Vegan fashion accessories designer Kuma Design increases their offering to customers with the opportunity to create your own individual fashion brooch using their ‘Build Your Own Butterfly’ Tool.
Since 2015 Mari Ojasaar was a child she always had a passion for creative crafting and design. She describes her life as ‘art’ and chooses to live life as a voice of individuality and not echoing what is ‘trendy’ right now.
This value transcends perfectly into a fashion world that is currently about volume and not quite about the wonderfulness of individuality. This is where Mari’s dream and vision is becoming a reality.
Kuma Design was thought up after Mari met with a friend who expressed a need for individual, creative and environmentally friendly products. This sparked an idea in Mari’s creative brain and she started toying with some handmade butterfly brooches and necklaces. Thus, the first Kuma Design accessory was born, and after Mari wore her own with pride and passion, soon her handmade brooches were becoming a conversation starter in Estonia, leading her to create the brand Kuma Design.
Since that fateful day in 2015, Kuma Design has gone from strength to strength, adding more fashion accessories to their collection; from brooches, to necklaces, La Pousette silverback earrings and vegan leather wristbands.
Kuma isn’t the only designer to focus on vegan-friendly products, but they are ahead of the bell curve in an industry that is only growing popular. Both Tom Ford and Stella McCartney have moved away from providing solely animal fur products. Tom Ford has openly spoken out about his veganism and inner conflict with providing animal products.
For Kuma, the reason for vegan-friendly materials is two-fold; one because of animal rights across the countries that Kuma Design delivers to – with more and more activists pressuring governments to act further on animal rights, more will be done in the future to stop animal cruelty and killing for fashion and materials, and it’s important to Kuma that they adhere to this policy.
Secondly, vegan leather is surprisingly easier to colour, offering a much wider scope for colouring materials depending on seasons, Pantone colours of the year, trends and customer needs. This, in itself, is where Mari and Kuma came up with the idea to ‘build your own butterfly’, a tool that offers the customer more control to have the perfect accessory to suit them.
Giving the customer nigh-on complete control is key here, the Kuma Build Your own Butterfly tool offers you the opportunity to pick as many colour layers as you want (so you could create the rainbow if you really wanted), a choice of two free Swarovski crystals and two butterfly brooch shapes to choose from.
What this does is offer complete uniqueness from a customer’s perspective, adhering to Mari’s original values and beliefs of individuality and creativity.
In an era where individuality is the new ‘original’, this opportunity is important for the development of fashion in the future. Take vintage for example; vintage and retro clothing has burst back onto the scene due to a demand for freedom of expression, individuality and creativity. The need for something different is high in demand right now and designing your own is just something that’s getting started.
Take Timberland for example, the shoe crafter now has their own ‘Build Your Own Timberland’ tool, giving you the opportunity to create your own unique Timberland boot; choosing from the colour of the upper, laces, stitching, sole and even adding your own monogram.
This is not anything new either; Nike has always offered you the opportunity to design your own football boots or running shoes and brand these to ensure uniqueness is clear – this has escalated to the new AR tool that lets you now create your own sneakers!
As we move forward more and more brands are taking the desire for individuality and expression, the scope of digital technologies is giving both brands and customers to create more than just products at scale, but products that speak on behalf of customers styles and personalities; a true opportunity to create uniqueness.
