Ep 55: The Experience Architect: Arne Koefoed

Andrew sits down with Arne Koefoed, co-founder of WINK, to talk about how throwing parties slowly turned into a creative life.

Arne never planned on designing experiences. There was no event school, no formal path. It started with squats, punk parties, and rave culture, and with the realization that bringing people together could be just as creative as making an object. That first party set the tone for everything that followed.

Over time, that same instinct carried Arne from underground scenes to working with some of the biggest brands in the world. What’s striking is how little the spirit has changed. The scale is different, but the mindset is still about energy, emotion, and making people feel something real.

They talk about why the best events feel more like memories than productions, why fun is often misunderstood as something unserious, and how experience design is often less about control and more about trust. At its core, this is a conversation about creativity without a rulebook, about designing moments instead of things, and about how some of the most meaningful work begins by simply opening the door and seeing who shows up.

Thank you to our sponsor Inside Denim.

Arne Koefoed
Founder and Head of Ideas at WINK
Instagram, Linked-In

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:05

This episode of the Jeans Land Podcast is brought to you by Inside Denim, the global resource for everything denim. From sustainability insights to fabric innovation and brand stories shaping the future of the Jeans industry. Inside Denim keeps you informed and inspired. So stay ahead of what's next in Denim at Insidedenim.com. Arne Koefoed is a hero to me. And I don't say that lightly. I'm a terrible judge of character, at least that's my default reality. Usually, if I like people, the minute I meet them, they later disappoint me, and the contrary is true. When I met Wink and Arne, it was in 2003 or late 2002, and we hired them to design and produce Kingpins Amsterdam. They came highly recommended, but honestly, the first news and suggestions I got from them turned me off. And I developed from a distance a kind of deep apprehension about Arne and the company he led, not sure they were for us. But the happy ending is what this is about. Our first show, the first show that they produced for Kingpins, blew my mind, and still does. And I think a lot of other people's minds. Wink designed the most wonderful creative denim show ever, with food being delivered by bikes, with a round room and 37 identical booths with a coffee bar in the center of the room attracting everyone, creating a tiny community, meeting place as if it was a London pub. It was amazing. Arne, I learned over the years, has a lot of hero qualities. Amazingly talented and a joy, carries a joy to share creativity with others. He's egoist. He is loyal. He is kind and not driven by money, but driven by fun and creation and experience. I love excellence and I love ideas that are not copies of other people's ideas. I'm thrilled to have him here today because he is a master of events. In the end, all of us need to master the communication of what we do. I searched you on AI, and here's what I was given. It says, in quote, you've been called a hippie, a hooligan, a storyteller, and an experienced architect. What is that about, and where did that come from?

Speaker 2:16

I think it's my own words, so that put on my LinkedIn profile. I don't have to. Get out of here. Seriously. Just took it from there. Um, where does it come from? I well, it's um a hippie, a hooligan and an experienced architect. So that kind of sums it up from my perspective as an early, you know, the second summer of love, which is 88, when we started doing our parties, I was already very much interested in the first summer of love. 88. 88? 88, I did my first parties. This was like in when the acid house music came and the wave culture started. Uh there was a second wave of uh chemicals. Of course, the first summer of love was combined with LSD, and I think the second wave was combined in a way with XC, MDMA. And and in this second wave, second cultural revolution that has the same way of being counter-cultural, but still uh you know having this sense of togetherness. This is, I guess, where the hippie comes from, and I really love putting people together, and I'm I'm pretty much of a hippie anyway. At the same time, I also really literally was a hooligan, uh, maybe three, four years before that. I actually went to soccer games of the of the team. Did you go with chains and knives and stuff? No, I didn't fight. I was more of a uh you know name-caller. I was I I just really wanted to belong. So you you lobbed words from behind other people? Yeah, I was just I was just calling the police names and the other and and the other football teams. I don't know. I was like 15, 16. It was not my I'd rather much rather in hindsight have been punk rock or something like that. But I must admit I was a bit of a hooligan and I that's a great combination.

