Along the way, we’ve partnered up with more and more talented people, which has allowed us to grow as a company.Ĭan you take me through some specifics of how your businesses are mutually beneficial to each other?ĭF: We are fortunate to work with incredibly talented people in all of our companies. When Dan joined us, he brought the operational piece we needed to grow. The ‘ID’ stands for “integrated design” - in other words, ID Company was always meant to be a design arm integrated into a larger company. We started ID Company to eventually do those same things for ourselves and very early on realized that we couldn’t do that without surrounding ourselves with talented and passionate people. I met Brad and we complemented each other’s skill sets and it was fun to see the sum of those parts help others as we provided design and brand management for clients. Grit and The Wool Factory were definitely extensions of that idea, and those are for sure the places where we’ve seen that vision come to fruition.Ĭan you talk about the synergy of the businesses and why they work so well together? Was this by design or did it just sort of work out that way?īW: All of our businesses have grown out of relationships, and all complement each other in some way.
In many ways, we started ID Company with the idea of continuing to do creative services for clients, but also to develop brands of our own. We still do all of those things, with a bit more focus on communication and content strategy on behalf of our clients.
What services did ID Company provide when you first started it, and what has that expanded to now?īU: ID Company started out as a fairly straightforward creative services firm, mostly focused on developing brand identities, website design and print collateral. UVA Today caught up with the trio to learn more about how they got started, their approach to business and how their time at UVA shaped them. On the surface, the businesses don’t seem as if they would be related, but, interestingly, they have all been designed to work in tandem with each other.Īt UVA, Wooten, a 2004 grad from Waynesboro, majored in religious studies and minored in architecture Uhl, a 2007 grad from West Chester, Pennsylvania, majored in economics and religious studies prior to earning his MBA at the Darden School of Business and FitzHenry is an alumnus of The College of William and Mary, who worked at the Department of Defense before earning his MBA from Darden. Today, their portfolio includes six Grit Coffee locations and The Wool Factory, a newly opened hospitality destination in Charlottesville’s newly renovated Woolen Mills, a property once owned by Thomas Jefferson that featured working mills they later produced military uniforms for the Confederate States of America before being torched by Union forces. Ten years ago, the alumni founded a design firm in Charlottesville called “ID Company” - a business designed to help other businesses via a wide range of services, including web development, marketing and rebranding. Wooten, Uhl and FitzHenry certainly seem to have the founding spirit thing down pat. The coffee’s flavors include toasted almond, vanilla and a “subtle hint” of black cherry that, according to its website, is “great for sipping on The Lawn or cheering on the Hoos” - a blend that is a “celebration of the founding spirit and the pursuit of excellence.” The medium roast blend that they created at Charlottesville’s Grit Coffee is called “1819” - an homage to the year UVA was founded.
The love that entrepreneurs Brandon Wooten, Brad Uhl (EMBA ’15) and Dan FitzHenry (EMBA ’18) have for the University of Virginia is pretty obvious – just check out their coffee.
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