These rugs do not bite
The idea...
Like with many other products, the idea came out of the phrase "I can't find any nice rugs in front of the baby's bed". I rarely design anything that I don't need myself. I wanted the carpet to be made out of wool and the shape to be something fun. Soon, the shape of the bear and the tiger began to emerge on the paper.
...finished product
If it takes x hours to design a product, it takes at least 10 times that to find the manufacturer. The goal that I always have is to look for a manufacturer from Finland. However, with the rug, this proved to be impossible. After dozens of emails and countless calls later I had to face it, the manufacturer was not found from Finland. (If you are Finnish carpet manufacturer I'm waiting for your call!)
So I started to look abroad and finally found a little family business from Estonia, that traditionally manufactures hand tufted rugs. Rugs are made from 100% wool imported from New Zealand.
Soon a huge box filled with wool samples arrived at my door. And when I say huge, I mean really huge.
Too many options isn't ever good idea with me as editing sometimes might be my down fall. Soon I had designed a 12 rug collection and all of them in several colors. However, the reality hit and only 3 samples left for production.
Waiting for samples is always a frustratingly long time for me and I am the stressful customer who constantly sends emails and asks for images and information from the manufacturer. Luckily, this endless time (2 weeks) was finally gone, and a new box with samples arrived at my door.
Product testing
Product testing is always carried out with the utmost seriousness and thoroughness by releasing my year-old assistant. Following things were tested: functionality as a playmat, surface for reading a book and durability as a picnic blanket. The rug also passed the "toddler got blueberries" test. The assistant gave her approval and rugs were moved into production after a few small design changes.