Speaker 1 3:47

Hooligan and hippie, that's funny.

Speaker 3:49

Yeah, there's a there's a great alliteration in there which I love, and it also uh I think it it makes fun of both of them. It kind of de-armors both of them, and that's the very wink way to look at things. So I would never call myself a serious hippie if such a thing exists, nor a serious hooligan. I would love to make fun of myself, so hippie hooligan does that. And then secondly, that's more serious, I guess. Experience architect. There's no word, there was no never a word for what my craft was in the beginning. So then I found these kind of words: experience architect, um, yeah, tactile designer. I don't know. We were always looking for words to describe the the world making that we did.

Speaker 1 4:31

But take me back to that first party, or one of the first parties that you threw. Um, what was in your head at the time? And were you already thinking like experience designer, or were you just trying to have fun?

Speaker 4:41

Oh no, no, no, this is like a revelation. So I was I was in fashion, I was studying fashion, so that's that's probably my most fashionable thing. Well, there's more stuff happening, of course, within this podcast. But so I was studying fashion, which was odd in any way, because I was never meant to be studying fashion, but I just rolled into it. And then the first year of art school was really eclectic at that time. So I got to do sculpturing, pictures, graphic design, everything was part of the first year, it was the basic year. And then only on the Friday afternoon with one day of our chosen subject, with which was then fashion. And then I passed that year with glorious numbers. Everyone, I loved it. It was like being in fame, you know, this series, fame, like art, really this kind of vibe. So I was super happy. Found my uh found my dream uh school, and then the second year, suddenly I was with only girls and and three gay guys. Uh so I was suddenly, you know, pattern drawing, uh, sewing all day long, and I lost a lot of the eclecticism from my first year, and I was really concerned because I didn't like it at all. Um, I already felt felt like a straitjacket almost from the beginning. And then a friend of mine who I knew from the first year was uh a painter. He lived in this squatted uh building because in the end of the 80s, I think it's a worldwide crisis, so you had big industrial buildings squatted everywhere in uh vacant, uh vacant buildings, and there was one in the center of Utrecht, which was quite rare because of the the city where I lived, or lived back then, and now still uh live, by the way, again. There was a beautiful building, and in that building there was squatters, there were punk parties, and there were uh junkies. He had uh he built on one floor he built his own uh workshop or uh studio, and then we knew there were parties there, punk parties, or and we said, well, we should do our own party. And then literally in this side, guys, there were the first raves in Amsterdam, and another friend of ours, we should do a rave. And I didn't even know what a rave was or what it was meant to be, or house music was. It was really like the first music just came from Detroit, and in hindsight, I know much more about it than I knew then. It was just this one song where it would be like, I see, this kind of thing came from Detroit, and uh, we knew there were smiley faces around, and that's what we knew. Um, but we had this huge squad factory, and what I did is I called all my friends from the first year, from the basic year, and we had artists painting the walls, we had video art in the elevator, shafts, we had um suddenly all this eclectic, all these different uh disciplines, suddenly at a home. And I really felt, and I do remember this like as almost like a lightning strike, so that I realized that there was this um how do you call this medium, if you will. This is an opportunity to do something which other people never doing. Well, I I just never realized that throwing a party would be such a creative thing because I didn't have the I now had this idea, and we also called it a nighttime exhibit art for the people. We were very activist about it. We we called it like we didn't want to be in galleries or museum, we wanted to create like a happening. And then, of course, reading back to the 70s, there were many of that. Ken Casey did the same stuff, but you know, for us it was like, wow, what is this? What what what how cool? And I you never went to event school. There was no event school that never that didn't exist, and uh and and of course I realized yeah, all the things I love about designing experiences is rooted in that first party. Everything, it's still very much the same. It's the it's the the fact that it's so urgent that it's only now, right? So either you're there or you're not. The fact that everyone is a participant instead of a you know sitting watching a screen or or watching a painting, it's it's like really much more participatory and it's super interdisciplinary, so everything you can imagine fits within the in the framework of an event. So I I really fell in love with uh with uh matter.

