays. So we’re now hosting three meetups a week. Tuesday night is a bit more of a workout, Friday morning is more an entry level 5K. And we've got the social run on Saturday, which is a 10K with a few different pace groups. We're trying to cater for different levels. We're getting about 120-130 people every Saturday, 50 every Friday morning, and about 40 on Tuesday nights. Over the years, I’ve always asked people how they found out about us. For a long time it was Instagram. But now it’s people saying, ‘I ran past you guys in the park and I saw someone wearing a T-shirt that said Canal Etiquette’—that's our little tagline—and I googled it and found you. We were also featured in the FT. I still get imposter syndrome seeing our name in print. It's mad.’

YFR’s commercial collabs

‘We get a LOT of interest now because we've got such a big group. But we're careful how we work with brands. As soon as we started to grow, we thought, how does YFR look in the world? Then On reached out. We’ve built a really good relationship with them. We also hosted a series of 5K runs from Selfridges and had a YFR x Selfridges collab which was crazy. That was one of our earliest partnerships. And now we’ve built a great relationship with Hoka too. We were their running crew partner for the Hackney Half. You might have seen my face on a billboard somewhere!’

Hitting a crossroads

‘Last fall, we took 50 people to Amsterdam to run the marathon. It was an amazing weekend, but pretty stressful. I was holding it down with my full time job at the time. I was working at The Modern House. Oliver and I were both like, This is great, but it's starting to feel stressful because we're juggling a million things. We hadn’t really delegated or relinquishing any control. It basically wasn’t sustainable running it in the way we always had been. We didn’t know what to do. And then out of nowhere, we get a message from a guy named Phil…’

An investor and an opportunity

‘Phil had been coming to the run crew for a year. A super nice dude. And he was like, “Look, I really want to buy you a coffee, I've got a couple ideas.” And he persevered. Every few days he was like, “Boys, that coffee, what do you say?” So after a run one day, we met up with him at a cafe. We had no idea what was coming. He said, “I've been coming to YFR for a year, I love it, and I want to help you reach the next stage.” Oliver and I had brands wanting to work with us, we had trips planned, the community was growing, but we were just struggling a bit. So we looked at each other like two kids in a candy shop. Phil asked, “What's one thing you'd love to do?” We both knew. To open our own space. We've crashed too many cafes. We're too big. We want a clubhouse! A place to hang, do our own coffee and food, run sessions and meetups. That's the dream. So we talked about it and over Christmas I wrote a business plan, then in January we registered the business, and at the end of February I left The Modern House.’

The next stage

‘There's so much going on now. Our community is growing, which is great. We want to keep growing it and become the most recognized open door and free running community around, covering the full spectrum of the sport. We want to bring in another layer of social events like supper clubs and trips; continue to produce regular merch and race kit; and also have our own flagship yearly event.

Here’s the potential business model: 1) A creative agency, which is a no-brainer. It's what we do and where we get most of our interest. 2) Our own online shop selling running merch and a handpicked selection of the best running gear. And 3) A physical clubhouse, which would be open-door and for the public. It's a bit counterproductive to launch a space that’s strictly just for our crew, so we’re thinking the space should be for all runners. It’ll be a retail store with a coffee bar and will stock all kinds of amazing running products.’

On the highs & lows of building things

‘Now that I'm in it, I get why it's bittersweet. It's a wild ride. One of the cliches of running your own thing is how excited you are to get up every morning. But no one tells you how excited you are to go to bed! I wake up everyday and I'm like, This is amazing, I get to think about running all day. But by 5pm my head is mush. I've got a life, a partner, mates and a dog too. I don’t want to be dramatic—I'm not running some big tech company here. I'm just starting to get a sense of how incredibly exciting this is. We're in it now. We're in the ring.’

Go deeper… Matt Horrocks // Your Friendly Runners // YFR on IG

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

• Meet the LA duo who bought and renovated a roadside motel in the middle of nowhere before becoming evangelists for the local community. Will Cuyama Valley become another Joshua Tree or Marfa? Keep reading…

P.S. I’d love if you subscribed to this newsletter. What have you got to lose?

Subscribe now

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I’m Editor-at-Large for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

Desire Paths is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, and cross oceans to start something new. I go deep with them—small business owners, designers, shopkeepers, farmers, billionaires, hermits, maybe even you—and share everything I learn.

Path #6: Cuyama Buckhorn owners Ferial Sadeghian & Jeff Vance

Cuyama Buckhorn is a classic roadside motel in New Cuyama, California, built in 1952. Desire Paths readers might already know that I had the pleasure of passing through the extremely beautiful (and extremely isolated) area the other week, and had this to say about it.

Below, as promised, is my lightly edited conversation with the Buckhorn’s current owners, Iranian-born architect Ferial Sadeghian, and Jeff Vance, founder of the LA-based design firm iDGroup.

They bought the property in 2018 and have since turned it back into something special. They’ve also discovered that some of the most rewarding aspects of the project haven’t involved hospitality at all…

Hello you two. Was owning a hotel in the middle of nowhere always your dream? Or rather… how’d you get into hospitality?

Jeff: I started my career in the film industry, doing everything from production and special effects to set design. I eventually got into real estate and ended up with a design and architectural firm. My family—my grandfather and his father and grandfather—were all in the hospitality business, in bars and restaurants. My great grandfather actually had a hotel and my grandfather was president of the bartender’s union. So as a kid I was always going to these places, sitting at the bars and talking to the managers.

Ferial: I'm an architect by education. Now that I think about it, I was training for this [project] for a very long time. Being Persian, parties and event planning come naturally. My parents were diplomats in Baghdad before Saddam and way before the Iranian revolution. So they cared about things like presentation and setting the table. As a kid, my mom would cook, but I was responsible for how each dish was served. Through my dad I was exposed to lots of fine dining and good food in Europe and also roadside places that were very different than in the US. Here there’s Carl's Jr. and if you're lucky an In-N-Out. In Europe, so much belonged to the place. When you passed through, it was often a mom-and-pop and the food came from the garden.

Walk me through how you discovered and bought the Buckhorn.

J: Ferial and I started working together. And as we got closer, we realized we both wanted to do a hospitality project. I was scrolling on my phone late one night, trying to fall asleep, and I saw that the Buckhorn was for sale. I couldn’t believe it. I'd been coming to the Buckhorn for many, many years. I said to Ferial, You gotta check this place out, it’s awesome. So we drove out there.

F: Jeff texted me about the Buckhorn. He’d known the place for a while. For me it was fascinating. It was the middle of nowhere. The hotel looked very different from what it does now. But originally we were looking for a hidden place, not directly on a main road, and especially not on a highway!

J: It’s actually funny how it happened. Right behind the Buckhorn is Blue Sky Center [a local non-profit]. Ferial looked over at a building and said That's a Khalili! A building made by the Persian architect Nader Khalili, a professor she had in Tehran. I said There’s no way a Persian architect, an instructor you knew, built something out here in New Cuyama. But sure enough, it was. That kind of brought the whole story together. And we fell in love with the place.

Serendipity! So you bought the property. Then what? Time for the hardhats and shovels?

J: The good news and the bad news was that the Buckhorn is a 1952 original. It really needed a makeover. In these types of projects, when you scratch at something and it's usually a system like plumbing, you don't want to fix just that one pipe. You gotta chase it back until you find out if it's in good shape. It could go all the way to the street. The hotel rooms were a cement block, which is fantastic for 1950s architecture. So we didn’t have to get into it structurally. All the buildings were in great shape, but several were just storage. I don't know how many rooms were operating. Some had been remodeled in the 80s/90s, some probably before that. It was a mishmash.

F: The mid-century architecture was something we both care for. The bones were there. Where the pool and bocce ball court is today, that was all asphalt. You could pull right up in front of your room back then. It was a true motel. What we did at the beginning was take away, just to see the reality of what was there. I remember walking into a storage space with a thick, dark, dirty carpet and chairs up to the roof. We were like, wait a minute, look at that big fireplace. This couldn't have been a storage space originally. This should be our lobby. Later on when the local ranchers came in, they said, Oh, you brought the lobby back!

So you wanted to stay pretty closely connected to the Buckhorn’s past.

F: We spent hours and hours reading about the Buckhorn in the library, and looking for anything we could find online. We did a lot of research. The history and architecture was important to us. We found out the architect was the same person who designed Flamingo in Las Vegas. And Ciro's in West Hollywood. 

J: We're both absolute architecture junkies. We love projects where we can rebuild something and bring it back. When we peeled back layers, we said, Wow, they don't build stuff like that anymore. You gotta remember, this place was developed by Richfield Oil. They had the budgets to do things right. We realized there was more to work with here architecturally than what met the eye initially. The Buckhorn started telling you what to do.

Immediately prior to you buying it, was the Buckhorn just a last-minute stop on the road for tired drivers? What was the story?

F: It was mostly farm workers or construction workers or truckers driving by. And no online presence, no software. That was right before us, and also for a few owners before that. But originally when the Buckhorn was built, back in the golden years, it was glamorous!

J: The hotel was barely operating when we bought it. Back in the day, though, jets would come in to bring people, there were white tablecloths, and a piano player four nights a week. All the way out here! There was an owner who had it for a long time who really loved it and took care of it. It had its heyday. More than one, actually. But like in any small town it goes through cycles.

F: What’s beautiful is when people come back. The granddaughter of one of the owners who had it the longest called us and said she wanted to have her father's birthday here. It was great to experience that.

J: People come through who say, When I turned 21, I bought my first beer there at the bar, or My wife and I met here 20 years ago. There's a lot of history here. But it was scattered around and nobody was bringing it all together. That's what we're trying to do. 

