Business owner Jari Toivonen are often pictured surrounded by large, colourful felt fabrics in the company’s photographs. Around him are grow bags, seat pads, handbags and different storage solutions made from felt in nearly any imaginable colour and shape.
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It is easy to presume that this must be some major industrial operation. So the surprise is even bigger when you get the answer to how many employees there are.
“We usually say we are two employees. We also employ around two local sewers and packers, but our ambition is to continue to grow,” says Jari Toivonen.
Started with an interest in gardening
The Vilikkala company was founded in 2014 in a small rural village between the Fiskars village and the glass and design company Muurla in southern Finland. The village itself is made up of around ten households.
Vilikkala and the green transition
Vilikkala is a Finnish design and circular economy company founded in 2014. It operates in the Salo-/Paimio region in southern Finland. Their aim is to combine a sustainable lifestyle, functional design and the circular economy. All production is based in Finland.
The company makes handbags, seat pads, storage solutions and more in felt. Their signature product is breathable grow bags that promote root development, making it possible to grow plants even in smaller urban environments.
The material is mainly made up of recycled fibre. The company processes around 300,000 kilos of recycled fibres annually.
Vilikkala collaborates with several regional actors in Finland to keep jobs, skills and material flows within the region.
The company uses the “Nordic Green” label and has been held up as an example of how small to medium-sized companies can drive the green transition through practical solutions and new forms of skills in areas such as recycling, sustainable supply chains and eco-design.
The company is also interesting from a European perspective, as the EU is tightening requirements for the collection and recycling of textiles. Vilikkala and their partners are good examples of how regional textile recycling can be built in practice.
The idea behind the company grew out of a personal interest in gardening. Grow bags in felt with good breathability for plants were initially made from recycled PET bottles.
“These were made in China and school pupils near us helped us sell them. They were properly paid and managed to save up money for school trips and such,” explains Toivonen.
But the pandemic became a turning point for the company.
“Suddenly, nobody could travel and there was no longer the same need to collect money for school trips. That’s when I thought that this might be our big opportunity to rethink everything.”
From PET bottles to textile recycling
Because of the pandemic, Vilikkala began focusing more and more on textile recycling and the circular economy.
“The recycling of PET bottles already works very well in Finland. But we realised when it comes to textiles, there were major problems and many issues nobody had really solved yet.”
In practice, the company buys recycled textile fibre from another regional company. The material is then turned into felt which in turn is made into various products.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine changed things yet again.
“Logistics issues, long delivery times and rising raw material costs suddenly made local production far more attractive. Many needed quicker solutions and shorter supply chains.”
The little company in rural Finland suddenly had a new kind of head start, and a rapid and strong period of growth followed.
“We’ve learned through hit and miss”
A key issue for the Nordic project Future Skills: Bridging the Competence Gap, which the Nordic Network for Lifelong Learning NLL has been involved in, is how new skills emerge when the labour market changes through digitalisation and the green transition.
Vilikkala is in many ways a concrete example of exactly that.
Future Skills – Bridging the Competence Gap
A Nordic project under the Nordic Network for Lifelong Learning, NLL. It examens how the Nordic countries work with skills projection, lifelong learning and matching education with the labour market in a time of green and digital transition.
Jari Toivonen is trained in finance and also works as cabin crew with Finnair. His brother Juha Toivonen is a mentor and advisor for the company. But there was, in reality, no established pathway into textile recycling and circular production.
“To create sustainable textiles, you need to know quite a lot about chemistry and physics. We have had to learn most of it through the actual work, through hit and miss.”
Toivonen explains that a lot of valuable knowledge was gathered through regional business centres and various networks focused on funding and business development.
The company has also become part of a regional collaboration on learning and skills development, including cooperation with the nearby Raseko vocational education consortium.
“We gather a couple of times a year to exchange knowledge. We keep an eye on developments in the textile industry and can share with them what is needed in the labour market.
“We also meet their students at an early stage, and they can get internships with us and the chance to become future employees.”
“They’re tough guys with a lot of courage”
Anni Karttunen, who works on education-related issues within the NLL project Future Skills: Bridging the Competence Gap, has been involved in identifying Finnish examples of new skills emerging in the labour market.
She first came across Vilikkala as a customer when she bought one of their products but soon became interested in the company from a broader perspective as well.
“They’re really tough guys. I’m deeply impressed with their courage in throwing themselves into this wholeheartedly, despite having no previous experience of the textile and recycling industries.”
Karttunen believes the company in many ways illustrates how the green transition creates a need for new skills which the education system still has not had time to address.
“There hasn’t really been an established knowledge base for these companies, not in Finland or, probably, anywhere else.
“They have had to discover much of that knowledge themselves, as well as learn to understand how to absorb and share both tacit and technical knowledge.”
Karttunen believes one reason behind the company’s success is the fact that they have established strong local, regional, national and international networks.
She says that Jari Toivonen is courageously open-minded and also highly skilled at surrounding himself with knowledgeable and innovative people in his local community.
New public transport collaboration in Berlin
Despite being located in a small village in Finland, the company also looks towards international markets.
One of the most interesting collaborations right now is in Berlin, where public transport staff are set to get new uniforms in the coming years – which will include tens of thousands of garments. The old textiles will be recycled in Finland and turned into new products.
“We will create felt and office bags from them,” explains Toivonen.
In practical terms this means that an employee’s uniform might return to them in the shape of a work bag.
“Yes,” says Jari Toivonen with a laugh. Even if the employee might not get their exact work clothes back.
Camilla Lindberg is the Finland editor at the Nordic Network for Lifelong Learning NLL. This article was first published on NLL’s website: Från uniformer i Berlin till filtväskor i en finsk by – här växer den gröna omställningen fram – NLL