Speaker 1 8:31

What was the elements that brought you that you think brought the first success, and what were the elements of failure? Because I'm always fascinated by failure because I think failures are the moments that you learn the most. Should be should be other than denim days for me. Denim days for me never taught me anything, just taught me how I can absorb so much damage.

Speaker 8:53

Yeah, that's sad.

Speaker 1 8:54

But tell me about failure for you and success. What would what were the lessons from there?

Speaker 8:59

Well, we were extremely successful, I guess, from the get-go. Um I remember the first part. Well, we we literally asked five guilders, which was you know, not even five bucks to get in. There was no it we didn't pay anyone, it was very much a happening situation. So, but everyone knew about it. I was I really loved being the promoter. So for my personal ego, coming back from wanting to be part of something really blossomed. So I really became this this guy you want to know when he throws his next party. So there's it's a great, it's a great boost for if you are insecure on the inside, right? So for me, this was was amazing. I really yeah, so it was a lot of positivity, and we got a a buzz from the get-go. We got actually got a nice article in a in an official magazine, which was a really big deal. And I think, well, the first time one of the junkies came home that lived there on the sixth floor of the same building, and he got beat up like almost to death by the the the guys I asked to do security. And I felt so bad because your own security people. Yeah, I what do I know? You know, I just asked someone who was standing at a club somewhere in town to do it for us as well, and I had no idea who I was talking to, and I just needed some muscle at the door, I guess. There was not nothing thought about. And then this guy comes home, right? So he lives there, and he suddenly he finds like a whole rave happening at the first floor of the building. He lives on the seventh floor. And if he's a junkie or he's a squatter or not, it's still his home. And my guy beating him up was something I felt super bad about. Um so I guess when you're playing with these elements, there's this kind of things. I don't know if that's a big thing. It was not fun. I mean, it was not a like a big failure or big lesson. I think I'm I'm looking at the big failure that maybe makes more sense. Um, it's a good question. I and and I don't want to be arrogant, but I'm just thinking where where are my biggest failures? And they're almost always on a on a sort of a personal level. Well, from a business level, we never made any, or I was never interested in making money. So I I always had uh partners from the get-go that were better at that or could keep some sort of books. Uh, we never made a lot of money uh from the first couple of years. That didn't matter at all. I worked in the bar, I had my student money uh scholarship. I I was just very much, I'm looking for the word, you know, I was really not at all busy with that. I was just being creative and popular and you know, having living my best life, uh I would say. And um having fun. Having fun. Yeah, I think the biggest failure at that time is when we moved out of the squatted place because it was good got kicked out, or the whole squad got kicked out and refurbished. Later became our office, became our office in Utrecht, which is funny. Like 10 years later we moved back into that office. Or in that building, had our first office. I don't know if you've ever been to our office in Utrecht, but then you would know the building. It's like this almost castle-like building.

Speaker 1 11:55

No, I never went there.

Speaker 11:56

I never went there.

Speaker 1 11:57

Tell me uh a little about how you got involved in uh bread and butter. That was also a cool one.

