Monocle 24: The Entrepreneurs

Tala is a young British lighting brand with sustainability at its heart. Max Wood and Josh Ward, two of the three co-founders, explain why they decided to strike out on their own, talking us through how you build a successful design company.

Breathing new life into a brand can be a difficult undertaking. From changing a logo, to overhauling the business focus, rebranding can make or break established names and struggling enterprises. We ask Pentagram’s Paula Scher to give us her top tips for revamping a brand and have Maurus Fraser of Winkreative walk us through his favourite rebranding projects. We also talk to the duo who have reimagined British eyewear manufacturer Kirk Originals, and a Viennese entrepreneur who has rescued an obsolete watch brand.

One-time banker Eric Brass explains the origins of Tequila Tromba, the Toronto-based premium tequila brand he co-founded in 2011.

Romée de Goriainoff is one of the three co-founders of Experimental Group, the French hospitality brand that launched Paris’s first proper cocktail bar and is now the name behind restaurants, bars and even hotels the world over. But it all started with three school friends and a mutual desire to spend their lives doing something fun, unconventional and challenging. In this week's episode, Romée tells us how he created one of the world's coolest bar brands.

Dustin Kroft went from moving furniture to making and designing it in 2015, when he established his eponymous design studio in Toronto. He traces the journey of Kroft Furniture and his ambitions for the firm.

In 2010, James Eden gave up a job in finance to turn around a 100-year-old factory in Manchester. The result is Private White VC, a luxury menswear brand where everything is made in Britain. Eden tells us how Private White VC breathed new life into the factory – and the community.

Jeremy Brown and his wife Cath left a vibrant life in London to move to the Devonshire countryside. There they launched Feldspar, a design brand that produces everything from tableware to lambswool blankets and is stocked in some of the best retailers in the country, including the Victoria & Albert Museum shop and Fortnum & Mason. Jeremy tells us how the countryside inspired their endeavour.

Dax Dasilva is the founder and CEO of Lightspeed, a tech firm founded in Montréal in 2005. The company provides point-of-sale software for small retailers and restaurants around the world, helping them to manage inventory, sell online and connect with suppliers and customers. Dasilva tells us how Apple was an inspiration, how design was crucial in shaping the company and why they chose to stay in Montréal.

Joel Clarke, Owen Walker and Diti Katona trace the story of their Toronto-based small-batch aperitivo rosso brand Capo Capo.

Amelia Harvey is the woman behind The Collective, an innovative yoghurt brand that has shaken up the dairy aisles of supermarkets across the UK and Europe with its playful packaging and fruity flavours. Founded in 2011 as a joint venture with the original New Zealand-based company, it has now grown into a thriving business with annual sales of more than €33m and a vast range of dairy products. In this episode Harvey reveals the secret to getting your foot in the supermarket door (literally) and explains how the food sector is evolving.

Archie Lee Coates IV traces the story of PlayLab, the creative studio he co-founded in New York in 2009.

Alex Bec is the co-founder of the HudsonBec Group, a company which began in 2007 with a website called ‘It’s Nice That’. The mission of the website was, and still is, to “enable creativity to thrive” and it does this by giving exposure to great artists, designers and illustrators all over the world. The brand now encompasses a printed biannual magazine and an events programme – and has a loyal fanbase. Alex told us about the brand’s humble beginnings and how it has grown since then.

Michael and Nicola Sacher are the husband-and-wife team behind cat-and-dog outfitters Mungo & Maud. In this episode, they tell us how their English setter sparked the idea for the brand and how it has grown into the world's top shop for discerning pets.

In the early years of the internet and social media, many assumed that e-commerce would eclipse traditional retail. But today many brands are successfully shifting their focus away from the screen and back to the high street. We hear from four businesses invested in that change, from pop-up-space rental platform Appear Here and clothing labels Kotn and L’Estrange to Singapore’s We The People, a shop bringing crowdfunded projects to bricks-and-mortar.

Toronto-based cosmetics entrepreneur Gaelyne Leslie explains why she left a career in investigative journalism to fill a niche in the all-natural cosmetics sector with her company, Crawford Street Natural Skin Care.