The Founder Files with Sienna Belle: What CHOPIT’s Viral Moment Revealed About Building A Brand
Welcome to The Founder Files, an inside look at the women building the next generation of category-defining companies. These conversations capture founders in moments of becoming. No polished retrospective or glossy highlights reel. This is where we catch ambitious women in motion: when the decisions are still hard, the outcomes still uncertain, and the lessons are still fresh enough to actually be useful.
Sienna Belle's relationship with art didn't start in the kitchen; it started long before that. She graduated with a raw 50 in Studio Arts, the highest mark in the curriculum, and went on to tutor other students in art for two years. Art history, art principles, the foundational language of visual creativity it's all embedded in how she sees the world.
For Sienna, cooking has always been a creative act worth celebrating: the selecting of ingredients, the balancing of flavour, the rhythm of the process itself. CHOPIT is the brand she built around that belief — a design-led kitchenware label that starts with one of the most overlooked objects in the kitchen and transforms it into a piece of functional art.
But CHOPIT isn't just a beautiful product. It's a brand that has sold out four times since launch and went viral to an audience of 13 million people within three weeks of launching. Sienna is building something that sits at the intersection of food, art, and culture, and doing it with the kind of considered, design-obsessed intentionality that's becoming CHOPIT's greatest competitive edge.
In this conversation, Sienna shares what a 13-million-view viral moment actually feels like when your operational foundations aren't quite ready, why branding is the only thing that can't be duped, and how embracing the romance of everyday cooking became the strategic heart of her best-selling brand.
Q. Tell us about CHOPIT in your own words. What are you building, and why does it need to exist?
“CHOPIT is a design-led kitchenware brand that celebrates the art of food. We are redefining kitchenware, starting with one of the most overlooked objects in the kitchen (the chopping board) into pieces of functional art.
For me, being in the kitchen has always been a place of artistry. The process of selecting ingredients, balancing flavour and texture, moving into the rhythm of cooking itself (often referred to as a flow state) and finally, plating a dish – cooking is a creative process that was once fully experienced and celebrated.
But in modern day culture, speed is increasingly prioritised. Quick meal prep, hurried midweek meals, efficiency above all else. In the process, we risk losing the romance of cooking, the simple, everyday play we can experience with food.”
“CHOPIT exists at this intersection of food and art. A celebration of creativity in the everyday. Each piece is designed to live within your kitchen rituals and inspire your rhythm within it.” - Sienna Belle
Q. What does building this business actually look like right now? What's consuming most of your energy this week?
“The truth is, every day looks vastly different. Sometimes a day will be spent devoted to assets; creating images and editing videos to funnel across our social channels and meta-ads (a true 12-hour lock-in). Other days are spent liaising in meetings, with my head down in the trenches of emails, invoices and accounting.
My favourite days are spent designing, a true devotion to the design process, exploring new concepts and assessing how each detail of the business can be enhanced just that little bit further (think packaging, new product development, care cards, all the finer touchpoints).
Currently, we are preparing for a major restock, a process that typically involves a three-month production timeline. Balanced with two new launches over the coming months, my time has been focused on managing production and logistics, balanced with marketing and campaign planning.”
Q. What do you know about functional art that most people are still sleeping on?
“Functional art isn’t indulgence. It’s not something that belongs on a wall or sits on a plinth. It lives in the everyday. It’s something you can experience in a sensory way. I’m a huge believer that the micro moments, no matter how small, incrementally make up your life. So, for me, it’s about making my life, in all the micro moments as beautiful, romantic and meaningful as possible. That’s why functional art is so integral to me; it inspires this way of living at the very foundation.”
Q. What's the hardest call you've had to make so far - and would you make the same decision again?
“Change has always been challenging for me. Yet it is the one constant any business demands. Evolving processes, stepping away from what feels familiar and navigating an already unfamiliar landscape have often required adaptability (which I am still learning to embrace).
I naturally lean towards being risk-averse, which made one of our biggest decisions to date (moving into a warehouse) feel particularly significant. It was one of those ‘chicken and the egg’ moments in business; there is only so far you can scale when you’re packing orders yourself until 3 am. Yet it's impossible to know with certainty how much a business can grow until you give it the space to operate at that next level.
“Signing a two-year lease just one year into business, without years of data or established forecasts behind us, felt like a considerable leap. But this is one I would absolutely take again.” - Sienna Belle
In many ways, my cautious nature worked to our advantage. Because I was hesitant, I approached the decision with thorough due diligence – ensuring I understood every term, financial obligation, and that we had a six-month runway to comfortably absorb the additional costs.
Since moving to the warehouse, we’ve managed to fulfil 200% more orders, largely due to having proper storage and staff to manage the higher volumes. It has been one of the most important decisions for the business, allowing me to allocate my time more strategically. Of course, that also meant restructuring how resources are allocated financially, losing an element of control in inventory management, and spending months rethinking our packaging to ensure best efficiency at a warehouse level.”
Q. What's the one thing you wish someone had handed you at the start - a framework, a rule, a piece of advice - that you've had to figure out the hard way?
“Setting up my business properly at the beginning. I went into this as a true startup, with no one in my corner who had done ecommerce before and no one around me who had built an online business before.
The advice I was given was simple: nothing will be perfect, just launch and learn as you go (this is after I had already spent a year perfecting all the finest details). While hesitant (I’m a natural perfectionist), I agreed with that approach and moved forward.
“Within three weeks of launching, we had what I can only describe as a unicorn moment: a video of our product went viral, reaching over 13 million people. It was an incredible opportunity and something I am deeply grateful for, but it was also an insanely stressful moment.”- Sienna Belle
I suddenly found myself reaching a global audience, without many of the operational foundations in place. Our website wasn’t set up properly to capture emails, I didn’t yet fully understand pre-orders, we weren’t prepared to ship internationally, and most importantly, we didn’t have the inventory to support the demand.
Whilst I still believe there is truth in the advice to simply start, because nothing will ever be perfect, I’ve also learnt that there are certain foundations worth setting up from the onset.”
Q. As a founder of an in-demand brand (your products have sold out 4x since launch!), what are your tips or advice to other founders about building a best-selling brand?
“Branding is everything. Investing in the brand and the world CHOPIT lives in has been fundamental to the business's success.
Naturally, we have created a product that people seriously love and want. But in a world of dupe culture, your product is (unfortunately) not enough. You need an edge that stands out and can't be mimicked; when I want to buy a colourful chopping board, I want to buy the CHOPIT chopping board.
This is critical to long-term success and differentiating yourself in a world where, quite frankly, everything is saturated. And if it isn’t saturated yet, unfortunately, it will happen.”
Want to follow the CHOPIT journey?
If Sienna's story has you seeing your chopping board a little differently, CHOPIT is worth exploring for yourself.
Browse the full collection — and get on the radar for the next restock — on the CHOPIT website.
For the behind-the-scenes of building a design-led brand in real time, CHOPIT's TikTok is a masterclass in content that actually converts. Follow CHOPIT on TikTok.
And if you want to follow Sienna's journey as a founder building in public — the wins, the 3 am packing sessions, and everything in between — her personal TikTok is one to watch.