Heads up: This post is 12 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
“my place” - Innovative Children’s furniture launched by 3 students#
Launching your own product is a dream many people all over the world has. For three students at Aoyama Gakuin University, Hitomi Kimura, Eri Nakatsugawa and Kyoko Takeda, their dream became reality with CUUSOO.
“It is a dream come true, to see our idea, now used by children as we imagined it only months ago.”
Together they came up with the idea for “my place” after seeing how children played, drew, read books, worked on and around the furnitures in kindergartens. “How could we bring the essence of this back to home.” Then they got the idea, “what if we could create a furniture that becomes the child’s playground in the home, enabling new ties between children and parents through play. We created drawings and a prototype made out of old wooden shelves and then posted our idea on CUUSOO. Gathering followers, using a micro funding function in CUUSOO, we were able to hire the talent of award winning designer Yohei Kuwano, who spent his early career at MUJI, to bring their idea to life. CUUSOO also enabled us to connect and work with Uno Mokko a small furniture company in Hiroshima, who are now producing “my place” as a true “Made in Japan” product.”
The “my place” story is one of realising your ideas, working with people across multiple disciplines, seeing the ideas come to life. This is usually a long journey that’s full of risks, one that most people only dream about, but never get to experience. At CUUSOO we are making this experience easier, by offering people a place to connect and work on their ideas, find support from potential consumers, working with professional designers and small manufacturers, all to bring their idea to the market in a risk free way.