Ed Smith and I have been friends for the last 25 years. We've always had a passion for making something happen for ourselves – even if, in our early days, counterfeiting money to spend at school when we were 13 or 14 ended up getting us in more trouble with the teachers than making us money – and we always knew that at some point we'd end up going into business with each other.
After university, however, we decided to do the 'sensible thing' and get some experience in the real world of work. I started working as a trader and loved the fast pace of it, the constant pressure, the people shouting at each other and the scarily large sums of money being moved around.
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I always knew it would be temporary, though, and it wasn't long until the novelty factor wore off. After a few years, of constantly talking about making a product we could touch and hold, we finally took the plunge and decided that we were going to make chocolate, but better.
We'd always been passionate about food and just felt that there was an opportunity to bring innovative flavours to a stagnant market. It's a pretty simple idea, but Doisy & Dam has since developed into a real passion project.
It's a pretty long way away from trading numbers on a screen, but what gets me out of bed in the morning now is the excitement of creating new flavours, developing totally unique products and building a long-term, sustainable chocolate project in Colombia to help people who have been hugely impacted by drug cartels and paramilitary activity. And we're even looking to have our own cocoa plantation in Colombia so that we can be totally transparent about where every piece of chocolate comes from.
We're both massive chocaholics and we're determined to spread our chocolate as far and wide as possible so nobody misses out on what we think are the best bars in the world.
