The people behind Skandino
Meet The Team
Ewa Kirjavainen
Emmi is a communication teacher, sign language interpreter and accessibility specialist. Emmi has years of experience working with special groups and children with language development problems both in Finland and abroad. She has worked as a trainer in the development cooperation project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland in the Ecuador disability project.
Emmi, a mother of two children, who noticed the issues in the children’s dishes while feeding her own children. That started a long period of product development.
Heidi
Katariina is an occupational therapist legalized by Valvira, who has worked with children, elderly people, stroke patients and the visually impaired. Supporting independent eating and finding suitable aids has been an essential part of supporting the client’s everyday life in rehabilitation. Katariina also has versatile experience in the trade sector, especially in customer service, consumer goods and children’s products.
Silja Ikonen
Silja is a speech language therapist legalized by Valvira, who has 20 years of experience of solving infants feeding problems. Silja has worked for many years as a leading speech therapist at a national rehabilitation services producer Vaalijala. Silja has extensive experience and she still produces evaluation services and guidance for children with eating disorders in her company Sananlaukka.
Emmi Lemmetty-Garcia
Emmi is a communication teacher, sign language interpreter and accessibility specialist. Emmi has years of experience working with special groups and children with language development problems both in Finland and abroad. She has worked as a trainer in the development cooperation project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland in the Ecuador disability project.
Emmi, a mother of two children, who noticed the issues in the children’s dishes while feeding her own children. That started a long period of product development.
Ella Siira
Ella is a licensed (Valvira) occupational therapist who has worked with the rehabilitation of children, working-age and elderly people. Facilitating easy dining and enabling independent eating have been important parts of her occupational therapy rehabilitation work. Eating and functional cutlery are close to Ella’s heart as a mother as well.
Among with the whole Skandino Design Team, Ella has been the one most involved in forming the Skandino design language from the perspective of children, motor skills and ergonomics.
Samuel Kautto
Samuel, besides being the youngest of our team, owns an excessive expertise in humane branding, ecommerce and sales. What initially started as Skandino being just one of Samuels many clients, turned into a deeper collaboration and soon to a shared ownership and an entrepreneurial journey with Skandino.
“I got lucky. Only a year-or-so before Skandino, I had became an uncle to my sisters child. It definitely gave me some perspective to taking care of children — I would never have been able to relate to a baby care product that well if this hadn’t happened.”
The Story behind Skandino
The story of Skandino begins in 2014, when our founder became a mother. The world was heavily focused around plastic as a material for baby products. Plastic isn’t toxic-free, and that didn’t feel allright. Harmful materials had to be removed from products meant for kids.
Additionally, as a specialist of linguistic accessibility, Emmi became aware of the fact that the world needs a fundamentally redesigned sippy cup that wouldn’t cause oral-motor problems. Many speech pathologists worldwide no longer recommended the use of spouted sippy cups at all.
These findings were critical. They resulted to burning years and work and tons of money in search for the better material and design. Joining forces with experts – occupational therapists, speech language pathologists and designers, more sustainable options were explored. Skandino has spent years in research and development of our products, design and material wise.
Join Us or Become a Partner
If you want to discuss possibilities of further cooperation with us, please head over to the Become a Partner -page to read more about the Skandino Partnership Program.
