By Travis Stratford
Twenty years ago, Enoch, Tony, and I met up after work at 5 Crosby Street, a dilapidated commercial building on the border of lower Soho and Chinatown. After daydreaming about it in college — and after talking through the “what ifs” after starting our individual careers in Manhattan— we were finally ready to build our own branding firm.
Transitioning from a manufacturing space into low-cost offices, 5 Crosby was raw and dirty. But with the neighborhood’s old-school New York charm, and with the several other young (and equally naive) building tenants working in the fashion and design worlds, committing to the space felt right to us. We pulled the trigger that night and signed the lease on CASE’s first homebase, which officially began a spectacular journey for all of us.
Fast forward to 2024 — to a team of 40 incredibly talented creators, offices on Wooster Street and in Los Angeles, and a diverse client roster of iconic beauty, wellness and lifestyle brands.
Over the next 12 months, our team will share various highlights and lessons learned over our past 20 years at CASE. The first and most profound lesson for us is one of deep gratitude.
We’re grateful for our high school teachers who inspired us to be interested in photography, design, and the arts; our college professors who, in addition to helping build our foundational skills, instilled in us a love of NYC and encouraged us to pursue internships here; for all our previous agencies and The Estée Lauder Companies’ co-workers and bosses for mentoring us and giving us industry experience prior to starting CASE.
We’re grateful for CASE’s foundational clients at Valentino, Bloomingdales, and The Estée Lauder Companies who all took chances on us that ultimately opened countless other doors for CASE. We’re grateful for the many talented clients and collaborators over the years who chose to “hitch their wagons” to ours to help create, recharge, and activate their iconic beauty and lifestyle brands.
And finally, we’re forever grateful for our entire CASE team (alumni + current team members) who continually push the work and business forward. Had someone asked us 20 years ago to describe CASE in 2024, I never could have imagined the rich and beautiful culture of collaboration we’ve built together or the plethora of beautiful brands we’d get to create.
