Birth, Babies and Beyond – Scandi Parents Love…

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A 1950s car. Photo: Joanna Forsberg A wooden doll.

A family business committed to creating hand-crafted heirloom toys

The Polish toy-making company Wooden Story was founded a little over 50 years ago. Its ethos is still the same as it has always been: to make meticulously hand-crafted wooden toys that can be passed from one generation to the next.

By Linda A. Thompson | Photos: Marek Zawadka

It was Władysław Borowy who founded the company over five decades ago, and today, the family business is run by Borowy’s grand-daughter, Gosia, and her husband, Wisiek, with help from their three children. According to the third-generation toymakers, the secret to the company’s long history is its devotion to family and tradition, a passion and love for the craft of making toys, as well as each generation’s respect for what their predecessors left them.

The ethos of the company – which is based in the Beskid mountain forests of Poland –is the same today as it was all those decades ago: to apply the greatest degree of care to every stage of the toy-making process, from choosing the perfect wood to create a new toy, to a toy’s final packaging. “We’re not trying to compete with other brands. We simply work and create in alignment with our Wooden Story philosophy and our personal values,” Gosia Borowy explains, adding that their toys are meant to be passed from one generation to the next, like an heirloom.

It’s an approach that has appealed to parents, relatives and friends shopping for children’s gifts. “A repeat comment we get from customers is that our toys take them back to warm moments from their childhood and their cherished memories of spending time with their grandparents,” Borowy says. “We are proud that so much warmth and love is associated with our craft.”

All the company’s toys are made with wood from FSC-certified suppliers and coloured with natural, eco-certified paints that are free from harmful chemicals.

The Wooden Story toy range – which includes everything from teethers, dolls and cars, to stacking towers and block toys – can today be found in many children’s stores across the Nordics. According to Borowy, Scandinavian customers have especially appreciated the pared-down elegance of the wooden toys.

“In our aesthetic, we emphasise our love of simplicity and try to express the beauty of minimalism as well as the philosophy behind our toys,” Borowy explains, describing Wooden Story’s key values as tradition, family, love and respect. “With our toys, we hope that children will absorb the beauty of the world around them and care for this world as much as we do.”

The company’s toys are made with wood from FSC-certified suppliers.

Web: www.woodenstory.pl Facebook: WoodenStorypl Instagram: @woodenstory

Banwood’s nostalgic kid’s bikes are what memories are made of

Everyone remembers their first bike. Founder of Spanish-based Banwood Bikes, Frida Jonsby, is no exception. “Mine was a red, Swedish-designed Crescent bicycle from the 1970s,” she says. “It was a real little bicycle, with straight lines and classic colours.”

By Lena Hunter | Photos: Banwood

So, when Jonsby and her partner, Juan Manuel Torralvo Castro, decided to design a line of children’s bikes, they drew on their own memories of endless summers playing outside until sunset. “We wanted something simple that evoked a nostalgic, vintage Scandinavian style – with a basket, so it would feel like a miniature adult bike.”

The Banwood family The signature Balance Bike was born. It’s made of aluminium stainless steel, with a little rattan basket for teddies, pebbles and snacks, and a vegan leather saddle and grips.

The Pedal Bike followed – lightweight, fully adjustable, with 16-inch tires and unique rosewood pedals. In a dreamy rainbow of cream, pale mint, pink, green and blue, the design recalls a Californian summer gone by. So, too, the latest member of the family: a candy-pink three-wheel scooter for kids up to age five. “We spent three years designing our tricycle,” says Jonsby. The trike’s attention to detail is the stuff of childhood dreams: crimson, with a padded oak deck and steel bell. “It’s important that our bikes look beautiful in 20 years, so kids can inherit them from generation to generation.”

Bikes imitating art As Banwood has grown, design brands such as Liberty London, Anthropologie and Bonton have collaborated on collections inspired by fashion and art. “I love Liberty’s floral prints. It was a dream when we collaborated with them,” says Jonsby.

Likewise, Banwood x Marest sees the classic Balance Bike wrapped in artist Antonyo Marest’s ‘espacio vital’ motif – a pattern he exhibited at last year’s Madrid Design Festival.

Iconic French lighting maison, Rispal Paris, was next. Rispal x Banwood’s Balance Streamline bike draws on the aesthetics of the French Golden Age, with an exquisite, curved golden frame and pure, white Michelin tires. “It’s really unique. It’s a piece of art,” says Jonsby.

