Amsterdam Made: Makers united

Amsterdam Made is a community platform for makers in and around Amsterdam.
Lucky for us, the 'around'-range extends to Zandvoort (it's pretty much Amsterdam Beach here anyway), which means we got to be part of the community and have House of Thol featured on the website.

The initiators of the platform were inspired by 'SFmade' a thriving platform established back in 2010 to boost the local manufacturing sector. Amsterdam Made has pretty much the same goal: a more diverse and sustainable local economy, where companies who design and manufacture products locally thrive.

Furthermore, Amsterdam Made is licensed by the city of Amsterdam to award an official 'Amsterdam Made' quality label to high quality products that are locally made, sustainable and innovative. 

Most importantly: Amsterdam Made connects makers in and around the city and strengthens the bond between entrepreneurs.  

Check out the growing network of entrepreneurs, craftsmen, manufacturers, artists, brewers and designers on Amsterdammade.org. 

Webshop / Webwinkel

Over the past months we've been quietly working on the design and content of our webshop.
We enlarged the images of the products, removed distractions and banners, and most importantly: we took the time to make the shop completely bilingual.

Notice the little flags in the top-right corner, next to the shopping cart?
We've set the standard language of the shop to Dutch, adjust it to English by clicking the British flag.

And check out this flashy feature: when rolling over the images the name and price of the item magically appears.

We also uploaded many publications from the last years featuring House of Thol. All media can be found in the media-section.

And last but not least: we've added a lot of new unique Neotribal necklaces to the inventory.

The webshop will remain work-in-progress, feel free to let us know what we can improve.
Next up: the website...

House of Thol for Pols Potten - coming soon!

We've been sitting on this one for a while...

Last August we participated in an open call of the creative industries fund (Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie) to come up with a proposal for one of five companies.

Even if we wouldn't come up with a proposal, we decided it was worth to respond to the call as the option was given to visit the participating companies.
Al visits would take place in one week and we only had one day that week on which both of us could make it. A lucky coincidence meant that this was exactly the day Pols Potten would be visited, and we happily joined the field-trip to their headquarters in Aalsmeer.

 a few snapshots taken during the company-visit in August

In the Pols Potten headquarters we got the chance to walk around, check out their new collection and all-time bestsellers, and as an added bonus we got a crash-course in Pols Potten economics and sales.

We left inspired and spent the next two weeks trying to come up with a proposal that would be perfect for Pols Potten and would stand out in the -undoubtedly- dozens of applications that would be sent in.
We sent our proposal in just in time for dead-line and then.... nothing.

The proposals were supposed to be reviewed within a few weeks, so we waited eagerly and... still nothing.

Until, after a month-and-a-half we missed a phonecall from the fund.
Thomas returned the call, not expecting a whole lot of it.
Well... -you probably already guessed this- as it turned out Pols Potten chose our proposal to work with!
Out of a 144 applications, we are the lucky design studio to develop a new product for Pols Potten with the help of the Creative Industries Fund.

In December we went back to Aalsmeer for a first official Pols Potten x House of Thol design meeting, and since then we've been quietly working on the design. We're not really in the position to reveal much about the product, except what the Creative Industries Fund published:

"House of Thol will design a series of pendant lamps consisting of two separate parts. Within the series, those parts are interchangeable, making it possible for the consumer to compose their own lamp."

Oh... and this little studio sneak-peak of a bunch of early paper models:

For the official announcement (in Dutch) and the other 4 companies + winning designers, click here.

We'll keep you posted!