May 02, 2023 2 min read
by Nat Korol
Another year old, wiser, and as energized as ever! As we celebrate our 7th anniversary, we’re reflecting on all the factors that have helped us come this far and shaped our story up to now. Here are 7 fun facts that offer a glimpse of what makes Hyphen tick.
- 🤝 Better together! The idea that became Hyphen took shape in a cafe at 401 Richmond in Toronto, where Nat and Rich met almost weekly for 6 months until we decided to merge our individual businesses – BlueShift Design and Korol Marketing – to form Hyphen. It took another 6 months for us to collaborate, merge our individual clients and systems, decide on our company name, and finally incorporate.
- 👋 Hi, my name is… A friend of ours, Kathy Daw, helped us to uncover our brand name and voice. Hyphen could have been: Comb, Bevel or Tether. We chose the final name within a few days from a short list of 20 name options!
- 🧩 Teamwork, our way. Some of our team members have never met in person! We’re your typical ‘millennial’ business that believes you don’t have to be in the same space/ city/ country to still have a great culture. We greatly value our untraditional ways of running a business!
- 🔋 Rest and recharge. Our team is encouraged to take 3 paid days per year to volunteer and at least 2 weeks of vacation per year (we average out about 3 weeks per year per team member). In addition, we close down for a paid 2-week break over the winter holiday season. We also don’t send emails or messages to each other or clients before 8AM or after 6PM EST, but we sure do work hard for the rest of the time!
- 🌍 Living our values. Social and environmental responsibility have been at the heart of our business since the very beginning as Nat and Rich met while volunteering for a philanthropic cause – SickKids Foundation. We’ve proudly been donating 1% of our sales (not profits) on an annual basis via our 1% for the Planet membership since 2020. Our next big goal is to obtain B Corp. certification, which is something we’re planning on tackling in 2024!
- 🥂 Welcome friends! Hyphen has been hosting #ThirstyThursdays (our monthly get-togethers where our clients, colleagues, and friends stop by our space between 4PM and 8PM for a chat and a refreshment) since we launched. The concept of a #ThirstyThursday was ‘borrowed’ by Nat from her days working in finance.
- 🏠 Our Hyphen home. Our original studio space at King St. West had a patio, which we all enjoyed very much until we had to move out to make way for a condo development… surprise, surprise – this is Toronto, after all. We’ve now been in our heritage location at 18 Gloucester Lane for 5 years and continue to love our ‘new’ digs!
There are so many more fun facts about us, but we’ll hold onto them for our next anniversary! However, if you can’t wait that long to learn more, our LinkedIn page is where we share quite a bit about us, our culture, and our work. Give us a follow here.
