kukunest featured in Small Magazine
April 8th, 2008Have you seen this awesome web based magazine, called Small Magazine? It’s only on it’s 5th issue but it’s so polished and well-crafted, you’d think it had been around longer. We couldn’t be more excited to have our lantern festival and happy dots sets featured in one of their photo shoots.
The mission of Small Magazine is to find, and feature, unique, interesting, and independent designs and trends, rather than relying on the same designer brands that are regularly featured in large publications. If you’re interested in one of a kind designs or undiscovered gems that aren’t picked up by major media radar, then it’s for you. It’s a very hip online zine, with gorgeous photo spreads. Check it out:
http://www.smallmagazine.net/issue.asp?issue=6&page=17
kukunest at bubble new york show
February 24th, 2008
From March 9th to the 11th, we’ll be exhibiting kukunest wares at bubble new york, a trendy, modern kids trade show. We have a small-ish booth at this show- so hopefully our brightly colored display of bedding will help us stand out a bit! Stop by and say hi to Teri - the show is held at 269 11th Avenue in New York City.
DailyCandy highlights Kukunest on TV
November 13th, 2007On Monday’s The View from the Bay, a lifestyle television program on the local ABC channel, DailyCandy’s (www.dailycandy.com) San Francisco editor Andrea Arria-Devoe presented several of her favorite reviewed kids products, many from companies here in the San Francisco Bay Area.Â
In addition to some other interesting items, she talked about kukunest, and showed off two of our shams: Sub Adventure and Little Friends.Â
You can see the whole segment on the KGO site here — the kukunest segment begins at about 3:10 in the program.
Thanks, Andrea!Â
Our new designs are here!
October 2nd, 2007 Finally, after umpteen delays, our new designs and products are finally here. And as such, we’ve put up our new website, a very different look for us (we’re loving it).  Thank you so much for your patience, we’re quite humbled by all the emails and calls asking ‘when is xxx going to come in’, and it’s been quite frustrating to keep saying ‘pretty soon… really… no, honestly, any day now!!’.Â
Come and check out our our newest offerings - the Little Friends and Carnival themes - and if you’ve been waiting for the full size or toddler bedding, that’s finally here too!Â
Cheers,
Laura and Teri
What’s new, kukunest?
July 27th, 2007So much for summer vacation – it has been crazy here at kukunest this summer. What have we been up to?
New designs!
Definitely, the most fun we have at kukunest is designing new products. But it is also the most intense work, so I am happy that the design work is done and the production runs are complete. Starting in early September the new designs will be available for sale.
Here’s a brief rundown on our two new designs:
Carnival
A new unisex theme that’s just supposed to be happy and light, we originally envisioned this as a rollercoaster design, but it’s grown to be so much more? Here is a picture from that theme:
Little Friends
Happy Dots has turned out to be one of our most popular sellers and we keep getting requests for it in a duvet, so we made one (!) and added more adorable girls in national costume for the sham pillowcase.
New Products
More than just new themes, we also have some new formats (again, available in September):
Toddler Sets
Includes a comforter, fitted crib sheet and a standard sham. Available in Lantern Festival, Deep Sea, Around the World, Little Friends, and Carnival
Full Duvet Sets
Includes a full duvet and standard sham. Available in Lantern Festival and Little Friends.
Et Cetera
And to support the new products we are, of course, also working on a photo shoot, new packaging, updates to our web site and press materials, not to mention a booth at the ABC Kids trade show in early September.
Perhaps a better question would have been: what have we not been up to?
Local Designer Show at Studio Grow in Berkeley
June 15th, 2007
We recently participated in a really fun show, NEST (love that name, wink wink), at at a great local family hangout in Berkeley - Studio Grow. Lisa Fontaine and the owners of Studio Grow put together this event for east bay families to shop and get to know local designers. The space was tiny for display, so we had to be really efficient, but no matter!
We got to see familiar faces and to hangout with fellow designers. Studio Grow is such a find - its basically a large children’s play space in Berkeley, CA offering scheduled classes and activities as well as open play.
Best of all was the opportunity to chat with local moms and dads and interact with our customers.
If you live in the East Bay, it’s highly worth a trip! P.S. That’s Teri in front of our display (darn, I wish we had taken more pictures).
LA Story, Part II
May 14th, 2007One thing I love about these shows is how nice everyone is. It’s like we’re all in it together. Need an iron? Booth 755 has one! Forgot your level? Just ask the nice guy in booth 832. Even with the vignettes, we kept walking by each other’s booths during the construction phase and the ego part of it just wasn’t there. We were all admiring each other’s creativity and ingenuity. Sounds a little ‘We are the world’, I know, but it’s true, I swear.