The best proof is if locals still come or if they feel they're not welcome anymore. When I was at the Buck Stop having coffee, the Santa Barbara Fire Department was having breakfast next to some 20-something creative director types. I thought it was cool.

J: At different times we'll look across the cafe or bar and see Silver Lake hipsters next to cowboys and the conversations that happen, it's really amazing.

Yeah, what strikes me is that this isn’t some random hipster project dropped into the desert. The Buckhorn feels like it’s rooted in the local farms, local business scene, community.

F: The Buckhorn had always been the hub in New Cuyama, during good times and bad. If something good or bad happened in the town, everybody would gather here. Some of that had gone away. We're trying hard to bring it back. We just had a fundraiser for the rodeo queen, the daughter of one of our team members. It was so great to see all the people here and the energy.

J: But by the same token, a couple of days later there was a fire down the road and everybody congregated here. The Buckhorn was a sort of information hub. When things happen, we're usually aware of it pretty quickly.

F: When the nearby airstrip went in, we talked with the pilots. Now we're getting a camera because they need to see the top of the mountain before deciding if they fly in or not! We’re also working with Santa Barbara Food Action Network and through that we created Cuyama Food Action Network, which started during Covid. We’re helping develop emergency strategies for the town too. We had a really hard winter recently. It hadn't snowed like that for 20-something years and some houses had limited access. We’re working the community and Blue Sky on how each group can become a hub for heat or food. Things we never thought we’d be involved in.

I mean, if you were a hotel in Downtown LA or Santa Monica, you'd be focused on profit margins and pop-up events with cool chefs, not how to make your entire town resilient. You’re in a different headspace.

J: Well, I have to say, as far as profitability goes… you immediately know out here that doing things right, building relationships with the ranchers and farmers and community, those are the things that are going to make this business work. We’re running a business, but we never actually sat and thought, Okay, what's going to be a big profit center? You’ve gotta blend in with the environment. So food has become big for us. That's one thing I didn’t expect. Some of Ferial’s closest friends now are in the grain business. You’ve gotta make that work before you can even talk about what the business profit centers are going to be.

F: A lot has been education for us. If Blue Sky wasn't here, I don't know if the path would have been the same. The first event we went to in town was a farmers and ranchers dinner. We thought we were the new ones; that everybody had met and worked together. Then we found out it was the first event Blue Sky had organized to bring everybody together. We did the next event. We’ve got two local wineries here, each one 20 minutes from us, and we found out they’d never met or tried each other's wines! So we were swapping wines. They’re busy, they’re farmers and ranchers, they work hard during the day and rarely have time to go meet people. So we became a part of facilitating that. 

We're also working on things like agritourism and town beautification. Someone reached out to Blue Sky through Caltrans [California Department of Transportation] and said they’ve got beautification funding if we had a group that could support it. The next day we met and the project starts next month—a $1.2m grant for the beautification of the highway.

Amazing.

J: And we originally thought the only rewards and gratification of owning the Buckhorn would be purely from the hospitality side of things!

F: It’s a totally different pressure on us, too. Especially when payroll hits. But it's not just about operating the hotel, it's all the outside stuff we’re involved with. That's where our time goes—having meetings for things we never thought we’d be having meetings.

What you and Blue Sky do sort of reminds me of Fogo Island Inn, a hotel in the middle of nowhere in Canada run by a social enterprise called Shorefast. For a town of 500+ people, Cuyama seems to really punch above its weight. Do you also look to a place like Joshua Tree? Will Cuyama be covered in vintage stores in 5 years?

F: We already have vintage stores! But this is the big question. The community all came up with this answer: Do we want to create more economic value for everybody living in Cuyama? Yes. But do we want Cuyama itself to grow? No.

You don't want to price out the locals.

F: On the one hand, we were new here too. We moved here five years ago. But now we're the old ones here. A place for people to work and make money is very important, so we're becoming one of the largest employers in a small town. But it seems that any new property owner or rancher who’s come here in the last couple years has been so engaged in the community. They care so much about it and have become a part of it.

J: Rather than exploit it. Have you ever been to Marfa? 

I know a bit about Marfa, but I've never actually visited. 

J: Marfa was one of the earlier comparisons that was made to this little town. I hadn't been to Marfa either, neither of us had, but I was familiar with it. And it was pushed on us so much that we made the trip there. You know, we're not anything like that at the moment. But I do see the comparison.

They’ve also got a well-known hotel there, El Cosmico, whose owner Liz Lambert announced some big plans recently. It’s definitely an interesting parallel or crystal ball thing.

J: Obviously it has a lot more commerce than what we have here. But I see the comparison. In some ways we strive to be something like that, but in other ways we are definitely our own unique thing. We’re located where we are. We're 2+ hours from Hollywood, Silver Lake or Santa Monica.

F: Whereas Marfa is 7 hours from Austin!

What do you think more generally about the growing trend of renovating roadside motels? Why is it happening? 

J: It’s a fashionable thing to do now. It obviously started before Covid. I think it's fun. There's an opportunity. People are on the road. Local vacation spots are a little bit more popular now as you don’t have to get on a plane. But the hotel world is on fire. You’ve seen rates—it’s amazing. It's not unusual to see $600 or $800/night rooms. They've gone through the roof. And if you can create an experience where you don't have to spend that kind of money, it's desirable. Especially in a unique area. There's no Aman or Ritz in Cuyama. There are big, fancy names in Santa Barbara and they're fantastic and beautiful. But talk about a different experience.

F: Also these roadside motels, these structures, are there. They've been built right. There's nothing you can build right now that would could match them. So the fact that they're being reused is great. 

J: It’s very rare that anybody would attempt to build an 18, 22 or 26-room hotel now. Especially in California, it’s so difficult to get it zoned and built.

Oh, really? 

J: Oh my god, yeah. It's very hard. That's a later dream for us, at some point—to possibly build new. We're in the business, we're builders, we're designers, and we cut out a lot of middlemen. But it’s so hard to do.

Lastly, how do you two spend your time between LA and the Buckhorn?

F: We’re for sure here once a week for 2-3 days. Work and life have merged into one. Weekends are important here, so we’re often here on weekends and then we'll go to LA for office work. 

J: Yeah, design firm work during the week and hotel work on the weekends. We've grown into it. When we first got here we took a couple hotel rooms so we could be on-site. Thankfully we got a little busier, so we made a work suite. When we acquired the building, there were a few houses for support management staff, so we then stayed in a house and remodeled it. But we were enjoying it so much that we committed to the area in a bigger way than anticipated. So right behind the Buckhorn is a road, and if you continue up that road four or five miles, we’ve got a little ranch up there now. 

I was wondering where that road goes!

J: Cattle, oil fields and dirt roads all the way there. We've got some friends and family who really love it and appreciate it. But then some others who come to us and say:

Who are you hiding up there?

What are you doing?

Go deeper… Cuyama Buckhorn / Blue Sky Center

UNTIL NEXT TIME,

Subscribe now

In this edition of DESIRE PATHS…

• Meet Liko Hoe, the art-loving, poi*-pounding, taro-farming, ex-college teacher who dishes out culture lessons and delicious Hawaiian food from his roadside restaurant in Oahu.

• And I’ve got a few housekeeping questions at the bottom of this one, so make sure to read to the end.

Thanks! And enjoy.

—DG

*A starchy Hawaiian food made from pounding cooked taro root and adding water.

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I’m Editor-at-Large for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

Desire Paths is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world are those who look at the boring, comfortable, predictable path they could take in life and say nope. Instead, they chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, or cross oceans to start something new.

I dig deep with these people and share everything I learn with you. Let’s go.

#5: Waiahole Poi Factory

Taro seems to be having a moment. Or maybe I’m just paying attention now.

A few years back, my pal Tony Conrad introduced me to what he called the most delicious bite of his life: freshly made taro donuts from the Hawaiian company Holey Grail. (Holey Grail’s since set up shop down the road from me in LA and I can confirm their taro donuts are next level.) But now I’m taro-curious. I turn my head when I see it on menus. It’s in boba, it’s in ice cream, it’s everywhere.

NEWS: White American guy discovers thing that's existed in rest of world for millennia. Yeah, I know. But still. Taro is new to me. I’m learning.

So on a recent trip to Hawaii, I wanted to learn about poi, Hawaii’s most important staple food. It's made from cooked taro root, it’s pale purple, paste-like, and depending on your palate, either delicious or... an acquired taste.

I soon discovered that there’s a guy, and a magical place, where poi was still made the old-school way. One of the very few places like it left on Oahu, in fact.

So I hopped in my car and paid him a visit.

Waiahole Poi Factory is in Kaneohe, on the main road that loops around the top of Oahu, sandwiched between lush mountains and the ocean only a few hundred feet away.

When I arrived, owner Liko Hoe was sitting outside, in front of his place, pounding poi against his wooden board. Behind him a queue of people were waiting by the takeout window to grab their lunches to go, while tourists walked by, curious at what, exactly, this man was doing hitting that squishy purple dough-like thing with a stone.

During my conversation with Liko, first on the street and then over lunch, a constant procession of locals, regulars and visitors came by, waving, smiling, honking, saying Aloha! or Mahalo! to Liko as he smiled and nodded and said Aloha! or Mahalo! back, all while maintaining the rhythm of his poi-pounding.

Here’s how Liko ended up doing what he’s doing and where he wants to go…

Hey Liko! I’d love if you can share the history of Waiahole Poi Factory.

