Sometimes the gut knows before the head.
#3 • Stories & Lessons of Founding Baron Fig
I was proud of our closet. When we were in an especially good mood we called it our studio. It was the first workspace we could call our own, located in midtown Manhattan, and about as teeny-tiny as it gets.
The space had a single window that nearly took up one entire wall. (The window was not big.) On warm summer days we could climb out onto the terrace, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t technically made for human occupation — it was a ledge that happened to have a waist-high barrier that prevented troublemakers from falling into the street below.
Every Wednesday night it was packed with bodies. Well, three people, but that’s about all it could hold before things got uncomfortable. On this particular night my co-troublemakers Adam and Scott were sitting on $14 Ikea chairs, leaning on our $39 Ikea desks.
“I like the word Baron,” I said. It was a shot in the dark, just a word I’d always had a strong gravitation towards. “But it needs something else.”
“How about Fig?” Scott said, without skipping a beat. I kid you not, I had barely gotten the words out of my mouth when he spoke up.
“Baron … Fig,” Adam repeated. We all liked it, as told by big smiles drawn around the room. “What does it mean?”
“No idea,” Scott said.
I liked the name a lot, but I didn’t know why. We were creating a company that focused on creativity and inspiration — a name without meaning would go against everything we stood for.
Over the next few weeks I literally came up with hundreds of alternatives. Every time we met I read them all off, and each night we parted ways with Baron Fig still the top choice.
Finally I looked up the origins of the words Baron and Fig. I was blown away by what I found. Turns out Baron is a symbol of Apollo (god of the sun and discipline), and Fig is a symbol of Dionysus (god of wine and impulse). They’re the perfect metaphor of balance in the creative process: having the discipline to work at your craft, but also the impulse to play.
We liked the name for a reason, we just didn’t know it right away.
Joey Cofone is Co-Founder & CEO at Baron Fig. The Founding of Baron Fig shares the stories and lessons learned on the journey of creating our startup.
Follow us @baronfig to stay updated. / Visit our site to shop our creations.