Speaker 12:03

Uh so um that happened through Peppigans. So Peppig. Yeah. So Peppigines, uh, we we knew some people. They knew us from art school, me but mainly, and they knew I could throw a hell of a party. They had a a staff party at at uh Peppigans in Amsterdam, their headquarters. We did that, we did a crazy party in their parking lot, which was underneath their building, and they liked it so much that two of the guys that worked their creatives, and they're always on Kingpin's, these guys, they're called Pirate. They do a lot for Jason, for Denim. They're they're still very much an uh a nice agency from Amsterdam. And these guys, they uh they weren't AG back then, they were working with Peppy Jeans, and they gave me the best brief ever. They said uh bread and butter is the new trade show in Cologne. This was when they first started, and it's next to Intergenes in an old factory, and they they are they were called the off-show for selected brands, they were very exclusive the first three, four years, seasons. And since Kar-Heinz Müller, who was the owner, is also a representative for Pepe Jeans, he wants Pepe Jeans to be the first major brand to partake in uh in bread and butter. But we cannot bring our booth because our booth is over 150 high, and uh there was a rule that you can only build, like he was very much angry in the beginning, or bread and butter had an activist statement against interjeans, which happened to be also in Cologne, which were all these super like million-dollar booth that you could not get into. So it was no more fun to go to the trade show. So that's why they said we're gonna like it goes in fashion, we start something different, something new. They started bread and butter, but they wanted big brands in and pepper jeans was the first, and they could only bring their big booth because they couldn't afford a new booth, or they didn't want to make a new one if they put it outside and in front of it put like a corrugated iron romney hall that they would make public, like make a public school space for the trade fair, so that they would give something back, and that was the assignment we got. So then we did the indigo room, which was the best brief, probably I I still uh I can still remember, and we made this crazy space for them, which was just beautiful. We had uh well, we completely furbished it in in such a cool way. I had a guy coming in almost destroying it while we were making it to give it a little history. It was meant to look like something in Portobello Road in London that had like a little bit of like eight you know antique in it, but also had like a 60s memory because the Rolling Stones once had been there, and then it also turned into a crackhouse in the 80s, but then raids were organized in the 90s, and now it was still a hotspot, so kind of the indigo room had to have this layered story, and we created this space, it was amazing, it was the hit of the trade show. The year after that, we did we could we re-remade Portobello Road markets for pepper jeans also in Cologne, and then during this, we met the guys from Bed and Butter, and they really liked us, and then uh then we started uh and then they moved to Berlin and they said, Well, we have this huge factory hall now, and we need some love. Will you come help us? And then uh then we came, we went to Berlin with them, and that was the beginning of a I would say 20 season, 10-year uh love affair where we grew with them in their insane uh growth and uh dis uh descent that they uh that they had.

Speaker 1 15:20

When we started with you at Kingpins, we were at 37 booths. Yeah. Because I liked prime numbers, that was the number that we picked. And 37 was the first number, and now I don't know what how many Kingpins has, it's a hundred or some whatever they have. So that was um not as big as bread and butter, but it was a pretty nice growth story, and it never would have happened without you. Well, thank you. I'm not sure about that, but I'm but thank you. No, I mean I can remember, and for the for the audience, I really want this happens very rarely in life, is when I went to the first show, I was so shocked at how beautiful it was, and so shocked at how clever it was and how funny it was. And um those moments don't happen that often. Okay, I want to change subjects. So when I started Denim Days, you know, or tried to start Denim Days, um, you brought me a book on the circus. Yes. And that book one of my favorite books. That book on the circus, I the concept of the circus so amused me. And and the whole idea of events, because in the end we were at Kingpin's was an event. The whole idea of the circus is is just something incredible. What makes it such an inspiration for you?

Speaker 16:32

Well, what I like about the circus is that it comes the traveling part, so it comes to town, it's it's it's in the moment, right? So they come and they put everything up. So I really always love the build-up and the breakdown and the life in between the the crew dinners, the uh not going to the fancy after party, but ending up in a hotel room with my crew. Uh so I really love um you know, when there's an artist that is on stage, looks like a million dollars, but then backstage is wearing, you know, uh rubber boots and walking through the mud, whatever. So so to me, this lifestyle where you kind of decide to to step outside of society and become like this traveling uh how do you call this uh vagrant, or I don't know, you're a little bit of a rascal somehow. It's an adventure, adventurous life, but it's also a really close-knit community, it's very much in the now by its very nature, and it's just about creating magic out of thin air. It's it's about uh smoke and mirrors, and it's about uh surprise and delight, and it's about you know taking people for a ride and giving them a little moment of relief or togetherness, you know. That's all beautiful, also shock to some extent. Sometimes. But that's I mean, I definitely like I I definitely like to disrupt a little bit, but I would I mean I'm that's that's but yeah, that's from from the circus for sure, shock, but not uh not from my work.

Speaker 1 18:02

You want to take the person's realities and put them into another reality for uh even if it's for a second, just to make them like double right?

