1999-2013

If the previous few years taught me how to have fun at work, the next decade and a half taught me how to have fun AND get paid. Jeff and I didn’t know each other from Adam but having done a joint pitch for a video game (too raw for the client) we did know that we had found our partner in crime. Coming from different backgrounds but sharing a mutual love of youth culture, we brought completely unconventional thinking to an industry which in thought was unconventional but in deed was very traditional. We waged war on those conventions and the clients loved the results. Along the way we hooked up with a likeminded artist and ended up putting on his inaugural London show in Rivington Street. That artist was Banksy. You had to sign up via hotmail and receive a Metropolitan Police forensic evidence bag. The show was legendary. Jeff, Robin and London Dave dressed in official looking overalls and painted the walls of the arches white in preparation for the stencil work, I went to my uncle’s shop to buy 300 beers from him. We hired an old dready I knew who had a van with a petrol generator powered sound system and I was DJing out the back of it. I felt safer in some death trap warehouse parties that I attended. There was no constant documenting then but I think in the first year of trading alone, we launched Betfair by parading a New Orleans style funeral though the City of London (still cited as a model launch 17 years later: https://bit.ly/2PybYQP), did Banksy’s show and bought the World Cup Skateboarding to London. Robin had paid us with a logo for our help in putting on the show so we decided to use that logo for a skateboard company, Clown Skateboards. We were suddenly flavour, profiles in the nationals. Channel 4 made a documentary on us called Cheeky Monkeys which followed our campaign for Dexter Wong. In fact the BBC were suitably impressed and they made a documentary on how we launched the UK flagship store for Diesel’s bastard offspring 55DSL in Soho. This was the embarassingly-titled Commandos of Cool. Embarrassing or not, this got us a LOT of work not least of which was the Converse account which we won and held for 7 years. When Nike took over the UK franchise they were shocked at how small our team was and the impact on sales. Never ones to stand still we cemented our love of music and events by going from production to eventually owning festivals. We also continued with our passion for art by opening The Orange Dot Gallery in Bloomsbury which also served as an office and white space for record fairs, makers’ markets and supper clubs. Not saying we were the first, but we were definitely early.