Sure. This poi factory was originally built in 1905. Back then, almost every valley area had their own poi factory because poi is the staple of Hawaiian food. But all that started to change, and by the 1970s the factory was closing down. This was right around the time when my parents were moving back to Hawaii from Minnesota. My dad's from Hawaii and my mom's from Minnesota, where my dad went for school. 

You can't get much different than Minnesota and Hawaii…

It's a little different! So they moved back here. My mom studied art in college and was looking for something she could do and still watch my older brother. So they came here. There was a small fruit stand – it's still here, right around the side – and my mom asked the lady who ran the stand whether she could put up a little wall and show her art. The lady said, “You know what? The poi factory is actually closing, why don't you ask them?” And so my parents ended up leasing the poi factory and ran it as an art gallery for years.

When did the factory become a place of food production again?

In the early 1980s my parents closed the gallery and, along with some other families in the valley, redid the kitchen and turned it into an incubator kitchen. People growing crops in the valley could rent the space and make products in a certified kitchen. It ran like that from the late 80s all the way to 2009. By that point, it was getting hard to find new people who wanted to rent the space as a kitchen. There’s not a huge community here – most of the people who wanted to try something here already did it. So we decided, you know what, let's create a Hawaiian food place!

So your parents were like, we’re gonna turn this place into a traditional Hawaiian food joint, do you want in?

It was more me – they were already doing other things. At the time, I was teaching Hawaiian studies at Windward Community College, right down the road. I was still full time at the college, so it was hard…

Sneaking out between classes to cook?

Exactly. At first, we were open one day a week, which went well. But within a few years we were open everyday.

I absolutely love that you were teaching Hawaiian studies then pivoted to making Hawaiian food. Were colleagues & students supportive?

At the beginning I was doing both, but it just got too ridiculous. I had tenure and everything, so my colleagues were, like, are you crazy? So I had to make the call and gradually switched over to the poi factory.

Were many places around here making traditional Hawaiian food?

Not a lot! We're in Hawaii, but you'll find way more Japanese or Korean food places, you know? Not a whole lot of Hawaiian food. We're a place where anybody can come to enjoy Hawaiian food again.

I've lived in New York, London and now LA, and the first time I've had real Hawaiian food was a few days ago. 

It should be more accessible and it's getting more accessible, which is good.

Yeah. I was completely ignorant to the difference between ‘plate lunch’ and traditional Hawaiian food. 

Plate lunch, yup. Hawaiian BBQ. That's more teriyaki or Korean flavors. Which is definitely still a part of Hawaii. But as far as ‘Hawaiian food’ goes, it's different. 

“My friend made this poi pounder stone; it’s about three years old. I’ve got another one that my dad's high school teacher gave him, made in the 1950s. I’ve also got one that’s hundreds of years old. Back then this would have been like a toaster oven – everybody had one in their house. This one is basalt, volcanic. It will last forever.”

Can you talk about poi? It’s not something you often see outside Hawaii.

Poi is usually made out of taro, but poi can be made from any type of starch that's pounded up like this. The traditional starches would have been taro, sweet potato, breadfruit, yams, banana. All of those starches can be made into poi. Taro is the most common. For Hawaiian people and in Hawaiian culture, taro is central. In our origin story, the first taro plant is considered to be the sibling of the first human being. It's the most important crop. 

So how do you take taro and make it into its edible poi form? 

Taro has proteins in it that have to be cooked really well. So the traditional way is to cook it in an underground oven. It has to cook really long and well, which takes a lot of energy. You have to use a lot of wood. It’s not something you want to be doing every day. You want to cook up a nice batch that's going to last the whole family for a couple of weeks. And then you cook again. 

And right now you’re doing… what, exactly?

This is basically the finished product on the board. It hasn't been fully mixed with water yet. To make it into poi, we'll mix in a bit more water. When I lift it up like this [he takes the stone and raises it] and the poi stays mostly on the board, that's a sign it’s almost ready. That means there's enough fluid in there. It's about the feel.

So you took over the place 15 years ago. What’s been the biggest challenge? 

Man, there have been a lot! With any kind of food thing there are so many variables. Covid was crazy. We were really fortunate, though, because we already had takeout set up, so people didn't have to come inside. We're also right on the road. There was a full year when pretty much the only thing people could do besides stay home and watch TV was drive on the road.

And we’re talking about the road! The big road that goes around Oahu.

Yeah, this is the road around the island. If you're cruising, we’re one of those places you'll pass. So we were fortunate, but you just never knew what would happen next. It was pretty stressful. One of the most challenging things has been finding people to work for us, too.

That’s a hospitality thing everywhere, it seems.

And in Hawaii in particular, unemployment is super low. It's a tight market. Everybody's got at least one job, if not two.

Is the business still family-run?

Definitely. It's still us. One of my brothers works with me a lot. My son and daughter, when they're here, they’re pounding poi with me. And a lot of our staff are from this area. Many families, ours included, have been here for hundreds of years. The families are kind of interconnected.

Walk me through a typical day for you.

It’s all over the place. We have a good crew in the kitchen that handles most of the day-to-day. But I try to pound at least twice a week, usually Wednesdays and Sundays. My son pounds with me on Sundays. He graduated from college a few years ago. He studied electrical engineering and found a job here, working on computer chip stuff. But he still pounds with me. And my daughter’s in art school at SCAD [Savannah College of Art and Design] in Georgia, so in the summertime she jumps back in here too. But one of the big new things I've been trying to do recently is the actual growing of the taro!

Oh wow, you’re a farmer now? Do you want to own the whole process?

Taro was the main food in Hawaii for hundreds of years. Pretty much every place that could grow it, grew it – especially on the windward side of Oahu, because there's so much water. We’ve got pictures of where we are now – all the way up until the 1970s there were hundreds of acres of taro here. Just on and on and on. That wasn’t unusual. Even in Waikiki, that whole area was a huge taro producing area. The big decline happened in the first part of the 20th century. Taro lands on Oahu dwindled.

So where does your taro come from?

Today there's one big poi producer and they're in town [Honolulu], right next to the docks. Most of the taro that's produced today comes from Kauai or the Big Island or some from Maui. The taro gets shipped in and then the poi is made right there. They make thousands of pounds of poi a week. But even that is a small, small fraction of what used to be. For me, it’s challenging because there's really no wholesale taro here. Most of the producers supply that one main poi producer. So, I ship in most of my taro and my sources are kind of outlier sources. It’s not a guarantee.... 

That it will arrive on time? 

Or arrive at all!

I see.

Yeah, a couple of years ago we had these huge floods on Hawai'i Island, which took out the production of the farm where I was getting my taro from. For months we were scrambling. I was calling everywhere. And when you buy it like that, you're not getting a good price. Then when the pandemic started, the farm lost its lease. So it went from less taro to zero taro. And I had to scramble again. What I'm trying to do now is just get a bit more control. It's just me and my younger brother and we’re still getting used to the process. It's a challenging crop, because it takes about a year to mature. But I enjoy growing taro!

This is such a special place. What’s in the poi factory’s future?

I don't know, man, it's just day by day. I was born right in the middle of when this place was still an art gallery. But even when it closed as a gallery, my mom became an art teacher and my dad stayed involved in traditional arts. I've always wanted to bring art back into what we do here. I'm really excited about what my daughter's doing. Maybe we can fold that back into the poi factory somehow. I love her work.

That would be very cool. You must be thinking about expanding, too?

At this point, we're maxed out at this particular site. So yeah, we’re thinking about a second one. We started in this form almost 15 years ago. It’s gradually grown and hasn't stopped growing. So I want to keep it moving, keep it growing, but not too quickly. Let it grow to be what it can be, but keep it an expression of who we are. That's one of the most important things.

Go deeper… Waiahole Poi Factory / Instagram / Google Maps

Hey, just one more thing….

I’m still getting the hang of publishing here and I want to make sure I’m delivering what you thought you were signing up to. DESIRE PATHS was always meant to be a library of fascinating interviews and stories… but also a bit more. From time to time, I want to use this newsletter to share other things I’m interested in:

• Deep-dives on stuff I’m thinking about

• Fascinating rabbit holes I’m going down

• Lists of things I like right now (we all like lists)

• And photo essays. Lots of you know I’m a street photographer. I’d love to use this space to share thoughtful images and photo essays every now and then. I might even start with images from Hawaii…

So, a mix of interviews (70%) and personal stuff (30%). Hope that’s cool. If you’re interested or not, let me know either way. And thanks again for reading.

Desire Paths is a newsletter about the wild, winding, lesson-filled lives of fascinating people. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d subscribe or share with a friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Subscribe now

Welcome back to DESIRE PATHS.

In Feb 2020, Kim and I got married at a small civil ceremony in London, where we lived, but Covid cancelled our big wedding (twice) and also our honeymoon to Japan. So, last week we travelled to O’ahu for an extremely delayed celebratory trip and readers, let me tell you, wow. Hole-in-the-wall gems, indie shops around every corner, godly poke & Kona coffee. It was my first time there and won’t be my last.

I also visited Waiahole Poi Factory and did a fun Desire Paths interview with owner Liko Hoe, who turned his parent’s roadside art gallery into a bastion of traditional Hawaiian food. Keep an eye out for that one soonish...

But first, today’s edition. Heather and Jahmicah from Slim Pickins Outfitters are the real deal and I’m so happy to share their story. We talk about setting up their outdoor gear & clothing shop, what success means, changing narratives, and life’s curveballs.

P.S. If you’ve been enjoying Desire Paths, I’d absolutely love if you’d subscribe or tell a friend. My goal is to build a special community here and any part you can play in that growth, well, I’d be forever grateful. Thanks! And enjoy,

—DG

I’m Danny Giacopelli, an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. By day I’m Editor-at-Large for Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

Desire Paths is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world are those who look at the boring, comfortable, predictable path they could take in life and say nope. Instead, they chase after risky dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, or cross oceans to start something new.

