S5E8: Clint Nagata, Founder of BLINK Design Group, on Building a $30M Business by Saying No to Gold-Plated Luxury
Update: 2025-08-06
Description
Most sensible people don't leave a partnership at WATG to start over. But Clint Nagata isn't most people. He's built BLINK Design Group into a $30M+ business by doing the opposite of what luxury hospitality expects—local stone over Italian marble, restraint over ostentation, stories over spectacle.
His Six Senses Kyoto channels centuries-old philosophy while his projects across Asia prove that the best luxury doesn't shout. But this isn't about zen minimalism or cultural tourism. It's about something more interesting: how to solve problems you can't articulate, why the journey matters more than the destination, and what happens when you design for the mood, not the moment.
His Six Senses Kyoto channels centuries-old philosophy while his projects across Asia prove that the best luxury doesn't shout. But this isn't about zen minimalism or cultural tourism. It's about something more interesting: how to solve problems you can't articulate, why the journey matters more than the destination, and what happens when you design for the mood, not the moment.
Clint talks about the strange intimacy of family vanity projects, why he wakes up at 4am with design solutions, and his prediction that luxury is becoming dangerously exclusive. Plus the uncomfortable truth about sustainability in hospitality and why his favourite project is always the next one.
50 trips a year. One philosophy: different but familiar. And proof that sometimes the most interesting work happens when you stop trying to impress people.
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