We started NINA several years ago now, just before the pandemic. Lots has happened since then - we got a dog, left London for the coast, and recently had a baby ourselves (chubby cheeked Finn - an avid fan of milk and making faces in the mirror!).

Our original goal with NINA was to connect buyers with makers. We were in Peru, both having quit our jobs, tired of the treadmill, eyes & minds open. We learnt that Peru is a massive exporter of so many good things, Peruvian Pima cotton being just one of them. And realised that whenever we bought something we never really considered much more beyond what it looked like. So we wanted to understand more about the start of that long journey. 

That's how the baby clothes started - we visited cotton fields, we met cotton farmers, we visited factories. 'White gold' they call Peruvian Pima cotton. The cotton of Incan gods and goddesses.

Pandemic happened, several close friends & family were having babies in this weird time, we wanted to do something more to celebrate motherhood. So we launched The Motherhood Prints - we got a group of artists together, they made some amazing artworks, we sold them on our website to raise money for charity....

We loved doing this and loved working with artists. Our baby clothes are plain colours for several reasons. We wanted to emphasise the softness and high quality of the cotton + as a small brand there's no way we can meet the minimum number of onesies etc that the manufacturer needs when producing patterned clothes + we wanted to create something that had huge circular potential. Working with artists on the prints made us wonder whether we could create unique baby clothes designed by artists - something that's not really done in the baby world. Enter our muslin collection! This time a different supplier in India, who was happy to make smaller batches for us (quite tough for start-up clothing companies to find suppliers like this!). 

In the future we'd love to keep launching new muslins designed by new artists we stumble upon and love. We'd also love to partner with a company like Renewcell in Sweden who make new textiles from old textiles - Peruvian Pima cotton is so perfect for this as its long cotton fibres are more durable and can therefore better withstand that process.

We love doing NINA. We don't have the cash for masses of online advertising and we're still doing NINA alongside our day jobs (Oli works as sustainability lead at an advertising company, I work in innovation consultancy). But we've got loads of plans still for NINA - we know you love our products and we love that as a small business, operating out of a little blue room in St Leonards-On-Sea, we have complete freedom.

We're looking forward to the future of NINA. Meanwhile we've got some orders to package up and some gift notes to write out...

Thanks for joining us on the journey!

Emily & Oli (and Finn & Bo!)

xxx