Fiskars is Finland’s oldest company at over 360 years in business. They’re “the world’s number one scissor brand” with their orange-handled scissors being sold since 1967 and their style and colour being copied regularly by cheap immitations.
These days they create “consumer products for the home, garden and outdoors” from sewing scissors to rotary trimmers to cultivating tools, and they also own a number of other companies such as Arabia Finland and a favourite of mine, Iittalla – makers of beautiful glassware, tableware and kitchenware who have a philosophy, “Against throwawayism“, where “everyone has the right to expect design that will last a lifetime”.
I have a pair of well-loved probably 25-year old Fiskars scissors, and my mother has some that are even older so I went on a little journey of re-discovery when I found an article about the Easy-Pour watering-can:
- Core77 – The Easy-Pour 2.6 gallon: Fiskars do it again
- YouTube – More Than Scissors (Fiskars Cuts+More™) - A video demonstration of the features of the Cuts+More™ scissors.
- YouTube – Olavi Linden: Portrait of a Creative Spirit - A short biography of Olavi Linden, an inventor and retired designer for Fiskars.
- The Centre for Universal Design – Case Study: Fiskars Develops Its “Softouch” – how Fiskars re-designed scissors for people with manual limitations such as arthritis
- Fiskars Group – Corporate site
Video: Passion and the power of self-expression: the artisans of Fiskars, Finland
“The most important thing is that the product is really good, that I’m a hundred percent satisfied, and I would work a hundred hours more if I wouldn’t be satisfied because it’s a part of me.”
