The Slightly Unexpected Story of OzMo

From Sales to Hand-Painted Chocolate:

It turns out careers don't always travel in straight lines, mine certainly hasn't.

If you'd told me twenty five years ago that one day I'd be sitting in Somerset, hand-painting tiny chocolate bonbons, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't have believed you.

My working life hasn't exactly followed a conventional route.

I spent 15 years working in IT sales, before moving to Somerset and eventually rekindling a passion I'd had for photography in 2005.

Photography started as something creative that I loved and grew into a significant part of my life. Over the years I've photographed festivals, events, weddings and people, and I've been an official press photographer at Glastonbury Festival for more than 16 years.

I've also produced two photography books, including work documenting Glastonbury Festival and the 2014 Somerset Floods.

But photography isn't actually my day job.

Scissors, cameras... and eventually chocolate

I'm a hairdresser.

And when I think about it, perhaps the leap from hairdressing and photography to hand-painted chocolate isn't quite as peculiar as it first appears.

They're all visual.

As a hairdresser I'm constantly looking at colour, shape, balance and the person in front of me. You're creating something individual rather than simply reproducing exactly the same thing every time.

Photography taught me to look differently too.

Through a camera you start noticing colour combinations, composition, light and tiny details that other people might walk straight past.

Then chocolate came along.

And somehow those different parts of my life started colliding.

It began with a promise

The name OzMo comes from my children, Oska and Morgan.

When they were young, I wanted them to understand that following something you genuinely love can lead somewhere meaningful.

I probably didn't appreciate at the time that eventually I'd have to take some of my own advice.

Chocolate wasn't a carefully planned new career.

It was something I became curious about.

And curiosity has a habit of getting me into things.

In June 2024, I went to the Chocolate Academy in Banbury.

I discovered tempering, moulds, shells, ganaches, caramels, cocoa butter, temperatures and considerably more science than I had anticipated.

But I also discovered something was missing.

Colour.

Suddenly an empty chocolate mould looked very interesting

The first thing that really captured me was the possibility of combining chocolate with art.

I could take an empty mould and start thinking about it in much the same way I might approach a photograph, or even colour in my salon.

Which colours work together?

Do I want contrast or harmony?

Where does your eye go first?

What happens if I put that colour next to this one?

And, perhaps most importantly...

What happens if I just try it?

I've continued learning since that first course, including further training with James Parsons of SoSaSe Chocolat, but chocolate is one of those subjects where the more you learn, the more you realise there is to learn.

I rather like that.

Am I a chocolate maker?

Technically, no — and it's an interesting distinction.

I'm a chocolatier.

I work with high-quality couverture chocolate and transform it into filled bonbons.

The couverture is my starting material.

I temper the chocolate, hand-paint the moulds with coloured cocoa butter, create the shells, make the ganaches and caramels, develop the flavours, fill and cap each chocolate and finally release them from their moulds.

A bean-to-bar chocolate maker starts much earlier in the process, working from cacao beans to make the chocolate itself.

That's another fascinating side of chocolate — and one we're discovering through our Chocolate Tasting Club — but it isn't what I do when I make OzMo bonbons.

The bit I still love

Turning out a mould.

Until that moment, I've been working on everything backwards. The coloured cocoa butter went into the mould first and the chocolate afterwards.

Then eventually I turn the mould over and see what I've actually created.

Sometimes it's exactly what I pictured.

Sometimes it's better.

Sometimes...

Well, let's just say chocolate has taught me that not every creative experiment needs to be repeated.

That's part of the fun.

Because every one is painted by hand, I don't expect my chocolates to look completely identical.

I don't want them to.

Looking beautiful isn't enough

There is one thing I won't compromise on.

They have to taste as good as they look.

The colour may be what initially catches someone's attention, but ultimately I'm making chocolate, not ornaments.

One of my customers summed it up beautifully:

★★★★★
“Amazing quality of chocolate that just isn't seen much these days, they look beautiful and they taste as good as they look!”
— Oliver Lewis

That's probably as close as anyone has come to describing what I want OzMo to be.

The first wow is when you see them.

The second is when you eat them.

So perhaps the journey from sales to hairdressing, photography and finally chocolate isn't as random as it appears.

They've all taught me something.

Business taught me to listen to people.

Hairdressing taught me about colour and creating something for an individual.

Photography taught me to really look.

And chocolate has somehow given me a place to put all of those things together.

That's OzMo