A Small Finnish Company With a Clear Choice to Make
Trojala was founded in Finland by a young woman who wanted her company to stand for something beyond the products it sells. From the very beginning, that meant being deliberate about who Trojala works with - not just where materials come from, but who actually makes each piece by hand, and whether that work translates into real, fair income for the people doing it.
That decision led to a simple operating principle: Trojala partners with women-led suppliers and women artisans.
The Problem We're Responding To
Around the world, women are still paid less than men for their work, and in many regions they have fewer opportunities to earn an income at all — not because of ability, but because of cultural and structural barriers that limit their access to education, land, credit, and formal employment.
The scale of this gap is well documented. According to the United Nations, women are paid roughly 20% less than men across all regions globally. The gap is worse in lower-income countries: World Bank data shows women in low-income countries earn around 70 cents for every dollar earned by men, compared to about 85 cents in high-income countries - meaning the same gender gap hits hardest in exactly the places where economic opportunity is already scarcest. The International Labour Organization has also found that women's global workforce participation still trails men's by more than 20 percentage points, leaving hundreds of millions of women outside paid work entirely.
Behind those numbers are real skills going underused. In many artisan communities, women have practiced traditional crafts like wool felting and hand-spinning for generations - skills passed down from mothers and grandmothers. But skill alone hasn't been enough to guarantee fair income, because many artisans have historically lacked access to the education, technology, and market connections needed to sell their work beyond their local community.
Trojala exists, in part, to close that specific gap: connecting skilled women artisans directly to customers who value what they make.
Our Current Supplier Partners
Wool Felt Artisans, Nepal Trojala's felt products (including our handbags, kids' accessories, sauna hats, and cat caves) are handmade by women artisans in Nepal, using traditional wool-felting techniques. Each piece is shaped entirely by hand, which is why no two products are ever perfectly identical.
Hand-Spinners, Argentina Our handspun organic wool yarn comes from a women-led hand-spinning workshop in Argentina. Every skein is spun by hand, giving it a natural, irregular twist and a texture that machine-spun yarn can't replicate.
Small Women-Owned Company, China Trojala also partners with a small, 100% women-owned company in China, expanding the range of women-led workshops we work with beyond a single country or craft tradition.
Working across three different countries and traditions is intentional. It means Trojala isn't dependent on a single supplier or region, and it lets us support women's economic participation in more than one part of the world at once.
What "Working With Women Suppliers" Actually Means for Us
This isn't a marketing label Trojala adds after the fact - it's a sourcing decision made before a single product is chosen. In practice, it means:
- Prioritizing workshops and artisan groups that are women-led or women-owned when sourcing new products
- Paying for the skill and craftsmanship in handmade work, rather than treating it as a cost to minimize
- Being transparent with customers about who makes each product and where, rather than using vague "handmade" claims with no real detail behind them
- Accepting that handmade, small-batch production means every piece is unique - a trade-off we consider a feature, not a limitation
Why This Matters to You as a Customer
When you buy a Trojala product, the money doesn't disappear into a supply chain you can't see. It goes toward paying a woman artisan in Nepal for a hand-felted cat cave, a hand-spinner in Argentina for a skein of yarn, or a women-owned workshop in China for the goods they produce - real income, for real skilled work, in places where that income can meaningfully change what's possible for the woman earning it and her family.
Every product page in our felt collection links back to this story, because we think it's worth knowing - not just what you're buying, but who made it, and why that choice matters.
Learn more about our artisans →