I love bringing things to life. It's the only through-line in everything I've done as an entrepreneur over the past 10 years. The moment an idea stops being a conversation and becomes a name, a label, a room, a website, a thing people can walk into or hold.
That pursuit first built Twin Sails Brewing, an award-winning craft brewery that found a global audience from a corner of Port Moody. It built Published on Main, and with it a Michelin star and a place among North America's best restaurants. It built Bar Susu, a beloved Vancouver spot that earned its own Michelin designation before we let it go. And it built several other concepts that had their moment, taught me plenty, and moved on.
What I chased in every one of my ventures was the same thing: the best version of it. The label that made someone pick up the can. The room that made a first date go well. The name people say to each other. I've never cared about brands as decoration, I care about the moment a customer interacts with something we made and it lands. They come back. They introduce it to someone new.
Root Down is me doing the part I love most, now full time: taking ideas from concept to alive. The brand, the identity, the website, the product development, and the marketing engine underneath it that most people never see. Whether it's a napkin sketch or a business that's real but invisible, I build it the way I built my own: obsessively, honestly, and all the way to the best version.
Cody AllminFounder, Root Down