Darina Garland’s Strategies for Success

“We’ve always been really ambitious,” Garland told the audience at the HSBC Strategies For Success event in Glasgow. “Ambitious for scale.”

Garland shared five key insights on how the co-founders took the brand from home experiment to global success story…

Rather than starting locally and then trying to expand, Ooni was set up from day one to sell and ship globally. Picking the right platforms helped with this; Ooni chose Shopify because of its worldwide reach. But considerations also went much deeper. Ooni’s distinctive tripod shape was the result of a desire to reduce weight and therefore shipping costs. And one reason the team went the crowdfunding route was they knew their backers could effectively function as a worldwide community to help spread the word. “We were able to go global from literally minute one,” said Garland.

Garland notes, however, that it is important to tailor your offer for different geographies. Ooni quickly introduced a larger oven for the American market, where consumers typically had more space in their gardens than people in the UK. Over time, Ooni built up a light local presence where needed, opening its first major international office in Austin, Texas—but even a small company can function globally thanks to online platforms.

Ooni’s products are the lifeblood of the business, and as with any great product, they are copied by competitors and imitators. Garland’s advice was to tread carefully when litigating patent infringements. “You could spend all of your money, all of the time on patent protection. That’s not the appropriate way to grow a company.” The company’s rule of thumb is to focus on the copies which are either particularly high-profile or most blatant (for example in cases where Ooni’s own assets have been used to sell the imitation).

More important, she said, is for the team to focus on product excellence and innovation. Rather than sit on its initial design, Ooni expanded its range after launch, including ovens that ran on gas and charcoal rather than hardwood pellets, and an indoor electric oven. The company also experimented with different sizes, and introduced new product categories such as a dough mixer. “We’re in the lucky and sometimes enviable position of creating a category,” Garland said. “Our purpose is trailblazing products that feed people and the planet. In order to be trailblazing, you need to be innovating.” It’s easier to stay ahead of imitators than to be constantly fighting to defend what you already have—within reason.

Thinking innovatively about benefits can be a powerful way to attract talent in a competitive marketplace.

Take Ooni’s ‘Passion Fund’. This provides each team member a budget of £500 to pursue something that “lights them up” outside of work. “It’s not necessarily for professional development, because we’ve also paid for MBAs and training—we think that should be part of your job,” said Garland. Instead, the Passion Fund is for something like an epic yoga retreat, say, or gear for a hobby. Pictures of the results are often shared in the company Slack.

This ultimately benefits the business by building loyalty, energy, and a culture where people want to stay and grow—all at a relatively low cost. “We’re trying to employ the whole person,” said Garland. In other words: make the relationship more than a transaction, and people won’t just treat it like one.

Ooni has five distinct values which are advertised on its website, in internal guidance and in job descriptions: ambition, rigour, innovation, passion and kindness. These guide every decision, and underpin the culture. Most businesses have something similar, but what stands out about Ooni’s approach is how it has directly engineered those behaviours into the workplace.

Garland has set up deliberate systems such as “values nominations”, where employees can nominate peers who they think have embodied each value. These are voted on by the team, and the winner is given an award, often in the form of extra Passion Fund money. This engagement makes the values more “meaningful”, Garland said. “They’re the behaviours we want to see more.” The values are also assessed in Ooni’s hiring process and employee performance reviews.

Garland says the reason Ooni takes this so seriously is that it’s the best way to ensure consistency of business culture when scaling fast. “They are the cornerstone of how we operate.”

Trusting her gut has helped Garland guide Ooni through major decisions, including about overseas manufacturing, team structure, and key hires. Intuition is more than guesswork—it’s the pattern recognition founders develop by being close to their product, customers, and team. Ultimately, you know your own business better than anyone else.

“We had advice about scaling a few years ago from very well intentioned, successful businesspeople who saw we had a 10x strategy about scaling our revenue. They were just like, ‘That is nonsense; no offense, but just no.’ It was completely the wrong advice.” These advisors wanted Ooni to stay local, and focus on Scotland and the UK, rather than selling globally, but Garland, Tapaninaho and their leadership team knew the business had everything in place to be a truly global brand. They stuck to their plans, and it paid off.

“In terms of what’s possible, I think that you need to be careful who you listen to, because even really beautiful, well intentioned advice can be stifling. That principle still matters to us today—we’ve had some great years, but we’re only getting started.”