Shaken, Stirred, and Starting Fresh: Our 2024 Year in Review
What a year! And boy has it been a rollercoaster!
For starters, after well over a decade in public service, we both decided to resign from our positions in the Federal Government. That’s right, we’re no longer ‘diplomats’ using our keyboards to thwart evildoers, but dove head first into the private sector.
Leaving our jobs with Uncle Sam allowed us to spend more time on C&D and our families and provided an opportunity to branch out beyond the government world – which, up until our departure, made up the majority of our professional life experience.
It was a big move for us, but both agree that it was the right decision and has greatly increased the quality of our personal and professional lives.
Life has also thrown some curveballs, but the timing is interesting as both balls passed across home plate just as we were leaving government service, which allowed us to focus our efforts on dealing as best we could. Kris’ father passed suddenly in March, and Rebecca’s grandmother got sick. The latter has pushed on with a strong recovery, but we’ve both been incredibly thankful for our new jobs that allow us to work from home and take care of family.
Expanding our Space & Team: A New Chapter for C&D
Now that Rebecca has joined a private intelligence company, and Kris teamed up with former colleagues and joined a new start-up . Both positions have kept us busy, so we hired our first salaried team member – Alison Simmons, our “aggressively helpful boss,” to keep us on track. Without her, C&D would have folded a year ago!
Our fulfillment center also got a major upgrade, graduating from our absurdly overpriced storage unit in Northern Virginia to the basement of our house. We moved to a small town in the Middle of Nowhere, Virginia (pop.327) with enough space to house all of C&D’s stuff. It’s made fulfillment much easier, even if our basement looks like a warehouse:
We also introduced another product! After nearly two years of development, we released our paring knife. Like most things we’ve built, it took longer than initially planned but our partnership with Half Faced Blades helped create what is, by far, our favorite blade in the kitchen.
We’ve expanded partnerships and even rolled out our products at a brick-and-mortar location in our small town.
We’re also planting our flag at the National Intelligence Agency (NSA) just after the New Year with an NSA-branded shaker, continuing our push to get our product in the hands of folks who truly appreciate a martini that’s shaken…not stirred.
Lastly, we did our first podcast, and got another episode of Black-Tie Cocktail Guy on Youtube.
Country Living: Finding Peace and Passion in Rural Life
Being in the country has been a welcome reprieve after spending most of our professional lives in cities. We’ve become gardeners, fishermen, hunters, and have come to love the relative calm of the sunsets in front of our home.
Year in Review
So, what does 2025 have in store for us?
For starters, we intend to share more of our story and the journey of C&D. We’re gonna keep humming along on some future product ideas but have learned to manage our expectations on establishing a launch timeline as the US manufacturing abilities have a way of serving us humble pie, but at least we can eat it out of our American-made Boston shaker!
If you’ve made it this far in the blog, we’d like to offer our sincerest appreciation for your support. It really means a lot to us.
Building C&D has not been easy, but it’s been fun as hell to bring our ideas to fruition, share them, and then hearing from the folks who are enjoying them as much as us. We’re still a small American company and answer our own phones; you should drop us a line sometime and say hello at support@cdtoolsusa.com . The email still goes directly to Rebecca and I, so you’re sure to get a response.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Much Love,
The C&D Team