Speaker 18:10

So it's on one side is distraction, and I also want to just recalibrate what reality might be, right? So maybe maybe they feel they're in reality when they're in the office or in the day jobs or when their family's in, but you know, reality is more than that. I just want to, you know, I want to stretch comfort zones. So why do you think that retailers don't do that?

Speaker 1 18:31

Um I'm blown a blown away by that. I'm blown away that retail stores are like hospitals. Yeah. You know, they're really they have their little theme, and then they never really move out of their theme. And you can go to the store in September, you can go to the store in October, and the only thing that changes is their products and their prices because they want to sell more. But experientially, they do nothing.

Speaker 18:54

No, in in the past you would have, I guess, more window dressing, which now also become like valuable square meters, so they actually skip the windows now. They don't do you don't even do like proper seasonal windows anymore. Um I think it's it's weird. Um I hate shopping. I hate shopping malls, I hate stores or in general. There's there's a few, you know, that that are interesting. But I was always surprised when a booth at a trade show looks exactly like a store. Because I'm like, okay, that's why why not take the opportunity to make something memorable or do something fun or do something people will talk about that you can do by the grace of the fact that it's temporary. You don't have to, you know, if you want a waterfall, you can have a waterfall for three days. It's not ridiculous. If you want to have a waterfall in your store, it's gonna be uh, you know, then it's a then it's a big big investment. But and I was also really s expecting, now that of course everything buys everyone buys everything on on online, I was expecting for stores to become more experiential, but it's not really happening as much as I thought it would. It's awful. Um so yeah.

Speaker 1 20:02

I find it incredibly disappointing and shocking that stores in the circumstance of people not shopping as frequently make no effort to make the experience more fun.

Speaker 20:13

I think I think it's uh it's really weird. And uh and I would maybe it's because the way profit or turnover or targets are are somehow measured by the amount of square meters of foot compared to you know how many footfall there is. I don't I don't know how people how people measure success in retail, but but I think the wow factor or the the return factor because it's fun or because I know in Holland there one of my most annoying things, and I'm not sure if that's the same in the US, is that if you have a store, you're not allowed to sell uh alcohol in the store.

Speaker 1 20:56

Yeah, there's an issue. There's an issue with that.

Speaker 20:59

I I would love for my cool garment store to have a bar. I would love for my bar to have a merge rack or to have something there that looks cool that that I would buy. But I think because of these rules where you cannot create these cross-pollinating interdisciplinary spaces, uh more like a market space. I yeah, I would like that a lot more if there's more of this happening. And there were, of course, cool stuff cool stores, but I think they're yeah, they're all come becoming boring because of probably people going, Well, we have measured it, and it turns out it makes uh zero point more something if we put this there instead of something fun.

Speaker 1 21:33

Well, a lot of people just go shopping to look for things and try them on and then go home and buy them online at the best possible price. So the store is really not even useful other than as a utility. That's crazy. Yeah, it becomes like I really like a showroom. Tell me about your campaign with Bud X. What is that about? Well, that's actually an old campaign. So uh but it was Okay. So tell me, so update up update me with uh with what what you're doing and how it started. And so on with them.