I dig deep with these people and share everything I learn with you. Let’s go.

#4: Jahmicah and Heather Dawes

‘The first Black-owned outdoor shop in the US’

How utterly wild that this sentence became true only a few years ago. The store in question is Slim Pickins Outfitters. It opened its doors in Stephenville, Texas (population 21,816) in 2017. And it’s run by Jahmicah and Heather Dawes.

I first stumbled into the magic of Heather and Jahmicah via a short film in which they shared their story. I was transfixed. And I knew I had to talk with them myself.

What I enjoyed most about our conversation was just how honest they were about how messy the SPO journey’s been. It’s refreshing, because it’s reality. That’s how it always is. Don’t let the ‘zero to millionaire’ success stories fool you. This stuff is hard. “I kind of despise the term small business,” Jahmicah told me, “because I know the effort, innovation, creativity and work involved is anything but small.”

Ultimately, ‘the first Black-owned outdoor shop in the US’ doesn’t tell their full story. As Jahmicah explains below, SPO is ‘Black-owned, but woman-run’. Heather and Jahmicah are a true team.

There’s no Slim Pickins Outfitters without both of them, together.

Read on for their story…

I’m psyched to finally talk with you guys. What drew you to the outdoors?

Heather: Us too, thanks! I didn't grow up outdoorsy, I just grew up outside. My parents are into organic farming and gardening, and my dad is one of those people who could survive off the land for years. We would go camping and sleep on a flatbed trailer with a mattress on top. But when I got older, I thought I didn’t really qualify as outdoorsy, because I didn’t do all the things other people do, like super long through hikes. My friend joked, like, ‘What did you think? You're not outdoorsy because you're not wearing zip-off pants?’ And I guess… yes, that's what I thought!

But before we opened the shop, I realized you don't have to be a skilled outdoorsman, you just have to go outside! That's all it takes to be outdoorsy: to be outside.

Was it the same for you, Jahmicah? 

Jahmicah: There’s the reality and the marketing story. Heather grew up outside and yet the marketing from brands was so powerful that it convinced even someone like her that she didn't fit in. My experience was a bit more traditional. Both of my parents were in the Scouts. My dad's originally from Jamaica. His dad was into farming. What drew me outside was my love of animals and also wanting to follow in dad's footsteps. So I became a Scout. And I'll just say that that didn’t last long.

Overall, it wasn't a good experience. It's not that I didn't enjoy certain moments, but it was also the first place where I experienced racism. It was like, man, if these are the stewards or representatives of the outdoors, then... it wasn't even that I didn't belong there, it was that I didn't know if I wanted to even be there. But at the same time, even though the Scouts was the first place I experienced racism, it was also the first place I experienced accountability for it.

Can you elaborate a bit on that?

J: I remember the scoutmaster's son said something to me and my older brother, who was always my advocate and protector. That night when we got home, the scoutmaster showed up at our house with his son. My dad opened the door, my brother stepped out, and I was peeking from behind. So it was, like, this is reality and what people think, but also here's accountability and forgiveness, too. People make mistakes. I was grateful because I was exposed to this reality, but I was also taught a lesson on how to handle it. My dad could have slammed the door in his face. But he knew I was behind the door. He was teaching his sons how to respond. 

Did that taint your love of the outdoors? 

J: My love of animals still kept me involved, and I got really into skating and riding single speed and fixed gears. Then in college, I had a group of friends that knew and loved me well enough, and knew some of those barriers to entry, that when they’d extend invites to me, they’d say, ‘I already brought my dad's other mountain bike,’ or ‘I already have an extra day pack in the truck’. So then I'd feel like a jerk if I didn't go! That was how I got back outside. 

Did you two meet in high school? Did you bond over the outdoors?

H: We actually met in college. It was my first semester and Jahmicah’s last. 

J: I don't think we would've been friends in high school. 

H: No, definitely not... 

Why's that? 

J: She would have been an overachiever. I might have still had a thing for her, but there was no way I would have admitted it. Like, salutatorian? Sorry, next... 

H: I was actually valedictorian. 

J: Oh babe, I knew that! I was just setting you up.

Nice save…

H: Yeah, so we connected over our shared love of sports. At one point I was even planning to be a sports journalist. But we also connected over style. Jahmicah was a fashion merchandizing major and I was coming out of this small rural town and finding my style, my place in the world.

J: I had a business then, Slim Pickins Vintage. I originally wanted to be a horse trainer, but I switched to fashion merchandizing and opened this little online vintage shop from my dorm room. I sold on Etsy and eBay and I'd also do appointment styling for people on campus, for date nights and job interviews. 

H: Our mutual outdoors connection came later, when Jahmicah went on a hike with my family right after we got engaged…

What happened on this legendary hike?

J: Well… it was Christmas day. I remember I had on a vintage Ralph Lauren sweater with reindeers, selvedge denim jeans, Sebago boots with Vibram red soles, and a newsboy cap. I was on point to impress her family. I also had to rep my business, right? But I didn’t know hiking was on the docket that day! Her dad just said, ‘Let's go for a hike.’ And I'm like, do you see me? I'm not gonna go crawling through some bushes or under some trees! But I didn't say that. Her whole family was there. They took us to this place where there's a dam… and they all just walk across it! I was the last one. Straight up I was scared. Like, what the heck? Her little sister was skipping…

H: She was wearing those little sparkly shoes, remember? 

J: Yeah. That day was amazing and that area is now my favorite place in Texas. It took me back to the things I enjoyed as a kid. I could go out and be myself. I wasn’t playing some outdoorsy role. I didn't look the part, but my heart was full. I was overjoyed, I was content, I was accepted by these people. And importantly, I was accepted by these people outside. Bringing that all together satisfied my soul. 

It’s crazy that in 2023 there’s still a feeling you have to be decked out in expensive kit to be an ‘outdoors person’.

J: If that were the case, just from a numbers game, there would be such a limited amount of people who are actually outdoors that there wouldn’t be enough protectors, conservationists & advocates for the outdoors. It's all about accessibility. If it's only for the elite, the Arc'teryx men and women, the Patagonia people, then that's a limited few. This thing that we've been put on Earth to be stewards of and advocates for, it's already going away. But if we limit the amount of people who have access to it, then we’re also limiting the amount of people who can stand up to protect it.

That’s just a whole lot of good sense.

J: For instance, I went fly fishing yesterday. When I tell people that I fly fish, I don't do it to get a reaction. But I love the reaction they usually have on their face, because I don't look like the average fly angler. My style is different. And I'm proud of that. When I come out of the water, I want my drip to look different. It’s important that sneaker heads and record rats and vintage nerds know they belong outside. If you're willing to step outside, the outdoors will connect with you in some way, shape or form, guaranteed. That stuff that you're into? Do it outside! We sometimes take a portable record player and sit under a tree. Heather will read and we'll spin some vinyl.

I'd love to talk about the store. When did you have the idea to open it?

H: It was 2016 and we’d both been looking for jobs. We didn't want to stay in Stephenville, but we went to school there and ended up living there. I’d been offered a job [in another city], but the day I received the offer was the day we found out my mom had cancer. I have a little sister and I couldn't leave my dad and my brother, who’d just started college. I couldn't be that far from home when they needed me. My mom's surgeries and treatment went well, and then I got a full time job. I wouldn't say I was the primary breadwinner... 

J: Yeah you were! You made that bread.

H: Ok, well my salary was kind of what kept us afloat. And we were thinking of what to do next. Jahmicah came to me with an idea [for a shop] that he had with a business partner. I said, okay, that's fine, but when this doesn't work out, I officially want to get out of here. The shop was scheduled to open March 2017, and 6 days before we we opened, I found out I was pregnant with our eldest son. We hadn't been able to get pregnant until then – we just thought it wasn’t in the cards for us – and mere days before taking the biggest risk of our lives... we're pregnant!

I walked into the shop to tell Jahmicah. There were no fixtures on the walls, no product was out, and I said, okay, now this has to work. But once we opened, we knew this is where we're supposed to be. We knew why none of our other jobs worked out. We’re fulfilling a need in our community that wasn't previously fulfilled.

Was there a gap in your town for an outdoors shop?

H: People were taking camping trips but had to travel to get their gear. It’s also a university town and students who studied abroad or did mission trips would have to travel to Fort Worth – over an hour away – for gear. There was a hole in the community for something like this. The jury's still out whether it’ll be successful!

J: Yeah, this is definitely still a social experiment. We knew that it had to have a communal focus. We're an interracial couple, and we wanted a place that would support, accept and encourage that – not just tolerate it. This is the cowboy capital of the world, and when you drive through town, it's easy to have a certain notion about what the people are about. But when you come into our shop, it's different. People say, ‘Oh my gosh, this reminds me of home.’ I don't want it to look like a normal outdoor shop. I want you to see the influence of vintage, vinyl, skateboards. This is our story. A running joke we have is: ‘It's Stephenville out there, it's Stevenchill in here.’ 

Is this how you persuade people to shop with you & not a big box store?

J: We hope that when people see what we're trying to do, they'll shop with us and invest in us. They’ll see our family. They’ll see our basset hound, Bill Murray, running around licking their feet. I could shop at a big box store, or I can try to support what these people are doing here. Almost everything we sell, besides our private label stuff, you can get somewhere else. That's the honest truth. So it's not about the brands. It’s about people, the culture we're trying to change, invite and establish in this town, and on a bigger scale, showing the country and even the world, that this is doable. 

