WoodTon

WoodTon is a new Ukrainian brand that makes handmade bow ties and accessories from wood. The brand was created by former classmates and friends - Volodymyr and Ilya. The main goal of WoodTon is to create stylish, individual, natural and ecological products which allow its owner to stand out from the monotonous routine. We have conducted an interview with the founders.

Why did you choose to produce handmade wooden bow ties in particular for shoes?

The idea of creating products from natural materials originated in early 2015. Like all young domestic brands, WoodTon tried to find a niche among the handmade accessories manufacturers.

The first product we created was the sunglasses in a wooden frame. Then we had product range widening and the wooden bow tie era. Bow tie is the main and most popular among our product at the moment.

Upon numerous customers’ requests, we have now cufflinks made of wood as a supplement to the butterflies. Producing these products, we had a dream to create something of our own, to contribute our share, to introduce new trend, so the idea was to create accessories for shoes, because shoes emphasize the owner’s special status.

What is your main goal? Why did you choose wooden forms and colors?

The main goal that we set for ourselves was creating high – quality accessories made of natural, environmentally friendly materials. Accessories that would complement the owner’s image and could make him or her unique.

We chose wood as the main material for several reasons:

- for the unique pattern of each tree that allows each tie to be the only and exclusive one, in fact, you will not find two identical models;

- for ease of material processing that allows us to create a variety of types and forms;

- wood is one of the few materials characterized as a natural and ecological material that you and your children can wear.

Which are the basic principles of your work?

In the early stages of creating accessories WoodTon, we set a goal to create such products that we would be able to wear, that we would like to give to our loved ones and to our business partners.

The basic principles of our work are doing what we can do best, something that brings us pleasure and that our customers will appreciate. Receiving hundreds of positive feedback from our customers, seeing happy WoodTon accessories owners, fulfilling custom orders from regular customers, we believe we have set the right priorities in our work and in the future we will improve them.

Where can your bow ties be found? Which countries and do you plan any further expansion?

One can buy WoodTon accessories anywhere worldwide at our online stores on Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Dawanda.

At the moment, the main WoodTon products buyers are from the USA and Europe, in particular Germany, France, Italy, however, sales in other countries such as Australia, Canada, Austria begin to actively grow.

In the future we plan to cover the whole Europe, as well as to start cooperation with offline stores where the customer can see the product physically, assess its quality, order a custom design.

How challenging is being the first in the industry to make 3D form bow ties?

We are one of the first brands in our country that started creating 3D bow ties. The creation of the first 3D model prototype took more than a month, however, there was further improvement with respect to its size, volume, and shape. The final version appeared only after 3 months of work.

Creating 3D models takes 4-5 times more time than the manufacturing conventional models. We use only solid pieces of wood and cover them with natural oils from Danish or Canadian producers.

When we created the first bow tie model, we began to experiment with forms and currently we offer our customers over 10 different variations. For the most demanding customers we offer individual design, engraving, exotic types of trees, that will match your suit, shirt and shoes.

More Info:

Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/woodton
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUDfoIScWclySQo5TwbSF0Q
Dawanda: https://en.dawanda.com/shop/WoodTon
eBay: http://stores.ebay.com/WoodenBowTies
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/handmade/WoodTon