The Fifteen-Year Dream Minna Wouldn't Let Go Of
Ask anyone at VIBAe who's responsible for the fact our Helsinki store won Best Store in Helsinki, and the answer comes fast: Minna.
She's also been quietly dreaming about one specific building on Fredrikinkatu, a few blocks from our current store, for the past fifteen years. She had no plan for what she'd do with it.
She just wanted it.
Now, finally, that dream has a name: VIBAe Lab. Picture a photo studio, a kitchen, a lounge you'll want to move into, special drops of shoe models we're testing before they reach the main collection, and yes, still a store, but one built to show you how the shoes are actually made and to share our story.
It isn't open yet. Right now it's 340 square metres of dust sheets, exposed wiring, and one very determined co-founder running on fumes and conviction. We sat her down to ask what fifteen years of wanting something does to a person.
Here's what she had to say.
Q: This building has quite a history. What was here before VIBAe Lab?
In 1935 it was Elanto's restaurant. Then Suomi Filmi had it. Then it was a gym. Then Casuarina, an interior design shop, for the last 27 years. I've wanted it for maybe fifteen years, though I had absolutely no idea what I'd do with it. I just wanted it.
Q: How are you feeling now that the dream is nearly real?
(Deep sigh.) Something in me has changed. This renovation has taken so long I think there's a word for it: battle fatigue. There's so much happening at the company at the same time, and I'm beginning to question my colleagues. Why didn't anyone advise me to sleep on it when I announced I'm getting it? Sleep on it for... like a week? Nobody said that to me, for the record. They should have yelled it at me, to be fair.
I still see the potential of the place, huge potential, but my energy to execute it is zero percent. I've thought more than once about which restaurant owner I could call and ask if they want a beautiful, fully renovated space. It would make an incredible restaurant. But I'm not actually going to. Probably.
Q: What's turned out differently from what you imagined?
The feeling of the space is exactly what I thought it would be, so that part's fine. What I got wrong was how hard it would be to renovate and fill 340 square metres and keep that feeling everywhere in it.
Q: What's been the hardest stretch of this whole project?
These last weeks now that we're getting close to opening. It feels like it will never be finished, and the responsibility lies with me. It's like the last mile on a marathon, and I'm anxiously waiting for the runner's high.
Q: Tell us about the sofa.
A big space needed something big. In this case, a sofa. I wanted to design one that invites you in, not one you sit on nicely. You fall into it, lie on it, sleep on it, just breathe. It's soft, but it has character. A sofa isn't just a shape or a material to me. It's a feeling, and you want to stay in it. The manufacturer loved it so much they put it into production themselves, under the name SYLI, Finnish for embrace. I think it's so different from what they already made, and I think that was the point. Selling a feeling instead of a shape was completely new for them. Their furniture is usually tight, linear, almost hard. Sometimes you're allowed to relax a little.
Q: You keep coming back to that word, feeling. Why does it matter so much to you?
Because feeling comes before words. You step into a space and you feel it first. You touch a material and your hand or body knows if it's good. A smell can take you back ten years before you even understand why. A sound can calm you, or give you goosebumps. We feel constantly, before we can explain it, before we've formed an opinion.
I don't want to make something that's just beautiful to look at. I want something to be felt: the product in your hand, the material on your skin, the room around you, the smell in the air, the sound in your ear. For me feeling isn't decoration, it's not the last thing you add, it's the beginning. I want to know how something feels before I know how it looks. Sound, scent, light, materials, living plants, colour, all of it together. You walk in and it's already there. Nobody has to explain it to you. You just feel it.
Q: What's something in the Lab that customers will never notice, but you'll never stop noticing?
Two things, actually. There's a blood stain on the wall from one of the renovation guys, and a scratch on the ball chair that's not going anywhere either.
VIBAe Lab isn't open yet, but it will be, as long as there is a certain co-founder running around on zero percent energy and a hundred percent conviction. We'll tell you the second the doors open.
Soon.
