Meet Aevin Kumar

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aevin Kumar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Aevin, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

As a child growing up I have always been surrounded by creative individuals from my dad designing our home to my mum enjoying her crafts to creative interior projects. As I grew up loving to paint and draw, my parents have always encouraged me to take on fun and creative hobbies alongside my academic classes. Overtime that grew to appreciating and enjoying the world of design, specifically interior design. As I’m now 2 years into my Bachelors of Interior Design degree, which allows you to be creative within an interior environment, and knowing that in the future I will be able to make a positive impact to peoples daily life. The journey has been filled with highs and lows but I’m excited to enter the industry soon.

I have always gravitated towards creative mediums and when starting Coffee Craze Company, it was about learning about the world of business and sharing these fantastic blends I had a hand in creating but overall it was another way to allow my creativity to flourish. Whether it being drawing up my first logo, designing the coffee labels or growing to love and appreciate videography, photography and content creation.

I keep my creativity alive through being surrounded by people who allow me to be creative and try new things from my family to friends. As a student going into the design industry, I’m constantly surrounded by creative individuals. I’m constantly discovering new brands, businesses, and artists that keep me inspired. When it comes to Coffee Craze Company, recently, creating content for my social media pages has been fun to do, creating new coffee recipes, engaging in some trends and overall finding joy in what I’m doing. Many people may not agree but I find social media to be a great place to be inspired. I love following other businesses, design studios, and artistic/creative individuals on the platform.

What also helps is the encouragement from my audience and fellow business owners, it keeps me motivated and any positive feedback and review, makes it worth putting in the hard work, which any business owner can understand.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My name is Aevin Kumar, and I’m the creative behind Coffee Craze Company! Coffee Craze Company, is an online coffee shop where we cater to coffee lovers across Canada who enjoy freshly roasted and robust coffee selections. What makes us unique is I specifically offer blends as I believe blends take you on a journey and lets you experience the different notes and flavours of the variety of beans within the bag.

Our coffee, is ethically and organically sourced and freshly roasted by our local roasters in collaboration with family farms and estate farms in major coffee growing regions around the world! I began Coffee Craze Company when I was in high school as a way to learn about the world of business through a hands on experience and combine that with sharing these amazing coffee blends I fell in love with. I discovered my now current coffee roaster after trying to find new coffee beans to try and eventually pitched my idea and worked to develop my own blends to create a classic collection.

I don’t see coffee as just a drink but rather a way of life. I wanted to create that haven for coffee lovers to embrace their caffeine craze. I believe coffee can be great addition to the start of anyones day, for a boost of energy or to get themselves focussed! I wouldn’t be able to do it without the help of our roasters who together we have created a small collection of blends from Dark Roasts to Decafs and everything in between along with having the option to choose your favourite grinds.

As I’m continuing to grow the brand, I’m expanding from classic roasts to beautiful coffee gear! Our latest product launch on June 24, 2024 was a custom glassware collection created for all coffee lovers. Perfect for hot pour overs or delicious iced lattes! I am also working on developing a coffee inspired candle collection which has been a dream of mine for sometime as I love lighting a candle and enjoying my coffee. This year I also plan to launch a coffee recipe book! For a while now I have been sharing coffee recipes from classic drinks to crazy and weird, my audience has grown to love them, just as much as I enjoy creating and epxiermenting. I since decided to start creating a coffee recipe book, filled with classic brews to coffees with a twist.
There is still much more planning and preparing to be done but I’m excited to start working on something new for Coffee Craze Company this year.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Communication skills
Developing strong communication skills is vital and it’s something I’m working on each day. As a business owner, you need to convey your vision, goals, and strategies when working with others. Communication is a big skill that I had to develop when I work with other businesses and our coffee roaster. Along with learning to communicate well not just in person but also over text and email is crucial. Working on interpersonal communication is important to work on with verbal communication, listening, and written communication. The way one communicates and conveys messages in a written form is key, work on delivery and how you form the message. You want to convey the message in a most likely a positive way. I can talk way more about this…Overall, through strong communication, you are also building and maintaining relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners. Building connections with other businesses in my community is something I enjoy doing.

With communication, it’s constant practice. I don’t think there is one way to develop this skill. It will come with time and effort. I think what helped me is attending local markets and speaking to customers face to face and making those connections. This was very important to me as I run my business solely online, and with that there is a barrier. I find at markets you not only meet great people but also fellow business owners, who you can network with. But to note, this can be achieved in many forms but that face to face communication helped me in building confidence. Markets may not work for everyone but since I started doing a few a year, it’s something I look forward to.

Time management skills:
If you’re a business owner, you know time management is so important. When you are a one-person team, there is so much to juggle. For me, I don’t only run a business but I’m also managing full-time classes and working towards my Bachelor of Interior Design degree. I started my business when I was in high school and since it’s been a matter of good time management skills. It’s always difficult but I try to dedicate overall 2-3 hours a day when I’m attending classes to my business. What helps me is, making my to-do lists and scheduling each day. Doing this at the start of each day, is very helpful and gives me a clear understanding of what to do. I make a list in order of what to do first to last, most important to least.
Now in the summer, I’m able to spend more time to grow the business slowly and set up things before I head back to full-time classes in the fall, the good thing right now is all my classes are online. For time management, most of the time business owners at the start are a one-person team and with that I find scheduling and planning my day in the mornings help me a lot, you can even do this at night and plan for the next day.

Willingness to try new things and not being scared to fail
This is one of the qualities I believe business owners should have. In my first year of business, it was all about trying new things, I was completely new to the coffee industry and how to run a business. Each new opportunity was a learning experience. I failed many times but learned something from it. If I don’t fail, how will I learn? I’m not afraid to try something different and see how it goes. For example, I did a 2-month pop-up in a store and barely made a substantial profit, I learned key lessons from it. Or the first few months of business were going great and later sales became slow, I had to figure it out and was another learning curve. I think starting a business is always a huge risk, you have started a business because you’re passionate about what you do, keep going and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. For me, being young and starting a business, I felt as if I failed, what would my family think, to want to start a business and then fail. I felt I had to prove something constantly and only achieve things and not fail at all, but I needed to grow out of that mindset and continue on the journey.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I enjoy collaborating with businesses as I have worked with great local businesses in the past. I love supporting fellow business owners and together we build and improve our local community. I would love to collaborate with stores who would appreciate great quality coffee, along with businesses who want to serve coffee in their establishments, a restaurant, cafe, office or hospitality businesses looking to elevate your coffee offerings. Lastly, enhance gift giving with our coffee, by adding our selections to gift basket businesses. If you’re interested in potentially working together, you can reach me through my website; www.coffeecrazecompany.com, through Instagram or email at coffeecrazeco@gmai.com.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.coffeecrazecompany.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CoffeeCrazeCompany/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coffeecrazecompany/

Image Credits

myself and No Filter Branding