The Story of Soulosofie

When we sold Indiska in 2016, I had spent 33 years in the family business. It had been such a huge part of my life that when it was suddenly over, I wasn’t really sure what came next.

So I went to India.

Not to start a company. Not even to buy anything. I just needed to go somewhere I knew, see people I trusted and figure out what I wanted to do next.

India has always been that place for me. I first went there with my mother when I was young, and over the years it became almost like a second home. I had spent so much of my working life there, and many of the people I had worked with had become close friends.

I spent some time in Delhi with my dear friend Aticka and then went down to Jaipur.

“And somewhere along the way, things started to fall into place.”

Jayan had been my colleague and friend for more than twenty years. We were sitting talking when he told me that, for him, working at Indiska had always been very connected to my family. Now that the family was no longer there, he wanted to do something else.
I more or less said, “Then come and work with me.” The only problem was that I had absolutely no idea what “with me” meant. There was no company. No collection. Not even a name. But I knew I wanted Jayan beside me. I trusted him completely, and after all those years he understood my taste almost without me having to explain it.

So we started a sourcing company together, Stockholm Jaipur.

And at the same time, I started thinking about something else. Something much more personal. Vintage furniture and interiors had always been my passion. Old things, handmade things, beautiful materials and pieces that weren’t quite perfect. Especially the ones that weren’t quite perfect. I’ve always loved things that have already lived a little. A scratch, a repair, a faded colour, an old piece of wood that someone else might walk straight past. I think I got a lot of that from my mother. And suddenly I realised that maybe this was what I should do.

Three months later, I went back to India. This time to buy. And of course my mother Kicki came with me.

We walked around for days looking at old furniture and objects, discussing everything. Colours, handles, finishes, what felt right and what didn’t.We didn’t have a big plan for what Soulosofie should look like. We just knew when something felt right. I still remember the two of us standing there mixing an olive green for one of the cabinets, trying to get exactly the right shade. It sounds like such a small thing now, but I think that was really how Soulosofie started. One piece at a time.

Around the same time, one of our old suppliers had just started his own vintage furniture business. Completely by coincidence, and with almost perfect timing. We started working together, and little by little our first collection came together. We still work together today.

And then there was Rickard. At the time, he was Head of Marketing at one of Sweden’s big telecom companies. He would come home from work and I would immediately start showing him cabinets from Rajasthan, asking what he thought about a colour, a handle, a logo, a new idea…There was always something.
And it didn’t exactly stop at giving advice. Weekends were soon spent unloading containers, packing orders and doing whatever else needed to be done. Soulosofie had a way of taking over our free time long before it became Rickard’s full-time job.

We talked endlessly about what Soulosofie could become, what we wanted it to feel like and how we could build it together.

And before we really knew it, that was exactly what we were doing. By 2019, Rickard had joined full time.

We’re quite different in many ways, which is probably a good thing. I tend to go very much on feeling, while Rickard has a way of bringing structure to the ideas. Suddenly we were running a family business together. Not something either of us had really planned, but something that felt very natural.

And the name?

SOULOSOFIE.

“Soul, Sofie and a little bit of philosophy.”

I came up with it before I really knew what the company would become. But I knew I wanted to do something I really loved. With people I liked working with, and in my own way.

Ten years later, quite a lot has changed. There are more containers now. More furniture. More people. But the part we love most hasn’t really changed at all. We still go to India. We still work with many of the same people. We still spend far too long choosing between two old cabinets. And I still get most excited about the piece that is a little worn, a little different and definitely not perfect.

I suppose that was Soulosofie all along.

Big hug, Sofie