Small town, big reach

Small town, big reach: running an international design business from the Kootenays

There's a moment on most video calls with new clients when they ask where I'm based. I tell them New Denver, British Columbia. There's usually a pause. "Where's that exactly?"

I explain: a village of about 500 people in the Slocan Valley, tucked in between mountain ranges in the West Kootenays. It's the kind of place where people still wave at each other on the main street, where the lake turns silver in October, and where our nearest major airport is a four-hour drive away.

Then I tell them who else I'm working with that week — a brand in Vancouver, a firm in Zürich, an organization in the Columbia Basin — and the pause gets longer.

I've been running Fulton&Co. from here for six years, and what I've learned is this: place shapes your work, but it doesn't have to limit it. If anything, being rooted somewhere specific — somewhere quiet, somewhere with a strong sense of identity — has made me a sharper designer and a better communicator.

Why remoteness is a feature, not a bug

The obvious question is: does it matter where a designer sits? In a strictly logistical sense, no. Files transfer. Screens share. Time zones are manageable. The work gets done.

But geography shapes perspective in subtler ways. Working from a small community means I've had to build relationships intentionally, communicate with precision, and earn trust without the shorthand of proximity. Those are exactly the skills that make remote client relationships work — and they're exactly what good communications design requires.

There's also something to be said for thinking space. The Kootenays are not a place that rewards busyness for its own sake. That cultural tempo has a way of filtering into the work — less clutter, more clarity, fewer things fighting for attention on the page.

What international clients actually want

Here's what I've noticed working with clients across Canada, the United States, and Switzerland: the fundamentals don't change much. Every client, regardless of where they're based or how sophisticated their market, wants communications that are clear, credible and visually coherent. They want a designer who listens, asks good questions and doesn't make them explain themselves twice.

What varies is context; the cultural register, the audience's expectations, the competitive landscape. That's where local knowledge matters, and it's where I lean on clients as partners. They know their world; I bring the design thinking and communications strategy. Together, we make something that actually works in the market they're speaking to.

The Kootenays as a creative asset

I'll admit I didn't always lead with where I live. Early on, I worried it might raise questions about capacity or connectivity — fair concerns, maybe, in a different era of remote work. But post-pandemic, the conversation has shifted. Clients are more comfortable with distributed teams and remote contractors than ever before. What they care about is quality, reliability and fit.

And increasingly, I find that the Kootenays story is a differentiator rather than a liability. It's memorable. It signals independence and intentionality. It suggests that I chose this; chose the quality of life, the pace, the community, rather than defaulting to a city because that's where the work was assumed to be.

The work followed me here. Or rather, I built a practice that didn't require me to be anywhere else.

What this means for Fulton&Co.

Fulton&Co. is a small operation by design - lean, flexible, and built around senior-level expertise rather than headcount. That structure lets me work with organizations of very different sizes and in very different places, showing up as a committed partner rather than an account number at a large agency.

If you're a communications or marketing team looking for design support, whether you're in a downtown Vancouver high-rise, a Zürich office, or a regional organization somewhere in the Basin, I'd love to talk about what we might build together.

The mountains are nice and the wifi is solid. Let's connect.