A simple mission All said, Banwood’s mission is simple: get kids active. “We love the way kids play,” says Jonsby – and therein lies the core of Banwood. They believe that your first bike isn’t just a bike – it’s made of many moments: the smell of fresh rain, ‘look mum, no hands!’, and reluctantly parking it away for the night, excited to come back to it in the morning.

Web: www.banwood.com Instagram: @banwoodbikes

Making friendships.

Fall in love with these Italian-style toy scooters

–an award-winning, active toy for toddlers that screams style, quality and value

Making dreams come true doesn’t happen overnight. No one knows this better than Elisha Ruesch and Nguyen Nguyen, joint founders of Ambosstoys. Developing the prototype of their child-sized scooter, the award-winning PRIMO Scooter, took them eight enduring years and heartfelt determination.

By Karin Blak | Photos: Ambosstoys

Nguyen and Ruesch began working together when setting up their workshop in Vietnam, restoring motorbikes and classic cars. Their showroom in Switzerland provided the outlet for their craftsmanship.

In the years that followed, both became parents and, as happens with many parents of toddlers, they noticed the poor quality of toys and how easily they broke. The plastic was not durable enough to last longer than a season, nor were the toys recyclable.

They turned their disappointment into a success story. They had the skills and craftsmanship to produce toys in materials that would last long enough to be passed on from sibling to sibling, perhaps even creating heirlooms that would be adored by generations. Having restored many scooters in their workshop, they decided to model their first toy on the classic Vespa.

From idea to reality Developing a new product without investment money or experience from a similar project proved to be a steep learning curve for the pair. But Ruesch and Nguyen persevered; their energy, time and, most of all, their desire to create quality toys in timeless and affordable designs, were all they needed to make this dream come true.

Shaping the clay prototype with their bare hands, they didn’t stop until they were both happy with the result. Eight years after they first began to design and

Sleek and sophisticated PRIMO Classic.

mould their idea, the PRIMO Scooter was born.

These brightly coloured, ride-on scooters are solidly made of sheet metal, powder-coated for protection, and in the timeless style of 1960s Italian scooters. Who could resist falling in love with these cheeky little metal movers?

Packaged to be easily assembled on arrival, these small three-wheel scooters are a dream for any toddler, aged around one and a half to three.

The success story In 2019, Ambosstoys attended the New York Toy Fair and, as Ruesch says, it was a matter of “either go big or go home”. They wanted to stand out so chose a large booth in a position where they would be seen. But that wasn’t all. They cleverly exhibited examples of their old collection of full-size Italian scooters, some of which had been modified, or “pimped”, with electric motors, made into sidecars or three-wheeled vehicles. Among these, they placed their cute and colourful toy scooters.

Their eye-catching stand caught the attention of retail stores as well as bigger suppliers, and orders began to come in. The most exciting order of them all came from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, who adored the PRIMO and wanted it as part of their design collection.

Seeing the PRIMO at the museum shop touched Ruesch deeply. “It was amazing,” he says, “to see our product in the window of the MOMA shop and then remember the process we went through. It was such an emotional moment.”

MOMA had placed the scooter in a large window at their SOHO Manhattan NY shop, standing on its own, a shining example that spoke for itself: this was a design that possessed longevity, quality, craftsmanship, and value – exactly what the two entrepreneurs wanted the name of Ambosstoys to stand for.

Adding to their success, the PRIMO scooter won the Best Toys for Kids Award 2019 and later the Toy of the Year award 2021. From that moment on, the scooter became a must-have for suppliers of toys and orders began flooding in.

Resilience through the pandemic As the pandemic hit retail throughout the world, orders were cancelled, and a different kind of challenge presented itself. Setting up as a provider to the smaller retail stores no longer proved a viable option.

Again, these inventive entrepreneurs found a way through. Switching their

Paint the rainbow with PRIMO Classic. Nguyen Nguyen and Elisha Ruesch, founders of Ambosstoys.

sales to online only, they created partnerships with bigger companies, making this delightful scooter available throughout the world, including Europe, Scandinavia, Israel, UAE, Taiwan, Asia and Australia.

Ambosstoys: the vision With this level of success, Elisha and Nguyen have already got the next toy lined up and due out in 2022. This time it will be with a focus on children three to six years of age: a two-wheel balance bike using the same philosophy of taking a classic design and turning it into a quality toy.

Ruesch cannot reveal the design before the patent has been registered, but watch this space: with Ruesch and Nguyen’s vision of converting classic designs into quality, long-lasting toys, Ambosstoys could before long become a household name.

Web: www.ambosstoys-europe.com Facebook: Ambosstoys Instagram: @ambosstoys YouTube: Ambosstoys LLC