We really bonded with Karina of Litto Kids. Teri gave her a hand one morning (you can see them both a little in the first picture below, Karina’s back is to the camera), and the next day Karina brought us a dozen fresh Krispy Kremes. Heaven….
Okay back to the vignettes! First up, a nursery with an owl theme by Litto Kids. Absolutely beautiful freehand cut wall treatment by Karina:
The amount of time it took for Karina to do the wall treatments is amazing. Karina used to live in the Bay Area, but moved down to Los Angeles, where she has a showroom and runs Litto Kids, a very cool modern children’s design company. Here theme was to do a ‘retro’ look (it’s hard to see in these pictures, but the lamps, cuckoo clock, and even wall fabric are vintage 60s design).
Next, is Boodalee. I have to say that Jeanice, founder and creative director, has an impeccable sense of styling. Her room vignette is so polished and nicely put together:
Boodalee’s theme was ‘Under the Trees’ which she captured really well through her use of color, natural materials for the wall, floor and accessories, and of course her tree themed bedding. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of the beautiful handmade tree wall treatment in this room, which really was one of the key features (sorry!).
Finally, Nurseryworks. This is a company we’ve all heard of and I was dying to see their vignette. Their vignette definitely had the most ‘lived in’ look with real kid drawings tacked onto a cork wall. Their color palette was also quite bold:
And the winner was….
everyone. Yes, in the most democratic fashion possible, every vignette won an award. kukunest won ‘Most Colorful’ and Litto Kids won ‘Most Earth Friendly’, Boodalee got ‘Most Creative’, and Nurseryworks? Well, they won ‘Most Practical’. An interesting assortment of awards; ‘Most Beautiful’ went to a muralist who did a mural of fairies, toadstools and castles, a very traditional look.
Lessons learned: bring more than you think you need (and don’t forget your level!). It’s easy to edit, but it’s impossible to create additional decor items or furnishings out of thin air. Teri and I were wishing for just a couple of more room items on Friday evening. Also, an important, overlooked feature: proper lighting. It makes all the difference, as you can see how Nurseryworks used it to light up their vignette. Right now we’re planning our booth at the ABC Kids Expo in Las Vegas in September. We’re in the Modern Child Pavilion and we’re really excited to get our booth look nailed down.
Have a great week!
Cheers,
Laura
LA Story, Part 1
May 10th, 2007If you were in Los Angeles last week, you would have noticed that it was a balmy 73 degrees, sunny with a nice cool breeze. Perfect LA weather for heading to the beach or strolling down Santa Monica’s 3rd Street…
I can tell you this because i observed it firsthand in my taxi rides to and from LAX to the Los Angeles Convention Center, where the Baby Celebrations show was held. The rest of the time, literally except for a few hours sleep, Teri and I were working like mad on our first ever trade show booth and vignette. You know how your firsts remain perfectly etched in your memory? Well, Baby Celebrations will undoubtedly be a bit like that for us, because we had NO idea how much work such an undertaking entailed!  Since we had a 10×15 foot vignette that was part of a competition held by Pregnancy magazine, we had a crazy amount of work to do. In fact, we spent so much time on our vignette, admittedly enjoying the creative process, but wasting tons of time by painstakingly lining up paper lanterns, etc., that we kind of forgot we even had a booth until about 4:30 Friday evening. Doh! Well, we managed to pull it together for the show despite our simultaneous panic attacks. The best part of this show for us? Getting the experience of putting a booth and a vignette together, but also meeting some amazing designers (more on them in Part 2 of this blog post) and making some new friends in the kids industry.Â
The Vignettes
When we arrived at the showroom on Thursday morning, the first thing we saw was a big, blank wall that formed the outside of our booth (we had no idea that we had this outside wall to use in our vignette). So we spent a good amount of Thursday designing and executing the look for the outer wall, you can see it here:
Because kukunest is all about fun and playfulness, we hit on this idea of a group of kids heading on over to our booth and working our name and logo in there. Frankly, given that we had no other materials to work with, we could only paint on this wall. But I have to say, I’m quite happy with the results and 3 weeks of planning probably wouldn’t have resulted in anything as fun!
The idea for our vignette was to use Lantern Festival to showcase the fun vibrant colors of our bedding and to also work in a festive, multicultural look. We used primarily inexpensive props because we wanted a ‘designer’ look that was also accessible. We wanted to work the creativity angle in there and make something handmade (that’s the wall drawings like the coat hanger, birdcage on the shelf, etc.) that we incorporated into the vignette). Unfortunately, the hand drawn decor did not photograph well (guess you had to be there, eh?) but looked good in the vignette. Not surprisingly, the other modern vignettes had handmade wall treatments too, i’ll show those in Part 2 (coming in a few days). Who won the competition? Sorry, i’ll have to keep you in suspense until the end!
