2025 marks the end of a six-year project I had with Neil Phillipson. We built a garden building company called Kani House, which started back in early 2018.
At the time, Neil was already building astronomical observatories. We met at an expo, I was promoting Yazaroo and he was Outsideology.
We were introduced by Karen who suggested that he would benefit from my brand building skillset.
We got talking about his desire to build high quality garden buildings and my ability to create brands.
It was an easy decision; he wanted to move into garden buildings because there was more demand there than for observatories, and there were very few premium competitors at the time.
I would create the brand and market the business and he would build the buildings.
When I told my mentor, friends, and family what I was doing, they were horrified. They thought I would end up working for free.
But I ignored everyone because I had met Neil, and my gut said this guy had something about him. He’d already run several successful companies, and I believed we both had an opportunity to add value.
So we started. I built the brand over a six-month period. I called it Kani.House, It was based on the idea of Japanese craftsmanship, I created a folk tail: “the House of the Crab.” That was the basis of the brands aesthetic and storytelling.
Over COVID, we actually did very well. But the fallout from the pandemic changed the landscape.
A lot of people in construction were laid off, and with everyone working from home, a massive wave of new companies started up. .
They were all competing on price. Combined with the lack of materials, our profit margins got squeezed too tight. While things improved as the world opened back up, the profitability never returned to the levels we saw when we started.
We looked at it objectively and decided our time was better spent elsewhere.
We both did very well out of Kani House and closed it with a nice profit, but now we have the freedom to focus on new ventures that will lead to better outcomes.
My gut was right back in 2018, and my logic is right now.
