Sourcing Nordic Styles for Children

ZNok

Nordic children’s wear has become more popular in the UK in the last couple of years and new online boutiques offering these funky clothes have opened - one of the newest ones is my own shop Hei Moose. Nordic children’s clothes are known for their colourful styles and cool prints that brighten up anyone’s day.

When sourcing brands for Hei Moose I wanted to create a combination of well established Nordic brands (like Duns Sweden and Smafolk) that were already in the UK market and also bring new brands  (Znok, PaaPii and JNY Design) to the UK’s consumers. Finding, or should I say deciding on the new brands was actually quite difficult since there are so many small businesses designing fabulous children’s clothes. The styles vary from the typical Nordic colourful new retro to minimalistic styles.

Generally, for the main stream styles, the websites of big Nordic chains like H&M, Kappahl, Lindex and Seppala offer inspiration. These companies have a non-stop stream of new stock arriving, if not weekly, then on a monthly basis. In Nordic countries, however, you soon notice that someone in a playgroup or a playground is wearing the same clothes by these brands. In the UK, the risk of seeing the same (Nordic) clothes is smaller!

PaaPii

When buying in the clothes, in order find new smaller brands you may need to do some research. I constantly follow a couple of discussion forums to find which brands are hip and happening according to Nordic mums. Since I’m a Finn I naturally tend to keep my eye on what is going on in Finland and benefit of recurrent field trips!

In the recent years the best known Finnish brand Metsola has received some competition from new brands. To follow Metsola’s footsteps many of these brands offer retro inspired clothing with slightly unusual colour combinations that are hugely popular in Finland. Also recycling and general ecological thinking are often featured too. Recently 8 of these new Finnish children’s brands joined forces on Facebook and created a group for Finnish Design Kortteli where everyone can easily find these funky brands and their collections – this group would be the one to watch in my opinion.

Since Nordic designed children’s clothing tend to come with a somewhat heavy price tag, flea markets – even on Facebook – are common in the Nordics. This is an easy way to recycle the clothes with a good resell value. Seeing as many of the styles are unisex, passing on the clothes and getting money for the next round of funky clothes is even easier.

Other tendencies in the Nordic children’s wear industry are home parties by Me & I – now also available in the UK – and fabrics designed by small companies. Me & I parties are very popular in the Nordics and it isn’t uncommon that their website is very slow on the day they launch a new collection since everyone wants to see it before attending a party. Also many small companies design their own fabrics that customers and other individual companies use to make children clothes. One example of these would be the Swedish Lilofant.

Bringing in the new smaller brands to the UK has been very exciting with Hei Moose, and it’s interesting to see that customers that came shopping with Smafolk on their mind fill their carts with JNY and Znok Design and other alternative brands.

Annika Winstanley x

Annika Winstanley is the owner of childrenswear independent Hei Moose and writes her own blog Nordicmumsnotebook.wordpress.com