About

Two operators. One practice.

Second Empire is Kory and Aimee Kapfer: a brand and marketing partnership built for companies that need senior leadership without the full-time overhead.

Kory Kapfer

Head of Brand

Kory Kapfer

Co-founder & Head of Brand

27+ years of brand leadership, most of them running Kitchen Sink Studios, the Phoenix-based brand agency he founded in 1999 and sold in 2024. During that time he built long-term client relationships that ran for a decade or more, leading brand strategy, identity, and creative direction for established companies navigating repositioning, category shifts, and moments when their in-house team had outgrown its ceiling.

A few names from hundreds of brands across a 27-year career: Fox Restaurant Concepts, Camelot Homes, Phoenix Art Museum, Wills Group / Dash In. All multi-year partnerships where the relationship, and the results, compounded over time. Second Empire is built to do that same work on a leaner footing: embedded, long-term, and without the agency overhead.

He leads brand at Second Empire: strategy, identity, positioning, and the kind of creative direction that takes a company's ambitions and makes them legible to the world.

Aimee Kapfer

Head of Marketing

Aimee Kapfer

Co-founder & Head of Marketing

15+ years of taking complex, technical products to market, spanning startups finding their footing and enterprises scaling what's already working. She's equally at home building a go-to-market strategy from scratch as she is optimizing one that's already in motion.

Her work spans consumer genomics, enterprise SaaS, FDA-cleared diagnostics, and nonprofit health initiatives: categories where the product is often ahead of the market's ability to understand it. That's the problem she's built for. Making sophisticated offerings legible to the buyers, partners, and communities who need them.

Aimee brings senior-level strategy and hands-on execution to companies that need marketing leadership without the full-time overhead. If your product is good but your market doesn't know it yet, that's the problem she's here to solve.

The practice

Built for the work that agencies can't do and full-time hires don't justify.

Most established companies need both brand and marketing leadership at a senior level, but not two full-time salaries. An agency can produce the work but can't own the function. A consultant can advise but won't embed. Second Empire is built for the in-between.

We work inside your business at a steady weekly cadence: sitting in leadership meetings, owning the brand and marketing function, and staying for as long as the work needs us. The engagements that define this practice aren't project-shaped. They compound over time.

Ready to talk about what you're navigating?

Start a conversation →