We definitely wanted our vignette to have the feel that a real child lived in this room (okay, a very tidy child who makes her bed very neatly, so maybe not that real) and to avoid an overly perfect ‘catalog look’ which rather than being fun, can be a little stifling.
Here’s another angle:
The fun little work table and bench are from Argington, modern kids’ furniture.Â
In a few days, I’ll post photos and commentaries of the other modern vignettes from this competition: Litto Kids, Boodalee, and Nurseryworks. There were a few ‘princess and castle’ themes that were extremely ornate, pink, and used lots of ballet tutu fabric. I didn’t include those here, although perhaps i should have to give you a sense of what was out there. The modern room vignettes were so different from one another; Teri and I were very much inspired by the creativity and execution of the designers.
Final note for this post: Robert Mahar of Mahar Dry Goods stopped by our booth at the show - a real treat for me because i love his website and blog. And not surprisingly, his personality is exactly like that of his site - totally charming and genuine, someone you’d love to go out and get a beer with. He sells very sweet vintage, one of a kind, and all handmade, children’s items, like Giddy Giddy hairclips made by our very own Teri.
Cheers,
Laura
C-YA in LA
April 22nd, 2007Just a short post to let you know that we’re going to be attending the Baby C
elebrations show, at the Los Angeles Convention Center next week April 28 & 29. It’s open to the public, although there is an admission of fee (i think it’s around $10). We’re sharing a booth with Mitzi of Livie & Luca shoes. We’re going to have a relaxing booth - seating, fun music, some toys for the kids, you get the picture…
We’ll also be decorating a 10′ x 15′ room vignette which will be judged in a competition. The theme we’ll be using for the vignette is Lantern Festival. Here’s a picture of this fun little doll that will be featured in our room (made by Teri). Anyway, if you’re in LA and want to say hi, come on by! We’ll be posting some pictures and thoughts when we return.
Have a great week!
Teri and Laura
San Francisco & Palo Alto Shows
February 10th, 2007We’ve just finished two trunk shows - Appel & Frank in San Francisco and a fabulous fundraise
r for the Palo Alto Partners in Education Fundraiser. It was a lot of fun to meet people, and get great response from visitors and customers. Appel & Frank got a decent turnout for a Super Bowl Sunday. Our dear friends Mitzi from Livie and Luca Shoes for kids www.livieandluca.com (these tassel shoes are so cute!)
and Amy and Janel from AbeJones www.abejones.com , stylish apparel for kids (of course I had to buy a tunic for my daughter), were there. We also met Trieste Prusso, a self-proclaimed ‘wife, mother, artist, modern Renaissance woman’. She does beautiful artwork,
like this Robot for instance.
She has a great blog http://triesteprusso.typepad.com/ where she discusses mothering, being an artist, and a a business woman.
But the Palo Alto fundraiser was just amazing. It was held in a beautiful private residence and as such only had room for a small number of vendors (less than 20). The atmosphere was cozy and informal, a combination of social get together and shopping. Perfect! We met some amazing women and great products. The collection of products was really well planned - very hip stylish products for kids. We met a few women in particular whose combination of product and personality was top notch. I was so bummed that i either didn’t know about them (or they weren’t in business) when i had babies. Unfortunately, i don’t know anyone having babies any more (i guess i am that OLD!).
Ana, from Super Natural Baby www.supernaturalbaby.com , sells crib sets and accessories for kids. And she’s from Oakland too - go Ana! They make these lovely baby blankets that convert to a poncho as the child grows.
Dagmar Daley http://dagmardaley.com makes couture quality clothing for kids at great prices. She’s also a lovely person as well. Teri succumbed and bought these adorable suspender pants for her daughter. That’s a difference between my life and Teri’s - if i got those pants for my daughter, she’d probably cut them up with her scissors and use the suspenders to make a sling!
I also met Iris of Extra Small www.extrasmall.com . I just love love love the colors she uses in her clothing. I urged her to make them for 6 year olds, but right now they only go up to size 2. She also sells toys. Look at these super adorable handknit animals. They are so cute! I didn’t realize that she sells these until i looked at her website after the show. If i had known, i would have been out some more cash.
And finally, i have to show you Catherine’s jewelry, which has nothing to do with kids, but we were right next to her table and i really couldn’t take my eyes off her stuff. She was just a delightful lady as well - so down to earth for someone so talented. Check her out at www.colmet-daage.com .
Happy Weekend!
xo
