Shooting Star: Karen Korjus, founder and designer of Costume Puzzle

by JENNY NIELAND

Learn to rest and not to quit

It all began in her childhood when Karen Korjus, founder and designer of Costume Puzzle, discovered her passion for designing clothes for her dolls. Starting out with her mother’s curtains and dresses, Karen now designs costumes for her company Costume Puzzle, which specializes in making an educational costume game for kids as well as for adults. After graduating from university in Estonia in Computational Linguistics and Economics, and working for an IT Company, she met her husband who was living in the UK at the time. She also decided to move there and study Design in Scotland and Milan. She places a special emphasis on fair fashion, which is also where the idea for Costume Puzzle came from. This involves developing products consisting of single fabric remnants, which are left over and therefore find a new use without any waste.

Through her work, she wants to offer kids a healthy childhood habit by using Costume Puzzle as an educational game which develops children’s creativity, problem-solving skills, social skills and motor skills, instead of spending time in front of mobile and computer screens. Her motto is that you have to learn how to rest and not to quit. Every time she realizes she’s getting restless, she takes a little break and reviews the message she wants to spread into the world with her product. After she has done this,

Karen Korjus, founder and designer of Costume Puzzle

she gets back the feeling that her product gives great benefit to children and their parents, and her business journey goes on.

Once the Estonian market already knew her products, she wanted to grow even more and take the goods to the rest of the world. She came up with the idea of marketing her products across the globe to give more people the opportunity to live out their creativity. She has sold her products in America twice in one year – over the Halloween and Christmas seasons. In Latvia and Finland, you can also come across Costume Puzzle in certain shops and soon Germany will be added to the export list.

The key for the production of her product is to doublecheck everything to make it as safe (every product is tested at independent labs in Estonia and meets the toy safety requirements) and high quality as possible. Some of the parts for Costume Puzzle are made in Estonia and some abroad, which is why double-checking is so essential to her.

As a tip for people planning to start their own business, Karen advises them to work hard but not to forget themselves. Take time for yourself and create something people need, ask for help and get inspiration from outside. If you ever have any doubts, ask the people closest to you what they think about your product. After you get good feedback, the inspiration will come back by itself. JN