This blog post has been waiting to happen in my to-do list for a while. Why does it feel cumbersome to write about one’s own company – as creating content for so many other brands come with ease?

But alas, here we celebrate our 10^th year anniversary as Omuus brand. To say the time has flown is understatement. I will try my best to elevate some of the stories of our adventures during these years.

Did you know Omuus is a family company? The story begins at Nokia, where myself and my sister Janina had been trained as CMF designers, being part of one of the most amazing teams in product development and design. When I left for maternity leave, and after the Microsoft acquisition happened, we decided together with my husband Tomi and Janina to start a business to offer CMF design as it was still in its infancy around the world in consumer electronics industry.

A bit of a background detail: Tomi is an airline captain, and our family have had the privilege to travel with him and have easy access to study the markets around the globe. In the beginning we had amazingly matching itineraries. One time for example he was the captain on my flight to Japan. Who else can say their hubbies take them to work on the other side of the globe?

Omuus projects have taken us to adventures in so many countries, visiting beautiful places and meeting wonderful people. Without this work it can be said that those places would not have been visited by us. One time I took the wrong train in Switzerland, traveled 1 hour to the wrong direction and another back with otherworldly scenery experience. Best wrong way trip ever. And the food, oh my, how I still have daydreams of the food we were offered in Istanbul while making a field study, or Omuus team travelling with car through Europe to meet different suppliers, what an adventure. And nothing beats the feeling when our team has successfully solved the problem the client has had.

In the beginning we were just a few, but we grew to be over 20 specialists over two continents, and started another company in Beijing to support the China projects. Our China colleagues have been amazing, we have spent countless of hours in meetings where the only spoken language is Chinese. Our Chinese colleagues have been incremental in understanding the Chinese market and user experience.

In my Nokia times my colleagues took the time to have lunch with me, and we continued that lovely practice in our company. In the beginning Tomi used to cook lunch for the team, and like a family we ate together. We have so many great memories of just enjoying the company around good bowl of food and you can see those images in the Omuus Instagram reel we posted. The global pandemic took those close moments away for few years, but we hope to start that tradition again when times are safer. The aftermath of the pandemic is still to be seen for both to Omuus and to our clientele, as the turbulent times are still upon us.

We have been fortunate to work with amazing partners, to do research on new and exciting technologies, curate sustainable materials and manufacturing technologies, finding the underlying drivers of user experience and translating all that data into designs, materials, colors and storytelling. Our people have always been our greatest asset, and we are thankful to have them grow together with Omuus to the company we are today. We have made Omuus as a platform for people to join and to grow into new roles. Cheers to all of our people out there who have been part of Omuus journey – until we meet again.

During these 10 years we have done dozens of lectures around the world, contributed to books, held hundreds of workshops, curated and validated our CMF methodology with over 300 projects and networked with embassies, research agencies and universities, collaborated with almost 500 suppliers worldwide and contributed to multidisciplinary teams of marketing, R&D, cognitive science, business, UI and UX design for various industries and across markets. In our Helsinki office we have material library tailored to technology industry, presenting over 12 000 material samples. To continue in the theme of numbers, this blog post is our 61^st.

As a celebration to our 10 years, the Omuus website was redesigned and updated with the latest projects and services.

Each project is unique, and our promise is that we are equally dedicated, no matter the size or project content. I love how that excitement and dedication is also recognized by our clientele: ‘The Omuus team was very dedicated and reliable in their work. As a customer, I felt being the most important customer at that moment.’ Kultavilla.

Quite often the projects run in parallel, and there are multitude of details that need to be worked out simultaneously. We take pride in our attention to detail, and our ability to identify and take away the pain our clients have by providing actionable solutions.

A huge thank you to our clients for enabling us to do what we love!

Send me a note if you want to talk more, we are here for you!

Let’s work together for a sustainable tomorrow.

Stay safe!

Annina Verkkomäki

Chief Creative Director

annina.verkkomaki at omuus.com

www.omuus.com