Like I said when I reached out for an interview, I don’t care what your sales are. I’m interested in you guys, your lives and stories.

J: And I can tell you, the sales ain't good! They’re a lot better than they used to be, and that's because of Heather. We're Black-owned, but woman-run, and that's been to our success. Women have gotten stuff done for us. They’ve been able to sit me down and say, this isn’t working, we need to change this. That's our strength.

So Heather, you’re the operations & business head and Jahmicah is the partnerships guy and brand ambassador?

H: Correct. We have one employee, our shop manager. She’s our sister-in-law and was one of my closest friends in high school. She handles the day to day, I'm VP of operations, and Jahmicah does our brand partnerships. I also had a full time job until January 2022. I worked in the nonprofit field. When I was pregnant with our oldest, I would work all day [at the nonprofit] and then I'd come to the shop and run it so Jahmicah could do the back office stuff. And even now I do baking and meal prep for people and I’m a substitute teacher at our local school. 

Oh my god…

H: It takes a lot right now to make this work. But it's worth it. 

That's impressive. Was COVID almost a death knell for the shop? 

H: 2019 was a lean year – we were trying to pay off investors, paying invoices, we bought out our business partner, and I found out I was pregnant with our second baby. Heading into 2020, we were hopeful. January and February were great, but in March everything started to shut down. At that point, neither of us had the best mental health. We didn’t know if we were going to make it all work. Jahmicah started working a second job stocking shelves at Home Depot overnight. We reached out to one of our reps who had become a friend, and said ‘We think we're going to have to sell the shop. Is there even a market for it?’ And he said, ‘Give it more time, I think you have more fight in you.’ I was just like, ‘No, we really don't. I think we're done.’ 

Instead, he connected us to a PR agency called JAM Collective, which did a few things for us for free, which was incredible. At the time we’d started to figure out we were the first Black-owned outdoor shop in the US. We had done our own investigations and talked to people who had been in the industry for a really long time.

This is what led to that absolutely beautiful short film you two were in?

H: Yeah, in July or August 2020, we got a call from a film production company called Wonder Camp. They said, ‘We've partnered with The Outbound Collective to do films called Everyone Outside and we think you’d be a great fit.’ We didn't even answer yet, because it seemed like there was no way anything was going to save us. How embarrassing to tell these people we might have to shut down? He reached out again and said, ‘We're really serious about this. Would you want to be a part of this?’ We said yes, but that we're probably not going to be open by the time they got here!

J: It was only fair to let them know what was going on…

H: So they show up in November, shoot the film, and they’re like, ‘I think something really special is happening here’. We connected with them. They were with us for a week and were very intentional. They hired a Black producer and a Black director to help tell our story. The day they left, we stood in the shop and cried. Because, on one hand, this was such a breath of fresh air. But also they’re saying the film's going to launch in February and we knew we were probably not going to make it till then.

That’s when the GoFundMe happened…

H: They said a GoFundMe might really change things for y'all. Jahmicah was more on board with it than me. It was really hard to be so vulnerable and open that we needed help. I come from a tiny town where everybody's in your business. I didn’t want to give people any more of a reason to be in my business. But they said they had a really cool marketing plan for the GoFundMe and that the film was really impactful. They sent the film to us – and we loved it. We showed close family and said, ‘What do you think?’ Every time we showed it, people were in tears, saying, ‘This captured you two so perfectly.’ So we went ahead with everything. We went to bed the night the film came out and when we woke up I told Jahmicah, ‘We did $6,000 in sales overnight.’

Wow.

H: He said, ‘How? We don't even have that much stuff in the shop!’ We ended up pulling stuff out of our back stock, doing reorders. We weren’t prepared at all. Then the GoFundMe hit $100,000 within 36 hours and just took off. It was one of the most mind-boggling, life-changing experiences. Until that point, I really thought we weren’t going to survive. And it would be disingenuous to tell you we don’t still have those moments. I mean, 3 months ago I thought we might need to throw in the towel. But something always pulls us back in and encourages us. This time it was a big corporate partnership where we provided merchandise for an event.

Life!

J: This has been an adventure. A roller coaster. I don't want to romanticize it and say that if you have a dream and a vision and just do a bit of work, then everything will work out. Again, we still don’t know if this is going to work. There's this thing from a hip hop song: ‘Just because it failed doesn't mean it didn't work.’ I've really adopted that personally. Last month, we celebrated 6 years of being open. And in those 6 years, we’ve seen 4 other Black-owned [outdoor] shops open up. There's a legacy here.

You’ve both said you don't know if you're going to make it. But what would ‘making it’ even look like? What’s success?

H: When our every waking moment isn’t tied to the shop. That's not quantifiable, a goal you can set where you cross a finish line. But it would mean the constant anxiety related to the shop wouldn't be there. But that's more success in a business sense. 

What’s your other version of success? 

H: We've been here 6 years and we’ve been able to change some of the narratives and conversations in the outdoor industry. Our kids have had this full, rich experience. They get to see their Black aunties and uncles go skiing. They get to meet Phil Henderson, who led a group up Everest. That's success. 

If we build this shop and down the line our kids decide they don't want it, that’s fine. We’d be okay with that. We just want them to have the confidence that they belong wherever they want to belong. That they can take up space wherever they want to take up space. When they’re 25 years old, I want them to be able to go on a run in whatever neighborhood they want – something Ahmaud Arbery wasn’t afforded. 

If Slim Pickens Outfitters and these conversations can play even a tiny part in that, then I'm thrilled. That is success to me.

Go deeper… Website // Instagram // Film

All images courtesy of Slim Pickins Outfitters.

Thanks for reading! Desire Paths is a newsletter about the wild, winding, lesson-filled lives of fascinating people. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d subscribe or share with a friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Subscribe now

Welcome back to Desire Paths.

Also… shit. I guess it’s been a while.

Since the last edition, I’ve dodged soul-destroying rain in LA, travelled back to London for a week of meetings and friends, had a long weekend on Long Island making spiedini for a family party, and spent a glorious, mezcal-fueled, life-changing (really) 10 days in Oaxaca as a student in a street photography workshop with Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, two photographers I’ve admired for ages.

Back in Santa Monica now and the sun is finally peeking out again.

A quick note on the pace of publishing: I always prefer quality over quantity. I never want to send you guys something just for the sake of keeping up some schedule. But still... a few months’ gap is too long. I’m gonna start posting a lot more. And I’ve got some incredible stories lined up… including today’s, with TRUCK’s Tok Kise.

I hope you enjoy it. And as always, lemme know what you think! daniel.giacopelli@gmail.com.

—DG

I’m Danny – an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. My day job is editorial director of Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

DP is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world are those who look at the boring, comfortable, predictable path they could take in life and say nope. Instead they chase after risky, weird dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, or cross oceans to start something new (or just start over).

I dig deep with these people and share everything I learn with you. Let’s go.

#3: Tokuhiko Kise

In the late 1990s, Tokuhiko (Tok) Kise was a broke 20-something living on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan, making furniture that no one seemed to want to buy.

That’s because, as he admits, he was located in the middle of nowhere. Few people walked by his small woodshop, and since this was an age before e-commerce, zero foot traffic meant zero sales.

So Tok and his partner Hiromi Karatsu formulated a plan: they’d move to the city proper, where they’d build a single space to 1) make their furniture, 2) sell their furniture, and 3) where they could live, too.

This sort of multipurpose live/work urban space was more common for bike shops, where the owner might work in the back, sell in the front, and live upstairs. But such a setup was rare back then for the furniture world. At least, no one in Osaka was doing it. So in 1997, they did it.

It was the birth of TRUCK.

In the 26 years since, TRUCK has become a cult-favorite furniture and lifestyle brand in Japan. Customers love the timeless furniture, the quality, the lack of short-lived trends, and also the quirkiness: TRUCK’s made books, music, accessories from leather scraps, and even opened a cafe and donut shop. It’s the sort of brand that once you discover, you want to tell everyone about it.

Which also explains why TRUCK’s become popular further afield. For years, American fans have crossed their fingers that TRUCK would set up stateside. Now, although it’s not quite a store (more on that later), Tok’s scooped up a cavernous apartment-showroom in an industrial area of downtown LA, where US customers can touch, feel and try before they buy.

It’s on a slightly gritty backstreet, right near the 10 and lots of commercial activity: semitrucks unloading stuff, an importing outfit called Ameri-China International, men with hard hats and clipboards wondering where the guy with the camera is going.

The sort of place where you can easily get lost. And, when meeting Tok for our interview, I did.

Once Tok opens up his big black gate (unmarked, in my defense), you stroll past his vintage pickup truck in a courtyard, walk through his front door, and you’re immediately struck by just how cozy and welcoming everything suddenly feels. Piano music fills the space from a record player, there’s a beautiful motorcycle in a corner, there’s a shelf of booze, a guitar, and some TRUCK books.

Tok’s seemingly built a little oasis here – and an entire company in Osaka for a quarter of a century – out of wood, consistency, smiles and good vibes.

I wanted to know how (and why) he did it.

Tok, tell me about your childhood. What were you like as a kid?

I was born and raised in Osaka, Japan. I’ve always liked making things since I was a child. Custom bicycles, too. I remember being 10 years old and going to the mountains near Osaka with my brother. He’s 8 years older than me and rode motorcycles. I’d always sit on the back and we went up to the mountains together. I’d also carry my bike up and down the mountains – this was before mountain bikes were a thing. When I was 13, mountain bikes finally got to Japan and as soon as I got one, I always went to the mountains. I’ve been interested in the outdoors ever since.

Did you get the idea for making furniture when you were out there in the woods?

