The Art of Scaling Taste

Taste is a double-edged sword. Because it is ephemeral, you’re untouchable if you have it. Competitors won’t be able to copy it—what is there to copy? You can expand products as rapidly as MSCHF has without any negative consequences. But taste can also disappear quickly. If the artists collective loses touch with what makes them special, their adva... See more

How do you become a 100-year company?

Taste is a double-edged sword. Because it is ephemeral, you’re untouchable if you have it. Competitors won’t be able to copy it—what is there to copy?

The more people who buy a product, the further the product’s message spreads, the more money the company makes, the more they can invest in their projects. It's a virtuous cycle of creation and consumption. By making scale—the number of people who use or see the creation—an explicit part of the art’s statement, they naturally marry the business’s g... See more

Each drop is creative and rebellious, winking to the world that capitalism is a necessary joke. They do all of this with a team of 34 people, most of whom are generalists with no background in making physical goods.

MSCHF didn’t make any money from the ATM. They never displayed it again. It was seen in person by, at most, a few thousand people. So it might appear to be a dud. But the company derived value from the narrative network effects for the brand. Every person who interacted with the ATM encountered an object that expanded MSCHF’s creative universe. It ... See more

To me, the key to keeping taste is to be true to yourself. While I recognize that that sentiment would be more appropriate on a wine mom’s wall hanging, it is surprisingly hard. When no one cares about you and you make objects for the simple joy of creation, you’re under no pressure to conform your taste to anyone. When your audience grows—when art... See more

Anyone at MSCHF—from the four-person design team to the chief legal counsel, who practiced law with Obama in Chicago—can suggest what to build next. They’ll enter the idea into a Google document. A central brain trust of five people, consisting of Whaley and the four other founding members who joined in 2019 (including Wiesner), reviews the ideas o... See more

Scale is not the goal. Scale is a tool to make the concepts better and more powerful.”

“Our only goal when we started was to make anything we wanted and only what we wanted.”