Case studies
Storytelling isn't a nice-to-have. It's why these worked.
Every belief on this site is easy to state and easy to ignore. These are the places where it was actually tested, where protecting a story, a feeling, or a piece of history was the entire strategy, not a marketing layer bolted on afterward.
Three examples, one thread: the story came first, and the outcome followed.
The strategic thread
From physical experiences to new ones.
A century-old inn creates emotion through architecture, hospitality, history, and atmosphere. A restored holiday tradition creates emotion through nostalgia, ritual, surprise, and shared memory. A neighborhood creates emotion through place, familiarity, and human interaction. Good Stuff Ventures asks how those same principles can show up in new places, sometimes in technology, and sometimes in another physical experience entirely.
An app, when it's the right tool, can help someone remember a person, preserve a story, celebrate a milestone, reconnect with someone, discover something meaningful, create a new tradition, or experience an ordinary moment differently. But the canvas doesn't have to be digital, a mailbox, a walk-through display, or a well-run stay can do exactly the same emotional work. Technology is not the purpose. It is one of the newest canvases, not the only one.
The Mariemont Inn
A Tudor Revival landmark since 1926.
Bill has been involved with the Mariemont Inn since 2004, a Tudor Revival landmark in the historic village of Mariemont, Ohio, that has welcomed guests since 1929 and has been carefully renovated while keeping its original character intact.
The Mariemont Inn isn't a technology company. It's proof that the instinct driving Good Stuff Ventures, protecting what makes a place or an experience meaningful, has been Bill's work for years before the studio had a name. Every renovation decision started with the same question the studio still asks: what made this special, and how do we protect it while making it better?
The story picks the medium, and the medium should never announce itself. But invisible isn't the whole job. The best ideas hide their machinery and keep surprising you anyway, small wows tucked all the way through, arriving when you don't expect them. One wow gets photographed. A string of them gets retold.
The Shillito's Elves
Keeper of a Cincinnati Christmas.
Since 2005, Bill has been the keeper of the Shillito's Elves, the animated workshop that filled the windows of the downtown Shillito's department store from the 1950s through the early 1980s, when generations of Cincinnati kids pressed their noses to the glass to watch the elves build toys and sort Santa's mail. When the store changed hands, the elves vanished; Bill went looking, bought what was left, and made sure they stayed in the city that loved them. The Shillito's Elves are not a technology company. They are proof that a tradition worth protecting can be rescued, rebuilt, and handed to the next generation, and the physical world version of the studio's core belief: when something is built around a real human experience, it lasts.
Every season, a small crew keeps the tradition alive and greets each family at the door. That greeting is not a formality, it's the first scene of the show, the moment a child's nervous curiosity turns into wonder and a grandparent starts telling the story of the windows they remember. The elves get the credit. The people behind them are the magic.
The Nolen Boardroom
Maybe the purest example of the studio's belief.
Created in 2025, inside the Mariemont Inn, Bill's dream of an elegant and stately boardroom came true. It is styled as town planner John Nolen's private office, stately wood paneling, period detail, nothing that looks like a conference room. The technology is all there: a pop-up HD television, state-of-the-art meeting amenities. It's just hidden until the moment it's needed.
The story picks the medium. And the medium should never announce itself.
The technology is there, just hidden until the moment it's needed. You sit down in a room that feels like 1926 and then the television rises out of an antique cabinet and the century disappears for exactly as long as you need it to. Neither half would work alone. The story lives in the combination: craftsmanship, surprise, and the restraint to keep the modern parts quiet until they earn their entrance.