When I was 17, I discovered a school in Nagano Prefecture – maybe you can call it a shop class – where you learn how to make furniture. I decided to go there after I finished high school. Part of me thought making furniture would be good for me, but the other part just thought that Nagano was such a beautiful city, surrounded by beautiful mountains – the ‘Japan Alps’. I spent a year in Nagano and it was great. But then I came back to Osaka and started working at a small chair company near my parents house. I worked there for three years and eventually opened my own woodshop when I was 23. 

Did you have any customers back in those days?

No… no one! I rented a small shed and bought some old machines. But I spent all my money on those machines and so had no money to buy timber. I’d pick up wood scraps from the street, and I started making a coffee table. That was my beginning. 

Were there a lot of other independent furniture makers in the city?

No, no. Of course, there were people who made wood furniture independently, but they lived in the countryside, because it cost less. Maybe once or twice a year they'd show their furniture in Tokyo in a gallery. I saw people like that in Nagano. But I wanted to do it in the city. In Japan there are small bike shops where they do their work on the street level, but the owners live on site, too. I wanted to do that with furniture making. So I did it.

But for those first five years I was on the outskirts of Osaka, and there was no one there. I mean… no one was walking past my woodshop. So in 1996, I moved to the actual city, Osaka, and set up a woodshop and in front of that my own furniture store, TRUCK. That was 1997. 

Let’s rewind. You built this new workshop and shop, TRUCK, inside an old building you found. How did you transform that space?

I basically wanted to design a place that would have 3 uses: to live, make, and show. And I eventually found a building – the first concrete building in Osaka, I was told – that was more than 50 years old. The owner was in the brass or materials business and had used the 1st floor for the business, and the 2nd floor upstairs as a place for living. It had a very traditional Japanese style, but they hadn't used the space for at least ten years. So I remember it smelled! But I still wanted it. I was like 27 or 28 at the time and I looked like a kid. The owner wondered if I could pay the rent, as it was a lot. When I told them I wanted to renovate everything, the owner turned me down. 

So what was plan B?

I told my architect friend, and he made me a blueprint (of sorts) of what I wanted to do. It was sort of like a fake – but it still looked okay! After that, the owner said yes.

Amazing.

For an entire month I worked on that big space, I built a wooden floor, painted the whole place white, and made a unique place to live. It was a pretty uncommon space for Japan. And then I moved my machines downstairs. But, once again, by this point my money was all gone! 

Were you self-funding this construction project? Savings? 

Yeah, savings. Then one day I went to a store in Amerikamura, in Osaka. I found two chairs that I really wanted, but the price was too high. I got to talking with the owner and he asked me, ‘Do you make furniture?’ I said ‘Yes, I'm about to open a furniture store in front of my workshop’. And he said I should do it immediately, because somebody will probably do the same thing before me!

The same concept, making and selling furniture in the city? 

Yes. So that was, you know, my ‘switch on’ moment. 

That guy lit a fire under your feet. 

Exactly. So a month or two later, Hiromi and I opened our store and named it TRUCK.

Okay, got it. What does ‘TRUCK’ mean? I mean, I know what it means… 

Actually... there's no meaning! It's just easy to remember. 

But it's in English, too... 

Yeah, I just thought it was cool. And memorable, right? I always found myself not very good at remembering other store names. And TRUCK was so easy. Everyone knows the word. 

It's a good name. One syllable. 

But still, people would always ask me: Why TRUCK? And so I started making up other reasons using the word TRUCK. I like pickup trucks, like the one out front here. Old pickup trucks that maybe a farmer might use, like a Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge. They're old and muddy, but they're tough and work hard. And that's sort of what I'm doing. I make furniture, I work hard, there's always a lot of dust in the woodshop, and I want people to use my furniture for many years.

TRUCK’s got a cult following now. When did it start to gain momentum?

I remember well that for the first month we had no sales. It's true. The space was still very small and we had limited pieces, like only 8 or 10 pieces. But at least people still came everyday, so it was fun for me. I was making furniture behind the sliding door and lived upstairs. But, again, I didn't have any money left! So we started to rent the space for photo shoots, which helped me to buy timber. People even came from Tokyo for magazine shoots. Maybe you know Popeye... 

I love Popeye. 

They featured us back then. Around that time, I decided to make a catalog. The internet wasn't like it is now. We didn't have a website. But I wanted something to tell the story of what we were doing. So we made a catalog, but it was more than a catalog. It was a book. We printed 2,000 copies of it and I visited bookstores in Tokyo. But I didn't know anything about books or retail or distribution. 

So it was a proper catalog meant to sell TRUCK’s products?

Yeah it was a real catalog with prices, except we sold it for ¥1,800, like twenty bucks. Five or six bookstores said, ‘OK, we like it’. Before then, I thought I might have to live with or sleep on top of 2,000 copies forever!

2,000 is a lot…

But within a few months, they were all gone. Soon enough, Kinokuniya, a big bookstore, called me and said they wanted to sell the catalog too. 

It's kind of funny that people were essentially buying your direct marketing.

Yeah, companies usually make a catalog and just [throw it around] for free. But I thought... It's a good book! I didn't want to give it out for free.

Do you still have copies of it? 

Yes, some, just for the archives. For like 20 years after that, I'd meet photographers, stylists and designers who would all have that first book, and companies would want to shoot books like us. It was all very funny, because we didn't know anything about commercial stuff at all. I just did what I wanted to.

So you opened TRUCK in 1997. But then more recently you moved to a new location…

Yeah, we moved 13 years after we opened TRUCK, in 2009. Man, I did so many things for that new location. I built four buildings at the same time! 

What?!

Yeah, and planted trees and everything. It was actually only three days before opening day when we finally announced it on our website. 

But why did you move locations?

That first place was nice, but I was renting a number of buildings and was paying a lot per month. Also: there weren't any trees and I wanted to live with big trees. I needed big trees! So I started to search for a new place, and it took five or six years. Throughout the searching, I was always thinking of Montepulciano in Tuscany. I once stayed there with a very nice couple who were running an agritourism stay. The views were amazing, but they could also walk to a supermarket or hospital. That's fantastic, right? I don't want to drive for an hour to get to a 7-11.

As someone who just moved from London to LA, I feel your pain.

Ha, yeah. So… we didn’t have Montepulciano in Osaka. But I found a space that was surrounded by three schools. It was an old taxi company and they wanted to sell their land. There were buildings but no trees. But I thought that if I could demolish the buildings, build new ones and plant some trees, then it would be really nice. So I decided to buy the land.

I saw an image on TRUCK's website showing you lowering a tree into the ground from a crane. 

The story is… everyday I took my five dogs to a big park near my house. It was a big park with big trees and next to the park were apartments. The city decided to demolish those old apartments and cut down those trees. So I talked with Osaka city and told them I wanted to rescue the trees. And they said yes. I rescued more than 30 trees. We kept them in the mountains until we could replant them at our new site.

That would never happen in the US. The city would just be like ‘nah…’

Oh really? Well, trees are alive. I've rescued many cats and many dogs, and trees are the same, they're living.

And you've also opened a cafe & donut shop. Was that a dream of yours? 

No, no, no.... I originally wanted a place for TRUCK customers to relax. So the first idea was a corner in the furniture store where you can sit and pour yourself coffee. But I realized I’m not happy if my coffee sits there for an hour or two. It gets cold. So I wanted to offer better coffee. And then donuts came from a memory of mine from Noosa, Australia. I went there for the first time in 2003 and saw a donut machine at a supermarket. It was very cute. Me and my friend really liked that machine and it stayed in my head for like six years. So I thought, maybe we can make donuts and coffee. That would be great. So that's why I opened Bird. 

So you started off by wanting to offer some casual coffee and donuts for customers. But now you've got a whole separate brand!

It’s pretty funny, these days most Bird customers don't even know about TRUCK! I'm always like ‘What?! It's right next door!’

TRUCK also doesn't do wholesale. Why not? 

I just don't want to think about sales. If I do wholesale, the other company might ask me to make something new or make something other people really like. 

You'd have external pressures. You want more control.

Yeah, I want to control everything. How it looks like in the store, for instance. Or what's next to my pieces. Really, I just want to make what I want to make. It's very simple. That's all. 

What's motivated you over the years? Do you have a 5 or 10-year plan? 

No, nothing.

You’re just making it up day by day? 

My father always said to me to make a five year plan, ever since I was a kid. Maybe he did it like that. But I live day by day. Well, maybe just for tomorrow!

Just 24 hours in advance... 

I'm really not good at making big plans. It’s more like ‘Today I want to go to this place.’

Were you just as spontaneous when you decided to get a place in LA?

My friends Stephen and Beks live here and have their own furniture brand. They visited TRUCK almost ten years ago. I saw them climbing up the stairs to the store and I went to say hi. We started talking and he said he also makes sofas. Since then we've been friends. Do you know Deus ex Machina? 

Yeah, definitely. They've got a store here in Venice. 

I knew people from Deus and Stephen also knew them, so Deus asked us to do a collaboration for their new Tokyo store. We did that and we also shot a short film with Deus here in LA, riding motorcycles and visiting an upholster. I'd visited downtown LA and liked these buildings. And one day Stephen said there's an empty space in the building… so I decided immediately to rent it. But another guy took it, so I waited a year. And then it happened again! 

Basically I've waited two years for this space. The idea, though, wasn’t to make a business space. It was more for personal reasons. I’d never lived abroad and I just wanted a place to stay when I’m here, to feel like I’m living in LA. But then I started shipping my furniture over here... and now it's like our showroom!

It was inevitable.

We’ve always been shipping our furniture to California, New York, Europe. But now we can show it here in person, so you can touch it. It's good. 

