MÄVINN collection
Home is where the heart is
Working together with seven social businesses from across Asia, designers Maria Vinka and Paulin Machado have created a home collection full of character that celebrates local crafts and artisanal workmanship.
For more than a decade, IKEA has collaborated with social businesses around the globe, producing home furnishing and food products that make a difference. By providing jobs and training for people from vulnerable groups, our partners empower them to become skilled professionals. This not only benefits individuals, but communities as a whole. By passing on local skills, the artisans become guardians of long-held, traditional craft methods. The objects they make not only embody the distinctive look and rustic appeal of handmade items, but also offer insight into the local culture.
The inspiration behind the collection was the experience of visiting local craft markets. For IKEA designers Maria Vinka and Paulin Machado, the collection tells the story of the interesting array of objects to be found among the stalls, the different types of handcraft techniques within each product and, most important, the artisans. ”We wanted to have products that show how they have been handcrafted and to emphasise that someone has put this object together,” says Maria.
Creating jobs, livelihoods and homes
Meet the businesses working for change
India
Spun
The India-based social business enables women with no other income in the family to become breadwinners and much more. Spun provides jobs through the production of skillfully crafted textile projects. By providing women with education and valuable skills, such as embroidery and sewing, they can become fully independent. This enables them to improve their lives and social status.
“These women become fully independent, which in turn has an amazing trickle-down effect: better education for their children, better livelihoods for their families.” - Dipali Goenka, CEO of Welspun, and founder of Spun.
Vietnam
Saitex
Producing denim and cotton products in its factory, Saitex is an industrial producer with a difference. Through its social division, Rekut, the company trains and employs workers with different abilities and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Its goal for 2025 is for them to make up 20% of the company’s workforce.
”A small enterprise cannot change the world, but we can, collectively, put a few drops into the ocean. Every drop counts.” - Sanjeev Bahl, CEO of Saitex
India
Ramesh Flowers
With a focus on both people and planet, Ramesh Flowers trains women from rural villages to create handmade products from natural materials such as banana fibre and waste from food production, such as nutshells. Ramesh also sees the potential in its workers and is committed to training women from the factory floor for promotion to management roles.
Vietnam
Doi Tung
Based in the mountain regions of Northern Thailand, the Doi Tung Development Project (DTDP) is committed to reducing social and economic inequality for villagers and tribal groups in the area through education, training and employment in a number of handcrafts, such as textiles, ceramics and papermaking. Papermaking has existed in the region for centuries, but when the forests were destroyed by slash and burn cultivation, the local craft began to disappear. Thanks to the replanting of mulberry trees as part of DTDP’s reforestation project, papermaking has made a comeback.
India
Rangsutra
Based in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Rangsutra provides jobs and training in traditional Indian crafts, such as embroidery, textiles and grass weaving for a predominantly female workforce of artisans. To create more work for local weavers, in 2021 Rangsutra started weaving its own fabrics. Today, many of the artisans are company shareholders. The striped cushion cover, produced by Rangsutra, features a tiny hand embroidered heart. “The heart emphasizes that it’s made with love, but also that it’s a hand that makes this little heart,” says designer Paulin Machado.
Bangladesh
Classical Handmade Products
The Bangladesh-based export manufacturing company produces items made from natural local materials, such as jute and banana fibre. Through its decentralised business model of bringing work to rural communities rather than establishing factories, its focus is on improving the quality of life for the disabled and women from disadvantaged communities. Providing workers with a livelihood empowers them not only earn their own income, but to buy land for cultivation and educate their children. The braided jute bowls in the collection feature hand-embroidered details in rainbow colours that add colour and character to the home.
India
Industree
The handwoven goods producer employs and trains women from the rural areas of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where job opportunities are scarce. Banana fibres are knotted into long strips of yarn, which are then intricately woven into the stylish, practical shopping bags of the MÄVINN collection.
The MÄVINN collection is available for a limited time only. If the collection is no longer available in your local IKEA market, or is unavailable in your country, you'll be directed to explore plenty more of the latest products and collections from IKEA.