I just found a blog post about “Toronto’s Best Baby Stores” on blog T.O. . The post is from summer 2009 (I guess better late than never :-) ). Many of the stores sell our wooden building blocks. It feels great to be part of it all.
Hello,
Our blocks were on TV last night as part of CHCH news in Hamilton. Unfortunately there was no mention of us, but footage of kids playing with them. Gosh, I really need my branding iron to come in :-) Maybe I can even track down some video online about it.
Cheers, Hans
I just got an email from a store owner. It made me smirk.
“Kids are always enjoying our demo blocks in the store, actually I am dumbfounded that more people don’t buy them. Every single kid I show thinks they are great and plays a long time. Maybe you should make them out of lead based plastic!”
I will have to get right on that… NOT!
I visited the Socially Responsible Design Exhibit at the Toronto International Airport yesterday. It was great seeing what others are doing, some great ideas and some really neat other products that are manufactured in Canada.
A huge thank you to Lee, who is the curator for the art at the airport. She does a great job and is very passionate about representing Canada at the airport is great. “It is often the first and last impression of Canada for travellers.”
She also told me that Treehugger reported on the show and that our blocks are featured in their article. Thank You Treehugger.
(click on image to see the blog post at treehugger.com)
One thing that I struggle with on a regular basis is that we have so much stuff in Canada/the US. Worse even, we think we really need the stuff that we have. Have you ever thought of what you REALLY need? It’s not very much. A bed, some clothes (not many), a stove, a few few pots and pans, and cutlery. Clean water and some food. Really that’s pretty much what we need to live. Well, I’m exaggerating, but when it comes down to it, not that much more.
You probably all know that I used to live in Africa as a kid. As kids, we didn’t need a lot of things. I used to mainly tinker around outside, building my tree house, playing with friends, just wasting time away and loving life.
This also reflects what I want to create for Ukoonto. Simple toys, that are valuable. Toys that don’t just break in a few months, and especially not those that make our children have ADD or other disorders. Don’t get me wrong, I love design, and a love really fun toys, but it’s certainly no Mattel.
I’ve always loved the company TOMS Shoes. Do you know them? In 2006 Tom did a trip to Argentina. He found people that were getting sick, and preventing those diseases is so simple: a pair of shoes. So for every pair of shoes that we by at TOMS Shoes, they will give an equal pair of shoes to people that really need it. Watch the story about TOMS Shoes:
Where does this all tie in with Ukoonto? I like the idea of “One for One”. Buy one computer, a second one is given away to a child in need (does that ring a bell :-) “One Laptop per Child”. I don’t think kids in Third World countries need the toys that we make though. They have such fantastic ways of playing and making their own toys. I would still love to give children in Third World countries something that they need. Something that we take for granted. Maybe books, stuff they need so they can go to school, food, or how about just clean drinking water.
What do you think?
Today I’m proudly annoucing that we have won a spot at the Socially Responsible Design Exhibit at the Toronto Airport (in International Departures). Our building blocks will be displayed for some time for the world to see. I’m not 100% certain when the exhibit is going to start (the original dates were pushed back) but I will definitely let you know.
PS: We’ll also post some photos here of the exhibit.
Today I must announce that we have to say good bye to a good friend: the “Daily Mini”. It’s been a while since I dropped the “Daily” anyways. Let me explain.
Ukoonto had been getting a lot of press lately and the orders for building blocks started pouring in. In order to get the orders out the door as quickly as possible (to prevent any screw ups by the Post), I had to spend a lot of time figuring out how process’ can be sped up. Things are going very well and on average it takes 2.5 days between receiving an order and it going out ther door. This was not without sacrifice and I had to find more time in the day.
The Mini was really time intensive, about 1 hour to get everything done:
After dropping the “daily”, some people thought that the “Mini” was a specific set of blocks that we are selling. We are only selling one set at this point, and it’s anything but Mini.
However, there is a replacement though :-) I am still posting pictures of new creations with the blocks online, which you can view in a slideshow, which is linked right from the front page.
For now, I’ve got to go back to the North Pole and be a little Santa Elf.
Cheers, Hans
Today’s daily mini, a roman acqueduct, or something of that sort. It’s actually a lot harder to make then it looks. More importantly, I used all 50 blocks, and trying to incorporate them all was not that easy.
Cheers, Hans
That was a comment (*) left on a survey that we have on our webpage. I don’t know who left the comment, but I hope that you are coming back to our website to read this post.
Lately I have been receiving a lot of questions about the wood and why it is “recycled”. I’d like to provide you with a detailed explanation about the wood we use and where it comes from.
Currently we are receiving our wood from a large company called Eastwood Wood Specialties right here in St. Catharines. It is 100% postindustrial recycled waste material. This might sound like a scary term, but it simply means that we are buying the cut-away pieces of their manufacturing process‚Äô. The wood has never been used (which is what the industry calls “virgin lumber”). Usually these cut-offs would be ground down and mixed in with organic waste (composted). Ukoonto effectively saves all this wood from the waste stream and makes it into beautiful toys.
The FSC logo has become very popular amongst companies that produce wooden products or wood related products (ie: paper, cardboard). The logo ensures that the company uses wood (or wood fiber) from forests that are well managed. This ensures that trees are being replanted after they are cut down.
I would really love for Ukoonto to be able to use the FSC logo, but we will have to go through a long certification process. Since the wood that we receive is not specifically FSC certified, I am not certain if we could in fact receive the certification. I have talked to the owner of Eastwood Wood Specialties about this and he explained to me that the lumber that he deals with is all from within Ontario. The lumber might not be specifically FSC certified, but in order for a tree logger to be able to sell lumber and keep on selling it in the future here in Ontario, he has to be very careful to treat his forests well. No one can just cut down forests without replanting any trees and expect the business to be sustainable in the long run.
This makes a lot of sense to me, and I will in fact do more research where the wood comes from in the future. I would really like to do a trip up north and do some more research.
The entire comment left by the mysterious person was: “Stop Global Warming; Stop Cutting Down the Trees and Plant More with UAVs.”
Let me compare wood and plastic, the two materials commonly used for toys.
Plastic for the main part is made from oil, which gets “split” into many different materials, such as gasoline, diesel, tar and plastic. Oil requires a lot of energy to be pumped out of the earth, then we use large tankers to ship it to China, where it gets refined (which creates the plastic), then we use the plastic to make toys, and ship it once again to North America. All of these processes require a lot of energy and subsequently release a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. We end up with a toy that has done a lot of damage to the environment and depending on the composition of the plastic can be very dangerous to our children‚Äôs health (just check out the many problems with Bisphenol-A). Plastic toys generally break a lot faster and after they are broken and disposed, will take decades, if not centuries, to decay.
Wood is a regenerative material. Trees bind the carbon out of the CO2 in the air through a chemical process called photosynthesis and release the oxygen of the CO2. This process effectively undoes some of the damage that cars and industry do to the environment. Wood (especially the one we choose: hard maple) is very sturdy and lasts for a long time. Most people will actually hand on their wooden building blocks and toys to their own children, and children’s children. If someone happens to throw the toy away, it will simply decompose within a few years.
Parents will always buy toys for their children, but Ukoonto encourages parents to get healthy wooden toys, if possible even locally made.
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Author: Hans Eich (owner of Ukoonto)
(* The entire comment was: “Stop Global Warming; Stop Cutting Down the Trees and Plant More with UAVs.”)