Would younger you be surprised where you've taken TRUCK?

I always say that I'm lucky because I'm just doing what I want to do and making what I want to make. It's that simple. But it's been 26 years since I started TRUCK – and back then I had nothing. No money to buy timber! Now we’ve got like 20 people working for us, and I have their family on my shoulders, too. It’s our responsibility to make good products and I'm serious about the small details. But still… I’m just a furniture maker, I’m not a businessman. I want to keep the company small and I try not to think about money or expanding. I don't want to open a store in New York or Milan. No, just Osaka. And LA – but remember, this is just my apartment!

Sure. And what makes you most happy, Tok? 

I feel happiest when I'm making something new, something that people love. A new prototype, for instance. First I'll say, ‘okay, it's good’. The next step is getting the approval of the people working with me. And maybe then I'll put it in the store. Then if a customer is interested in it, it's just so satisfying. But if they buy it?! Oh, man. ‘You want to buy this?’ That's unbelievable! It’s not about money. It’s just the best feeling.

BIG LESSON: To build something long-lasting, you don’t need to plan ten, or even five, years into the future. You just need to wake up everyday and do what you love doing with consistency. That consistency will pay off down the line.

Go deeper… Tok // TRUCK // Bird // Films // History

Thanks so much for reading. Desire Paths is a newsletter about the wild, winding, lesson-filled lives of fascinating people. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d consider subscribing or sharing with a friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Subscribe now

Happy new year and welcome back to Desire Paths.

This week’s edition is a bit different – more photo essay than interview. But I think images are best for telling the story. I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. Huge thanks for the big response to DP #1. Lots of you even wrote in to say you’re booking a holiday at Le Provencal, which makes me incredibly happy. Tell Damien I sent you.

—DG

I’m Danny – an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. My day job is editorial director of Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

DP is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world are those who look at the boring, comfortable, predictable path they could take in life and say nope. Instead they chase after risky, weird dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, or cross oceans to start something new (or just start over).

I dig deep with these people and share everything I learn with you. Let’s go.

#2: Tom’s One Hour Photo

This is Tom Tuong, owner of Tom’s One Hour Photo & Lab, a photo studio in LA.

You might have heard of Tom. You might know his story. And you might have even trekked out to his photographic cave of wonders and emerged with incredibly cheesy 90s-yearbook-style portraits – and a giant grin on your face. It’s a quintessential LA experience.

Tom immigrated to the US from Vietnam in the late 70s, and opened his studio in ‘91. He had a bustling trade back then, with portraits, film development and photo printing still a growth industry. Things, alas, changed. Digital photos have eaten the world. Back in ‘93, there were 7,600 one-hour photo processing shops in the US. By 2015, that dropped to only 190. I'd wager the tally’s since fallen further.

So, spots like Tom's are rare. And while some anachronisms have gained steam in recent years (vinyl, anyone?), I’m not quite sure 1-hour photos have yet. That is, unless you're Tom’s. Because over the past 3 years, the fate of Tom’s nondescript Koreatown studio has transformed from mom-and-pop-shop-just-about-getting-by, to viral sensation and beloved local business.

And it all happened with a friendly boost from Kacey Musgraves…

Back in 2019, the country singer, by chance, stumbled upon Tom’s, loved it, posted about it on her Instagram, and even created a dedicated IG page for the business:

We were just in LA and needed to find a One Hour Photo place quick. Sandwiched between little bodegas, my sister randomly found this place on Beverly Blvd in Korea Town called Tom’s One Hour Photo & Lab. It’s one of those rare mom-&-pop gems that has lasted thru trends coming and going and weirdly has come back around again without even realizing it. The owner, Tom, was SO adorable. He not only does film developing but (cheap) and nostalgic portrait sessions too. (He gave us digital files and we edited these but he’ll shoot on film if you ask him to.) Pick your favorite background! He made them all himself. 🥰 It’s cash only and he has no internet. He sadly told us his business used to be really busy back in 1991 when he opened but has slowed way down since the digital wave. So, like any good millennials would do we started an appreciation Instagram for him. @tomsonehourphotolab 🌹 Not sure he’ll even see this. Stop by, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to tag. Let’s keep this charming business afloat! #TomsOneHourPhoto

The rest is history. The LA Times came calling. Rolling Stone stopped by. And a long caravan of dogs, celebrities, and fans have paid to have their photo taken by Tom – including me and Kim, on a beautiful winter’s day a few weeks ago…

1. HOW TO BOOK. Tom’s has no website. Instead, you call a number and Tom’s wife Lisa Le picks up the phone and books you in for a 20-minute slot. Business at Tom’s is booming these days, so plan ahead accordingly. You’re reminded to bring cash $$. You’re also reminded more than once that Tom’s is a family-friendly studio. I can only begin to imagine what depravity or props or illicit behaviour led to that policy. But hey, I’m a family-friendly sort of guy. No worries there.

2. BE ON TIME. On the day of your 20 minutes of fame, you turn up at the shop in Koreatown, and Lisa greets you at the counter. We got there a bit early, and Tom was tinkering in a corner. I immediately fell in love with the chaotic perfection of the scene. Camera batteries, clocks, fan art, photos of family and Kobe Bryant and Mike Bloomberg. After signing in, you choose a backdrop for your shoot – clouds, dragons, butterflies (there are 30+ of them, which Tom hand painted 20 years ago) and wait for the fun to begin…

3. THE SHOOT. Getting your photo taken by Tom is unforgettable, in the best sense. When your name is called, you’re led through the back of the shop, into a small dark room decked out in backdrops, faux ancient Greek columns, and a giant flash hanging from the ceiling. What happens next is either magic or something Larry David would have nightmares about in a Curb episode. Between snaps and flashes, Tom contorts your limbs, head and hands into the most unnatural and hilarious of positions, while barking orders: LOOK UP! LEFT! NOT THAT WAY, THE OTHER WAY! FACE UP! YES! CHIN DOWN. After a few minutes it’s all over. You return to the waiting room, dazed, laughing, happy, and wondering what the hell just happened.

4. CHOOSE YOUR SHOTS. Take a seat and wait for Tom to call you to his computer for editing. Kim and I went for the ‘inspirational cloud backdrop’ (she also did a rose one). You get your entire shoot on a memory stick, and Tom prints your favourites in whatever size you want. For a bit extra $, I also got a particularly hilarious shot of us in a transparent keychain.

And that’s it. It’s pretty simple: local businesses like Tom’s give me life. They’re the fabric of communities. And they make cities interesting places to live.

I’d go back again in a heartbeat.

Why not pay him a visit yourself?

Go deeper… Tom’s One Hour Photo // Book a session

Thanks so much for reading. Desire Paths is a newsletter about the wild, winding, lesson-filled lives of fascinating people. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d consider subscribing or sharing with a friend.

Subscribe now

Share

Subscribe now

Hello! Welcome to the first edition of Desire Paths.

It’s taken me a LOT longer to get started on this than I’d hoped or expected. But big thanks for the incredible support so far and for subscribing. It’s given me a real boost of adrenaline (dopamine?) and a kick in the ass.

The reason for the delay: a few months ago I moved to LA after calling London home for 12 years. My beautiful London. Some say I’m crazy. But the sun was calling and after a dozen years anywhere, sometimes a change of scenery is needed.

Rebuilding in a new country takes a lot out of you. Stress, money, second-guessing. It’s not for the faint of heart. And I’ve had to put a few things on the back burner. But let’s be real. Few people on the planet have a say in where they build their life. It’s a luxury. I’m lucky. And while life’s been wild, it’s also been wonderful. I’ve swapped a terrace flat in the Barbican for a midcentury apartment in Santa Monica. Outside are palm trees, hummingbirds and the Pacific. It almost makes the traffic bearable.

I like it here. I’m happy.

And I’m ready to get started.

—DG

I’m Danny – an editor, photographer, traveller and small business fan. My day job is editorial director of Courier magazine. This is my personal newsletter, Desire Paths.

DP is based on the idea that the most fulfilled, fascinating people in the world are those who look at the boring, comfortable, predictable path they could take in life and say nope. Instead they chase after risky, weird dreams, change careers, make unconventional decisions, or cross oceans to start something new (or just start over).

I’ll dig deep with these people and share everything I learn with you. Let’s go.

#1: A fairytale by the sea

This first edition is with Damien Piffet, co-owner of Le Provencal, a hotel on the southern tip of Presqu'île de Giens, a peninsula that itself is at the southernmost part of the south of France. Giens is the end. A Gallic Montauk. Outdoorsy, unpretentious, idyllic.

The hotel was built by Damien’s grandfather in 1951 and is today run by Damien and his brother Benjamin – once-reluctant hospitality operators who were sucked into the vortex of their family biz and are today utterly passionate about modernising it for the next century.

Together they look after the hotel, residences, a private park, pool and beach, a boutique shop, a wildly popular weekly jazz event, four restaurants, and a newly renovated brasserie, Le Guillaume Tell.

Le Provencal is a special place. And Damien’s a special dude. Below, we talk about the hotel and his philosophies on hospitality, family and the good life.

It’s summer and I’m swimming off the coast of Giens – relaxing, floating, eyes to the sky – when something sharp stabs my side. What the fuck?

I paddle in pain to the ladder of Le Provencal’s famous rocky pool deck, climb up, look down, and see it: a satisfied, bobbing, neon-pink blob. Jellyfish. It hurts. And it sort of becomes a whole thing. My wife Kim runs to the small town’s pharmacy for medicine, while a group of French sunbathers point at the water and then at me, whispering (judging?), and an older woman with snorkeling gear shrugs and jumps in anyway.

