From the
Desk of ...

I really like our mugs.

We sell some nice double walled stainless steel mugs that are great for coffee or beer and I really do use them all the time. It's trivial, but I enjoy having fun branding items for ourselves.

Recently, at this desk ...

I have been working on a pop-up with Drake's and KEF at the Pedder Arcade. I'm excited to put these two great British brands side-by-side and seeing what might come of it. They fit well together, both idiosyncratic, design focused and with a great heritage.

I keep an old bank bond certificate on the wall that belonged to my father.

It's a very old certificate from the early 1900s—I think my father bought it in Hong Kong in the '80s. I actually never saw it hanging when I was young, but I found it in a box of his old things a few years ago and decided to hang it up. I use a specialist who hangs all of my art, an older man named Simon in his 60s. When he hung the bond for me, he said he used to work for the gallery that my father bought the certificate from and he had been to my dad's apartment in Hong Kong to hang art for him as well. Funny how things come full circle.

The newest item on my desk ...

Is this great desk lighter from Houseplant called the Block Table Lighter. It was a gift from a friend and I love the overall form and how hefty it is. I just wish the ashtray was big enough for a cigar.

I have multiple calendar/reminder systems.

Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Evernote and endless scraps of paper. I still can't keep up. If something didn't get done, I have to resign myself to the fact that if it didn't get done, it probably wasn't that important in the first place. And I still use pen and paper a lot. I have terrible handwriting, but I do like to write and sketch.

I hate being so reliant on my phone but I begrudgingly admit it is invaluable.

I use the camera constantly, I take notes constantly, I keep in touch with people at all hours and the phone enables that for better or worse.

“Inbox zero”, for me, is about staying on top of everything.

I try to get through all my e-mail, all my IG DMs, all of The Armoury's YouTube comments. It's important to be in touch with what's going on in and around the business.

I don’t mind eating at this desk.

Honestly, sometimes it's just necessary, right? Unless it's lunch with other people, then I'd rather just eat quickly and get back to work.

Routine can be nice.

Generally, I work mostly the same schedule everyday. I am almost always at our stores or our offices and I rarely take days off or go on holiday. I really like my work. There are so many interesting things to do and so many interesting people to meet.

In order to focus, I try to push myself hard.

If I feel like I'm losing momentum and getting frustrated, I try to reframe the situation in my head and look for the positives. Often it is simply trading short term pain for long term gain.

It’s not always a good quality, but I rarely give up on things.

Sometimes it produces amazing results, but other times you can waste a lot of time. I also care a lot about relationships. I think a lot of The Armoury's success is due to the friendships we built within the company with each other and also with our suppliers and our clients.

The only thing that really takes my mind off of work ...

Is computer games. I especially love games by little indie studios. I was really into Slay the Spire, Faster than Light, Hades ... the list goes on. Maybe because I deal with a lot of craftsmen in my line of work, I have great admiration for single individuals or small teams doing great work despite very limited resources. I think you can really tell when a product has had real love and care poured into it.

This desk is certainly a lot nicer than my first one.

I started out at a bank, doing financial analysis. It could be quite dry, but I liked the math aspect. I remember I used to spend a lot of time on the visual aspects of the documents I'd have to produce. Silly little things like making sure the right fonts were used, the sizes were consistent, using borders and color-coding, etc. My higher-ups would always tell me to move on and spend less time on things like that, but I just couldn't. I really cared about these details even if other people thought they were minor.