By guest author
The warmer weather means it’s time to officially bid farewell to winter and find refreshing ways to greet the change of season.
Spring is upon us with gradually rising temperatures and longer and brighter days. There are many ways to welcome the much-anticipated change of season and the new beginnings it typically brings. Below are five of them.
1. Update your home (Finnish Design Shop)
Nordic design is known for its classy simplicity and high quality, something that is in abundance at Finnish Design Shop. Image: Finnish Design Shop
Spring is just right for giving your home a new look and a fresh start. Founded in 2004, this world’s largest online shop specialised in Nordic design can provide you a lot of ideas on how to enhance the beauty and function of your home with a Nordic twist.
The shop picks the best lifestyle design products from both iconic and less-known brands and spreads them across the globe to over 180 countries. For inspiration, have a gander at Design Stories, Finnish Design Shop’s own online magazine.
“Nordic values, like equality and closeness to nature, resonate everywhere,” said CEO Teemu Kiiski. “The Nordic nations are famously some of the happiest in the world, so our mission is to share pieces of this happiness.”
2. Declutter your closet (Zadaa)
Spring is the perfect time to prioritise and declutter wardrobes. But what next? Throwing away unwanted clothing is far from ideal, as it has serious repercussions for the environment. Make room for Zadaa.
Since 2015, this marketplace app has been helping people to buy and sell quality second-hand clothes by connecting people of similar build and style. On a mission to change the way people consume clothes, Zadaa has already attracted eco-conscious fashion lovers from over 300 European cities.
“Zadaa is a mobile application that helps people to sell and buy well-fitting, pre-loved clothing,” summed up co-founder and CEO Iiro Kormi. “We wanted to create a service that makes recycling clothing so easy that even we would do it more actively.”
Spring is upon us with gradually rising temperatures and longer and brighter days. There are many ways to welcome the much-anticipated change of season and the new beginnings it typically brings. Below are five of them.
Spring is just right for giving your home a new look and a fresh start. Founded in 2004, this world’s largest online shop specialised in Nordic design can provide you a lot of ideas on how to enhance the beauty and function of your home with a Nordic twist.
The shop picks the best lifestyle design products from both iconic and less-known brands and spreads them across the globe to over 180 countries. For inspiration, have a gander at Design Stories, Finnish Design Shop’s own online magazine.
“Nordic values, like equality and closeness to nature, resonate everywhere,” said CEO Teemu Kiiski. “The Nordic nations are famously some of the happiest in the world, so our mission is to share pieces of this happiness.”
3. Start gardening (Fiskars)
Gardening is the ultimate symbol of spring, and having proper garden tools at hand makes all the difference. Fiskars, one of Finland’s most iconic and valued brands with origins going back to 1649, provides global consumers functional and timeless tools for nearly any task around the house or garden.
Designed with a distinctive Nordic touch and manufactured with sustainable and long-lasting materials, Fiskars’ products have been applauded by the design industry’s top professionals. In 2020, the prestigious Red Dot named a Fiskars design team led by Petteri Masalin as the Design Team of the Year, as well as recognised the company’s watering nozzles and wands for groundbreaking design.
“Ever since Fiskars was founded, we have stayed true to our strong heritage and DNA while being bold and innovative,” Masalin commented. “To us, it’s always about staying curious about the world while being loyal to our roots.”
The innovative approach can also be seen in the brand’s recent foray into the world of fashion. In collaboration with fashion and textile designer Maria Korkeila, Fiskars launched a capsule clothing and accessory collection, targeting gardening and streetwear enthusiasts alike. With adaptable and detachable details, the 11-piece unisex collection is yet another brilliant example of Fiskars’s functionality.
4. Eat healthier (Oddlygood)
A change of season is the perfect time to rethink old eating habits and start making the right choices. Oddlygood, a growing family of plant-based dairy alternatives, is not solely targeted at vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians, but at everyone who’d like to make their diets more balanced and try new exciting flavours.
Consumers in Finland and a handful of other markets have been enthusiastically trying Oddlygood’s plant-based alternatives, including oat drinks, cheese and yogurt, and products used in cooking and baking. The sales have doubled each year.
In late 2021, Oddlygood Global, the company behind the brand and a spinoff from Finland’s biggest food exporter, Valio, received a 25 million-euro investment from Mandatum Asset Management to support its international expansion and product development.
“Interest in plant-based products is growing exponentially worldwide, which we can also see in a significant increase in our sales,” said Niko Vuorenmaa, CEO of Oddlygood Global. “However, consumers will only change their day-to-day consumption habits if they find dairy alternatives that both taste good and fit their lifestyle.”
5. Add a pop of colour to your look (HAVU Cosmetics)
A new season calls for new makeup. Face masks may have shifted focus to eye makeup during the coronavirus pandemic, but nothing can ever replace a great lipstick. For Lumi Maunuvaara and Tatu Fontell, who founded their own cosmetics brand while studying chemical engineering at Aalto University, a great lipstick is one that is made in the most sustainable way possible and goes hand in hand with nature.
All HAVU lipsticks, as well as lip care products, are bio-based and contain only natural waxes and oils with no additional perfumes or preservatives. Handmade in Finland, the lipsticks come in elegant wooden containers with inner mechanisms made from biodegradable polylactide (PLA). The lip care products, in turn, are packaged using eco-friendly Sulapac materials, free of harmful microplastics. Thus, all HAVU products can be disposed of as biowaste after use.
“When it comes to sustainability, you have to look at the whole lifecycle of the product,” Maunuvaara reminded.
Drawing inspiration from Finnish nature and having environmental concern as a core pillar, HAVU Cosmetics wants to spark a change in the global beauty industry, a major contributor to the plastic waste problem, and challenges other beauty brands to invest in products and processes that are harmless for consumers and the planet.
“We believe that natural cosmetics are the future,” HAVU states.