Fast forward a few hours and we’re in the car with Le Provencal’s co-owner, Damien Piffet, who happens to be Kim’s childhood friend, as he drives around the peninsula, working, meeting suppliers, running errand after errand. I tell the jellyfish tale as if recounting a war story, upon which Damien turns around, pulls up his shirt and reveals a massive sting. Long red tentacled lines. Like something from an alien movie.

‘It happens!’ he says, laughing. And on we drive.

Here’s the thing. I bet that sting wasn’t even the most eventful part of his day. More a minor occupational hazard of running a hotel in a magical place.

In the course of 24 hours, I saw Damien run a bar, wait tables, work behind a front desk, oversee the fit-out of a new bar, shake hands with countless locals on the street, give one of their relatives a job on the spot, play with his kid, bounce between pool and boutique, work an evening jazz concert with hundreds of attendees, make deals, give directions, and take me on a successful, sweaty hunt through old streets to find the spot where Henri Cartier-Bresson shot a very famous photograph.

Damien’s a busy dude. Really busy. And he loves what he does. But he didn’t even want this gig, this life.

At least, not at first…

Damien, how did your family get into the hotel business?

It all started with my grandfather, a chef from Hyères, who decided to try his luck in Paris. There, he met two brothers who’d recently taken over a venue called Le Lido, which had a pool inside and where they put on shows. But the brothers wanted to build a proper cabaret and were looking for a chef to run a gastronomic restaurant for a thousand people. No one wanted to do that because it sounded impossible! So they gave the job to my grandfather, this little chef from nowhere.

This was in 1946. And in six months it became the best performing restaurant in Paris. It was crazy. And by 1949 my grandfather had enough money saved up to buy land in Giens [south of Hyères] where he opened Le Provencal in 1951.

A savvy and entrepreneurial chef!

Exactly. But he still wanted to keep his job in Paris, so he handed the hotel to his family-in-law, my grandmother’s sister and her husband. For the first 35 years Le Provencal was run by my grand-auntie. And then, finally, my parents took over. 

Did your mom want to get into the family biz?

Well, she grew up with all the Lido cabaret girls and all of that craziness. Eventually she met my dad, the head pastry chef at a big Paris hotel – the InterContinental Paris le Grand. My mom worked there at the time as the head of the front office. 

At one point, my grandfather said to my mom, ‘Okay, someone has to take over down in Giens! Do you want to try it?’ My mom asked to bring her boyfriend. After a bit of hesitation my grandfather agreed, and my mom and dad took over in 1981.

Growing up there, did you feel the hotel was your destiny too?

It’s funny, my parents never gave us the idea that we should take over. They always pushed us to NOT do this business and to go and do something else!

Really? Why?

Even though they raised us around the kitchen and hotel, they said it should be our own decision. That if we weren’t interested, they’d be fine. ‘If you want to be a journalist, go be a journalist. We’ll just sell the hotel. Don't worry.’ They raised us in this spirit. So we never felt that we should take it over, or that we had to take it over. My brother and I said, ‘Okay then, let's go abroad, let’s do something else.’ 

So where did life take you?

I went around the world – Australia, Hong Kong, Africa for my first internship in a brewery, I did marketing for restaurants, Finland to study in a hotel business school. And yet, weekends and nights, I was always thinking about the hotel back in Giens… 

But you never planned to return and run the business?

Never!

Sorry, that seems crazy. That you’d learn the hotel business but didn’t want to run one in the most perfect place.

I just think my parents did the best job to push us away. In the end, they were only seeing problems with the hotel. Growing up, it was just problems with staff, problems with investment, just problems. It’s almost a virus of people who stay in the same place. When you forget to take distance, you start to only see the problems around you. You don’t see what makes something, the business, perfect. The good things. I just felt that if I knew the industry, it would be easy for me to work… somewhere. 

But clearly you changed your mind about taking over.

Every time I came back to the peninsula, I’d say, ‘Yeah, okay, come on, this place is amazing’. I’d tell my parents ‘We have to do this, we have to do that, we can do this.’ At some point, you really start to think about who you are and what you’ve come from. This place is crazy, you know? For 70 years people have been coming to Giens and they remember the Provencal. They learned how to swim here. My parents would know people anywhere we went – suppliers, fishermen, former guests, movie stars. People would say 'Oh, Le Provencal!' I never forgot that. I was amazed by it. This place brings people together.

When did the prodigal son return? Walk us through your decision.

I was working in Australia for a company that does events like the Grand Prix. I was in my early 20s at the time. And I get a phone call from my parents. ‘Okay, we found someone to buy the hotel,’ they said. By that point, the hotel was already on the market for five years. My parents had us when my dad was 50 – he's 85 now – so they were getting tired.

After the call, I couldn’t sleep for 3 days. I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, it's happening!’ And my grandfather said to me, ‘Try it! If anything happens, we can still sell it. But at least try it!’ So, I called my brother, who was working in finance in London, and I said, ‘Okay Ben, I'm gonna give it a go. If I feel underwater at any point, I'll give you a call, and you can either stay or come.’ And then I told my parents I’d come back home.

This was 2010. I stayed with my parents for 2 years, working 20 hours a day at the hotel, until I became crazy. My parents never really embraced the fact that I was there. It was really hard. They pushed so hard that I was saying ‘You either let me try, or you let me fail.’ So I called my brother, just before the Olympic Games in London, and said, ‘Ben, I’m gonna have to quit if you don’t come.’ The next morning he got on a plane and said, ‘How can I help?’ He never flew back to London.

What a brother!

Yeah, I asked him to run the brasserie for two months and we’d see what happens. Sometimes when you have a family business, it's too small. But we had enough space for the two of us, and we had SO much to do – the hotel, residence, beach, pool, restaurants – that we can spend the whole day without seeing each other. I stay with the waiters and front office, and Ben’s in back with the kitchen guys. It's stressful because there’s so much to do, but that's also why it's cool. I'm just a kid with stars in my eyes.

Did the pandemic impact Le Provencal in a big way?

Covid was really damaging at the beginning, when we didn't know what was going to happen. The first phase was painful. We were so worried and didn't know if people would come again. We used to run with 75 employees and had to downsize to 32. We had to learn a new way of managing the restaurant, looking at it week-by-week to be sure that it's profitable.

But what Macron and the government has done for our business was incredible. The loans we got changed everything. And after the lockdowns it was like a tsunami of people. Three days after we reopened, we realised it's going to be crazy.

We’ve had ebbs and flows. And we have to reimburse the money, of course, so we’ve had to be very careful. But now we can invest. And we can also buy a brasserie…

Yes, yes. To make your life even more chaotic, you and Ben have bought Guillaume Tell, a famous brasserie you’ve known since you were kids… 

It's true! Our problem’s always been seasonality. We’ve got a very seasonal business that peaks in summer, but we’ve always wanted to have a year-long business. Even if we try to stay open a bit longer, sometimes we might have only 10 clients because it's really just at the end of the world. We didn’t want to think about seasonality anymore.

We’ve always grown up around this old brasserie in Hyères. It's been there for many years, since the 1930s. And we saw it was for sale. I called the agency that was selling it and made an appointment, but they cancelled at the last second because someone’s offer was accepted. It’s a very long story, but that guy ended up pulling out, and months later, we got a call saying the owners accepted our offer. 

I bet that caught you by surprise.

Totally. I went back to Giens and said to Benjamin: ‘Uh, we’re in deep shit. They said yes to everything.’

Not ‘congratulations’? We’re in deep shit!

Not at all. We’re in deep shit. Our offer was low and it was sort of a bluff. So now we needed to find a bank! And then the games started. Big smiles. Ben was like, ‘Okay, let's do it! Let's try to convince a bank.’ We found a team, renovated the place, and after lots of delays we finally opened in September. The first day we had like 900 people come around.

When I visited, the brasserie was still a construction site, but you could tell it was turning into something special…

It's a place for everyone, from 7 years old to 90. We call it lieu de vie: we want people to feel they can live there, like they’re in their house, having a coffee with really affordable plates. It’s open all day long, all year long, 6.30 to midnight. We didn’t want to do something super-design, blah blah blah. We want a little 82-year old granny to come in the morning to have her coffee. If the place ends up being Instagram-cool, okay, sure. But the goal isn’t Instagram, the goal is the granny. If granny comes, the rest will come.

You're always running around, putting out fires, juggling projects. What makes you happy? 

This place, my kid, my life. I take happiness from the people here and all the topics I can cram into my day. Today I spoke with fishermen at noon, our community manager about the branding of the brasserie at 3pm, and then I was trying to solve a boring issue I’ve got with my office safe. But, like, the other day I met the guy from Daft Punk who told me the hotel was amazing. I was like… what the fuck? That's life.

From buying fish to talking to Daft Punk. 

Yeah, that's the big jump that you can have in a day here. But above all, I try to remember to always stay positive, to realize the chance we’ve been given to take on this project, to renew the hotel’s image for the next generation. That’s what drives me every morning. If people say cool things about the hotel, of course that makes me happy, but what makes me even happier is being with my friends and family. Everything else is bullshit. If I have that, I'm the happiest man on earth.

Sounds about right.

I sometimes tell people I'm not actually working. I just wake up in the morning, make a coffee, and live in the little village where I grew up, where I have the people I love. It's kind of like a fairytale.

Go deeper… Le Provencal // Brasserie Le Guillaume Tell

Thanks so much for reading.

Desire Paths is a newsletter about the wild, winding, lesson-filled lives of fascinating people. If you enjoyed it, I’d love if you’d consider subscribing or sharing with a friend.

Subscribe now

Share