Speaker 22:01

Yeah, so so I mean we're starting off as a more of a fashion experiential agency doing trade shows and doing parties. Uh we all we also always had this because we were doing parties, we also had always had this love affair with liquor brands or beer brands, uh, or love affair, uh let's say natural connection, because there's this uh you know social lubricator that goes with alcohol, just it really a party really fits that kind of product. Um, so we were working for Bacardi from earlier days on, and then I think I don't really bad chronologically, but uh let's say seven years ago we started working for uh ABI. Uh first with um Who's ADI? ABI is uh Anijer Busch Imbev, which is the owner of Budweiser, it's the owner of Corona everywhere but in the US. Uh it's the owner of um Jupiler beer from Belgium. It's it they have like I don't know, gazillion brands uh all over the world. They are the biggest brewery in the world. And Bud Light, Budweiser, Micelop Ultra, these all these brands are all from the same uh mother company, which is ABI. So ABI is our client, uh, our biggest client right now. So we really have grown with them. Currently, Wink is extremely busy with organizing a lot for the Corona beer brand in the uh in Italy for the Winter Olympics. They're uh their uh alcohol-free product, which is Corona Zero, is uh is the lead sponsor for the for the Olympics. Uh they were also in Paris two years ago, and now that now we're in Italy with a really interesting job because we're all over the place, we're in the mountains, it's it's there's like 200 people working on it, so it's uh it's a huge job. Um, but you know, but X was a was a was an interesting format because I think what Bink always tries to do, what is a little bit the trick, is that we somehow are the broker between culture and corporate. So we we we are from culture, counterculture, culture. So we know we know the the what's happening in music and fashion and and and we know who's credible and what what what's going on and beer brands uh obviously want to own this kind of uh cool, and they are near to all those uh to the to the to that group, but then to do the right thing, they need an agency to come up with the right activations. So it's a very good marriage, I would say, for for and it started off with doing more activations on a festival for like a bar, and then the bar would be a cool bar, and so the the brands would have a a really nice presence there, and and it would rub off on them, and it would give us the opportunity to work with our lovely network of of creatives and artists and builders to create these beautiful happenings. So it's it's always been a little bit of a you know love affair between those two. And for BudX, this was actually the example of this. We just came up with so they wanted to launch, or they are still uh pushing for Budweiser to become a global player, uh, more so than, for instance, Heineken. And and because they cannot call it Budweiser in uh in Europe, because there's still an older original Budweiser from Tchekia. They have to call it Bud in Europe. So if you buy a bottle of Budweiser, it just says Bud in Europe. And um we wanted to create this platform where it which would allow Budweiser to collaborate with well, basically with whomever, whatever events you could go, BudX Fashion Week, or BudX An Artist, or BuddX Amsterdam, or BuddX um uh so it's basically just uh a connector or multiplier between the brand and whatever we want to pair it with. So that was a smart formula to be able to hook anything that is cool to this. Um so we do the Buddicks Miami around the Super Bowl back then, which was like an amazing event. Um you're doing the Super Bowl this year? No, so Budweiser's I think is uh no longer active. So I think Bud Light is the is the brand that that works with uh with the Super Bowl. Wink is not doing uh I think we did one, did we do one event? No, last year we did what do you call this? Oh, I'm really bad at it. It was in New Orleans. We did the commissioner's party, but that was uh more a B2B event for the for the NFL.

Speaker 1 26:28

What about the World Cup? Do you do the World Cup?

Speaker 26:31

Yeah, for sure. So we do uh we do both for on a global stage, we're working with Budweiser because they are the main partner on the global stage, and then locally in the US, they are partnering with their other brand, Micelop Ultra. Yeah, so we're doing some stuff with Micelope as well, and uh and besides that, we're also working with the city of Atlanta, directly for the city of Atlanta, to do uh Viva Fanfest, to which means uh yeah, during the tournament we'll create a whole circus for uh you know what you are you gonna come to Houston for the World Cup? We tried actually to do the fanfest for Houston, but we didn't win that one. But we we did pitch for it. I'm gonna be uh I'm not sure where I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be in Houston uh well, I'm gonna be to in South by again, South by Southwest next month.

Speaker 1 27:20

Tell our listeners about South by Southwest, what you do there.

