As a Brand Designer, I Was Living In a 'Design Utopia' — Until I Started My Own Product Company, and Reality Hit Owning my own spirits company gave me insights into the tough business decisions my clients had to make every day.

I thought I understood my clients' needs. Then I started doing the same work as them — and realized how much I had to learn. It was humbling, but it also made me better at my job.

Back in 2001, I cofounded an agency called Love, which designs brands, packaging, communications campaigns, and experiences for the likes of Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, and Guinness. Over the years, we've come up with a lot of ideas that never saw the light of day; we called them "urchins" — wily ideas without a home. So in 2020, we launched Urchin Spirits, with hopes of filling "fat niches" in the spirits market — or underserved segments with low barriers to entry, but significant growth potential.

But pretty quickly, we realized there were a lot of external factors affecting our clients' decisions that we'd never had to worry about as designers.