Vincent Ayar and Ooze: The Co-Founder Behind the Design

Accessory companies live or die on two questions: does the product work, and does a shopper reach for it on a crowded counter? Overseeing design and development puts Vincent Ayar at the point where those questions meet. Decisions about shape, materials, colorways, packaging and how one item connects to another all flow through that part of the business.

Because Ooze has always handled its own component sourcing, product design there is not just drawing a shell around someone else's parts. The design side has to account for what goes inside each item, which ties his work closely to the engineering and supply decisions the company makes.

Ooze was not a solo venture. Its partners and co-owners include Danny Hannawa, the company's founder and president, and Steve Hannawa, whom Vincent has credited with bringing e-cigarette technology to Michigan. In the earliest days those partners were the entire workforce, packing and shipping out of a 2,000 square foot warehouse.

That structure gave each partner a clear lane. Vincent's lane, design and brand, is the part customers see first: the logo on the package, the silhouette of a battery, the feel of a silicone kit in the hand.

By September 2019 Ooze had expanded to roughly 42,000 square feet and more than 50 employees. Growth on that scale changes what a design lead does. Early on, overseeing development can mean personally signing off on every sample; at fifty-plus people it means setting a standard that shipping, marketing and design staff can carry out consistently.

Much of that staff is local to Metro Detroit, and the owners are all Michigan natives, so the brand's day-to-day execution stayed close to the people who built it.

The fuller founding story, including the move from vape batteries into a wider accessory range, is told on the Ooze venture page of this site. For Vincent Ayar's own words about the company, The Weed Blog's 2019 interview is the most direct published source.