Everybody was together in DUMBO.
Several people were visiting from out of town. I sent an invitation to somebody nearby and said the team would be glad to see them.
No big announcement. No launch. People were in New York, so we found a reason to get into the same room.
Apply had started years earlier as a New York sticker company. By 2025, I was no longer treating it as my main operating job, but I still had a relationship with the company and the people doing the work.
Physical-product companies benefit from being together sometimes. Samples can be handled. Print and material differences are easier to see. Packaging makes more sense when it is sitting on a table. A long email thread can become a short decision.
Apply was built around extremely physical details. Color, cut, adhesive, finish, packaging, and whether the thing in your hand looked as good as the thing on the screen. You can send photos and proofs all day. Eventually somebody needs to hold the sticker.
That was part of what I always liked about it. The software and ecommerce mattered, but the customer ended up with an actual object. If the production work was wrong, no dashboard could make the sticker right.
The visit also put Apply back in the city where it began. DUMBO has studios, stores, offices, and enough foot traffic to make a small design business feel at home. Brooklyn was part of the company's identity before it was a line in the address.
Years of company work create a strange kind of shared shorthand. You can go a long time without seeing somebody and immediately return to an old product, customer, vendor problem, or joke. The company keeps changing, but the people remember the versions that came before it.
DUMBO made the invitation easy. Stop by. Meet the people who were in town. See what everybody was working on. Stay for a little while or get pulled into the whole day.
That is usually better than calling something an offsite and building an agenda nobody wants.
The work week had Goodword product meetings and early-company operations in it. The weekend had Apply people in Brooklyn.
Different companies. Different work. Same city.
I sent the invitation and went to see the team.