Speaker 27:23

Yeah, so this is a new love. Well, it's an old love that that suddenly got into a really new uh new new phase, which is great. I love South by Southwest. It's uh it's probably one of the most interesting conferences, festivals in the world. It's uh it's about innovation, tech, but also about film and TV and also about music, uh, with its its root in in showcasing new bands uh originally. You feel this very much. I love Austin as as a as a as a city. Uh I went there for the first time in six in uh when we moved to uh when we moved to uh to Amsterdam uh with Wink, which was 2006. So 10 years ago, I went to Burning Man and I went to uh Southwest Southwest. Those were my my bucket list of festivals I wanted to visit when I when we would start our business in uh or expand our business to the US. And South Bayer really fell in love with it, just the cross-pollination or everything. So we went there and then decided to create this Dutch wave to it. So we started the new Dutch Wave, which was like a strategic trade mission or creative trade mission we organized for seven years. Um this we're still doing that, but on top of that, we are now being chosen directly by South by so by the organization itself. They're changing a lot in their or in their in their festival this year, and part of their new format is three clubhouses scattered throughout Austin. Really big hangouts for the different badge holders. So you have the innovation badge, the film badge, and the music badge, and they each get their own clubhouses. And Wink is designing and producing those. Uh so that's a real cool job that I've I'm I'm really happy to uh to be doing. Really, really nice job. Yeah, it's a really nice job. So I'm really proud that we landed that finally after investing uh so much time or loving them.

Speaker 1 29:10

You've gone from degenerate clubs and with you know homeless people living inside to working for the biggest brands in the in the world. It's quite a ride.

Speaker 29:22

Yeah, that's uh it is it is weird if you look at if you if you say it like that, it sounds weird. However, if I look back, it's still so much of the same elements that I was just rattling off earlier. So the interactiveness, the the fact that people are participating, the the the interdisciplinary stuff, the fact that you can find money and momentum for artists who are struggling or making their own work suddenly to become part of something bigger, and you have this togetherness and there's this synergy involved. So for me, it's so much, very much the same still as 30 years ago, so or 35 years ago. So so for me, of course, it's it's insane that we managed to come as far as we did, especially because we never had a plan. There was never a goal or a purpose, no exit strategy, no dot on the horizon. Uh, we were really having fun and getting away with it. But uh, but we are here we are, 30 years on, and there's I know there's I think there's 60 people working at Wing now. Uh like and uh and we're with 200 people working in Italy.

Speaker 1 30:29

The fact that you can have fun and be a successful business is a model that you know for our listeners, especially the young people, this is something to keep in the back of your mind because having fun allows you to express yourself in your work and it allows you to to do it.

Speaker 30:45

Well, and it's contagious, right? So it's contagious because you come in to to to the first uh Kingpin's in Amsterdam and you uh you you are affected by the fun we are having with your world, right? So it's it's uh it should be contagious.

Speaker 1 31:02

That's why I like the circus book so much because silly and unexpected. Um most people in business try to avoid that. They go, I you know, it's it's yeah, it's like the first thing you do is you don't want to make anyone not like you. So the first thing you have to do is to be totally average. And the whole success story of Wink, and I think the story with Kingpin's was very similar, is that we all I mean you're much much more than us, but you actually fed us. But the idea of the unexpected is everything in business. And it's it's funny and it's fun, and doing it straight and not offending anyone is the to me the worst thing you could possibly do.

Speaker 31:40

Yeah, to me too. So I and and I and and there if there's one thing I really, really don't like, and I'm I'm I always think I'm I'm I'm not that critic, not that much of a critic, but I really can't stand people who take themselves too serious. I think uh I think you know that's that's the that's the bottom line of what Wink stands for. I mean we do take our clients serious, but if they take themselves too serious, I find it harder to work with them. So I I need a little sense of humor or relativity, you know, owning up to the you know the simple fact that we're all just running around, you know, and and there's the only real assignment I think we have is having fun. That's also why the aim of the game is to feel real good, has become our or has always been our our uh credo or our motto. Um, you know, it's it's don't take yourself seriously. That's that's just that's holy to me. That's the one thing I'm serious about.

Speaker 1 32:36

Me too. And on that note, I want to say thank you for your time and sharing. I love our podcast because I want the listeners to get to meet all sorts of different people and perspectives. And I appreciate your perspective enormously, and I'm um thrilled. And one of the highlights of my career was the chance to get to work with you. So thank you for doing this.

Speaker 32:55

Well, thank you, Andrew. I really, really like working with you, and I'm honored that you asked me to be part of your podcast series. I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Speaker 1 33:04

Take care. Bye bye, my friend.

Speaker 33:06

Bye.