Skip to content

Founder Stories: Tom Leahy, President

When Tom enters a room, everyone definitely knows- from the fist bumps to the near constant jokes, he keeps the office smiling. Here is his story.

ONEHOPE: Tell us a story from the early days of ONEHOPE that highlights the challenges of entrepreneurship and disrupting the wine industry.

Tom: Early on we sold a program into Albertsons in Arizona. It was very exciting and big opportunity. We purchase what we thought at the time were amazing display pieces to support selling ONEHOPE in the stores. Instead of paying for shipping the display pieces to Arizona we wanted to save money and drove them out in Jake’s Ford F150 through the middle of the night due to heat during the day. We started the drive with 95 big display pieces packed in 95 separate boxes. By the time we arrived to Kristen’s parents house, where we were staying (to save money), we had 86 display pieces left. We lost 9 somewhere in the desert on Hwy 10 and the loss for those display pieces would have easily paid for them to be sent out with a professional freight company.

ONEHOPE: Tell us about the moment you knew your young company was going to be successful.

Tom: A great moment was when we moved from a warehouse in Irvine which was about 3500 sq ft to a warehouse in Santa Ana at 14,000 sq ft. It seemed like we were never going to fill it up and we had so much space to work with at the time. We out grew the space and will be moving again this August.

Photo of warehouse can be found here.
Video of warehouse can be found here.

ONEHOPE: Tell us the cause you are most passionate about and why.

Tom:
Partnering up with our Veteran organizations is always very fulfilling. Being able to show our appreciation to those who make sacrifices for the greater good is a great way to let them know how we feel.

It’s crazy how much we have grown in the past 10-years! Stay tuned for more founder stories.

Love,
The ONEHOPE Team

Recent Posts

No comment yet, add your voice below!


Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *