In 2005, Ronel Jordaan, having been a textile designer for 26 years, began researching the possibilities of using felt as a creative medium. Entirely self taught and following her own creative instincts, she began to turn fine gossamer thread into robust felted forms. By patiently rubbing and coaxing threads of pure wool into shapes in nature that inspire her, she found her direction and started a small home industry. Next she trained a handful of women to help her. Recognized for their originality and design uniqueness, her creations found an immediate market. Within a year she sought bigger premises and a year after that she needed to expand further. She has applied the felting process to create a panoply of textures and shapes, of leaves and flowers, webs, thorns, hides and bark. The most recognizable of all her products are her pebbles and rocks.

Ferry’s label frrry started some six years ago and the serious, meticulously made work is very much about construction. In many different ways. The ideas are personal, yet timeless. The style is not about trends, but it is contemporary.
A seemingly simple rectangular bag that has not been put together as you might expect it to. For this series he let himself be inspired by the possibilities (and impossibilities) of having a collection produced. This was to take place in a workplace that he, when designing, had not yet visited. In the end the workplace turned out to be very well equipped, but the ideas did come out handy anyway.

Margriet Foolen (born in 1982) started her own design studio after finishing her studies at the Design Academy in Eindhoven (in 2006). Meanwhile she has produced various designs under the \\\\\\\'diVers\\\\\\\' label. With her interest in materials and processing techniques she designs splendid, simple products which exude functionality. Margriet Foolen has already won several design awards for her work and is often asked to participate in (internationally esteemed) Dutch design initiatives such as Unseen Products. With the Slowcooker, her graduation project, she won the prestigious and popular Red Dot Award, together with the company Van Kempen en Begeer! An international jury of design experts chose the Slowcooker out of more than 5,000 entries. The Red Dot is an important award for designers.

In 1990 Eek graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven with a scrapwood cupboard. In a time of \\\\\\\"extravagance\\\\\\\" he decided to use simple materials and plain design. Working with scrap materials makes each product by Eek an exclusive one. Eek designs (and manufactures) furniture, illumination and accessories and decorates buildings. His work was exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Groninger Museum.
Piet Hein Eek immediately said yes when he was asked by Dutch Design in Development (DDiD) to go to Vietnam to work with Fair Trade Original producers. “It was a fantastic experience. The whole process you go through with the companies and people. And it was interesting for me that I could design products which require a lot of manual work.\\\\\\\"

Michiel van der Kley describes himself as a designer with a clear vision. His work is functional, associative and non-conceptual. ‘What you see is what you get.’ When studying history he came across the futuristic furniture design of the beginning of the 20th century and he was sold. After he finished his study he couldn’t stop thinking about designing and started to design furniture on his own. After several years as a self-producing designer he decided to focus on design only, and he started to sell his work to manufacturers. Currently his designs are produced by several leading manufacturers in the Netherlands and abroad, among which are Artifort, Arco, Gispen and van Esch. For Unseen Products Michiel has designed the Impulse Collection, a collection lamps made of Lokta paper.

Manon de Bruijn is a designer with her studio ‘Manon Juliette’ based in Amsterdam. Her carpet Feliz! which was awarded with the first Toon van Tuijl Design Award in 2007. An Award that stimulates design that contributes to the economic and social development in developing countries. Manon believes that design is there to enjoy the owner and his environment and giving a happy feeling to everybody involved in the process of creating her designs. She brings together the best of different cultures, materials and production ways.

The Work from Chris Slutter can best described as a search for the simplified form through design, this and the ongoing investigation of how the process of design affects the final product, and through this method of questioning he can stay true to the materials he uses which is central to his work. This cogitate process formulates a functional basis that expresses itself by clarity and quality in the completed design. Chris Slutter’s designs are produced in small series; he also makes 3D prototype models for clients and himself giving rise to an overall vision of the product. Much Chris’s client base is to be found in the multinational and architectural environment as well as the private sector.

As a many sided designer, Christel Hofmans is more interested in putting a gesture in a design than choosing to focus on one kind of product, material or technique. That’s why you can find her working in many fields of design, from product to interior design, and from graphic to jewellery design. Always looking for a nice balance between functionality, clarity and poetry. Through interventions in daily consumer goods, she tries to summon a smile, contentment or surprise. With her way of regarding the things around us, she works with different companies and private clients to develop new designs for the living and working environment.

Chris Slutter and Christel Hofmans worked together on a project to design furniture for domestic animals. For this project they went to Bali and found a local producer for their designs. Their goal was to loose the outmoded image of pet furniture. Therefore they used robust materials that could be found and processed on the Indonesian Island and turned them into strong, contemporary shapes, like the cat scratch pole.

Martijn Homan has been working as an independent designer since 2002. In 2005 he founded ‘labelh’: a jewellery and accessories collection, consisting of unique pieces, limited circulations and industrially produced series.
Part of his work centres around the pictogram (the archetype), and draws on the images from early childhood stored in our subconscious mind, as a collective consciousness.
On the other hand, he also tries to investigate the psychological roots of products, perceiving and playing with the interaction between the object and its owner.
Martijn travelled to Lima (Peru) to design a silver jewellery collection in collaboration with Dutch Design in Development (DDiD) and Unseen Products. The collection’s production is based on fair trade principles and will be sold under the name lab925.

Janske Megens has graduated in 2004 her studies on the department 3D Design on ArtEz in Arnhem with a collection of handmade bags.
Currently Janske Megens has a studio in Nijmegen where she works as independent entrepreneur on her bags collection, her fair trade collection from Nepal and as freelance designer for other companies. She has already presented her work on a number of successful exhibitions and fairs in the Netherlands and in foreign countries such as: Tendence in Frankfurt, Maison et Objet in Paris, Interior Life in Las Vegas, 100% Design in Rotterdam etc.
The products of Janske Megens are fresh, contemporary, obstinate and detailed. Her bags are jewels and delightful to the eye, made of experimental knitting designs or laser pattern canvas combined with high quality of leather. The knitting designs from the women collection of bags are produced in cooperation with the Dutch Textile museum in Tilburg. Recently Janske started a new collection interior products, accessories and jewelry produced by women on fair trade basis in Nepal. These products are sold under the label Janske Megens.

The co-operation of feminine producers in Nepal, has started this new project. A Design products collection. In co-operation with Dutch designers a new collection has been produced with the first 18 companies. All participants of this unique project are part of fair business. Womanpower has a poverty alleviation target reached trough a business, work and production improvement.