Pidät: You Hold, You Like, You Keep.

Founded by the husband and wife design duo behind Studio Tolvanen, Mika and Julie Tolvanen, Pidät is a Finnish brand of everyday objects. Studio Tolvanen has designed furniture and household products for international labels since 2015, and in 2019 they became the first designers to create a product exclusively for their new venture, Pidät.

'We had a dream to start our own small brand with an aim to produce playful, sustainable everyday household objects with no compromises.'

Julie Tolvanen

Both avid birdwatchers, the couple struggled to find a bird feeder that worked for them and so took it upon themselves to design their own, testing a string of 3D-printed prototypes in their garden. The final design took a few years of perfecting, but creating a well-functioning product that also looked good wasn't enough. It needed to be sustainable too.

'Sustainability is definitely part of our DNA... Finding the right materials and producers, we found out, takes as long as designing and testing the product.'

Julie Tolvanen

It became apparent that production required a creative design process, thinking outside the box to find green alternatives for traditional materials.

'We research materials for as long as it takes and develop only products where we feel we can contribute something fresh and unique. We won't introduce something until it's truly ready. I guess you could say we embrace 'slow design'.'

Julie Tolvanen

Julie and Mika knew from the beginning that the bird feeder needed to be made from only repurposed materials. They tested several types of recycled plastic from different suppliers before settling on the one they use now, which is made from upcycled post-consumer waste household containers & washing machine parts. The innovation doesn't stop there, as the feeder's rope is made from repurposed plastic drinking bottles, and the overall design allows for complete disassembly for easy replacement and recycling to support a circular economy.

'We really wanted the environmental impact of the bird feeder to be positive - just feeding the birds.'

Julie Tolvanen

Bird Silo has been a sellout product, and Pidät has just released a new object, Stop. Designed by their friends at Studio Gorm, Stop is an innovative doorstop made from recycled shoe soles.

Much like with the Silo, finding the right mix of materials for the doorstop was a challenging task, but one the team fully embraced. When they coined that shoe soles were both durable and flexible, much like a door stop should be, Pidät approached a shoe sole maker willing to experiment. By cutting up discarded soles and adding them to a rubber mix, the final product is a beautifully speckled synthetic material composed of 60% upcycled materials that would have otherwise ended up in landfills.

'Our idea is to produce products from a variety of designers. We are working on a few products at the moment, but we aren't in a hurry to flood the market with new products.'

Julie Tolvanen

Having two such ingenious products hit the market in only three years, we cant wait to see what Pidät come out with next. Feeling inspired to step up your bird-feeding game? You can buy the Bird Silo here.