Around The Shop

CODO Turns Six

AND WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED

Today marks CODO’s sixth anniversary. Six years. That’s almost one in dog years. In business years, well, just six.

That’s six years of building this company—working with people, organizations, and initiatives we believe in across Indiana, and increasingly, the United States. Six years of working hard, learning as we go, rolling with punches, and always evolving the company, refining processes, and including our clients in the creative process.

Over the last year, CODO members have purchased homes, retired old college cars (with the requisite viking funerals), invested in client companies, gotten engaged, and volunteered time and services around Indianapolis.

We were lucky to travel around the country to beautiful places like Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Virginia. On deck are “working” trips to Alaska, Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois, and if we play our cards right, Mexico. I feel like I say this every other week, but if you were to go back to when we were in school six years ago, back to when CODO was still a dream, and tell me I might get the opportunity to visit a beautiful place, or even fly to another country for work, I would’ve laughed you out of the classroom.

This last year, we won awards, published a magazine, gave big time (and small time) presentations, authored dozens of widely shared thoughts on design (particularly surrounding craft beer), and some of us were even able to take real life vacations. And what started out as a slow trickle has morphed into a scary amount of work within the craft beer industry, with us just inking a deal with our tenth brewery partner.

Rather than continue to list every exciting thing that happened to us this year, I’ll talk for a minute about what’s to come for CODO. Over the next year, we’ll be hiring some new folks. We’ll be publishing a Craft Beer Branding Guide that’ll help startup breweries through every step of the branding process. We’ll begin working on our new website and along the way, take a long overdue look at our own branding and positioning. And while this task will never end, the next few years will be a process of determining what we want CODO to be in the not too distant future.

Do we want to continue being a small, nimble company? Valuing the level of craft, and including our clients in the creative process above all else?

Or do we want to become a medium-sized company? Six to ten employees. An actual HR policy, etc.

Or do we want to grow into a big company? Maybe Cody and I could wear business guy suits all day and monitor our stocks AND bonds while others do our bidding? (I have no idea what successful people do with their time. Hunt people for sport?)

At this point, I’m not sure which direction we’ll take CODO, but I do know it’ll be an adventure. Stick around. There’s a lot to come.