THE OUTO STORY “I want to have a different beanie for every day of the week.” And so he started the first one. It wasn’t perfect, but with some help from his mother and a tremendous inspiration from his snowboarding idols he made the seven of them. But before the third one was ready his friends at school already asked him to make them the kind of cool beanie he was wearing. (October, 2002) Through the winter his snowboarding friends asked for more and more of the individual, hand made beanies. In fact, the beanies started to be seen all over Finland where the snowboarders made their tricks. “We should call these beanies with some name!” he said on a hot summer day. After two more steps in the market place in Turku it was clear. OUTO, that’s what we’ll call them. For foreigners: OUTO means weird in Finnish language. (July, 2003) In the global village internet spread the word. People from all over started asking how they could get their own OUTO. The ladies at the post office started to know him of his frequent visits to send small soft envelopes.

“What is this that you are doing? Shouldn’t you have a company for this?” they asked. And so the name was registered as trademark and the company, Outo Wear & Gear started. (October, 2003) The business was flowing, and OUTO got a side bar at the annual Ski & Board Expo in Helsinki and the first re-sellers took beanies in their shops. As part of the Finnish team he was sent to Trofeo Topolino, the Disney junior games in Folgarida, Italy. His board bag was stuffed with beanies – and there weren’t enough of them as his fellow boarders bought them to take them home all over the world. “Cool, so many people with open minds and the right attitude are wearing OUTO. This is becoming a World Domination Industry for people with minds and ideas of their own.” (March 2004) In April he won the Finnish junior halfpipe championship – and opened the first website for OUTO stuff. In addition to beanies there were hoodies and summer hats. In autumn outowear.com was launched with help from Jussi Leinonen from Rovaniemi. (September 2004) “How did you think of starting to make beanies?”, the first question of every one of the dozens of TV and press interviews that he was invited to. And the boom went on with crocheting classes at the Board Expo, handicraft trade fairs and culture seminars, and with design panel debates and lectures on entrepreneurships at schools and polytechnics.

The book ‘Stitch’n bitch’ included him as the local icon of the renaissance of handicrafts (November 2005). The Finnish EU presidency tossed a great challenge for OUTO. In just three months he made 260 different, unique beanies for the international Young Active Citizenship delegates. Each one was tagged with a ThingLink code and has its virtual presence on the net, www.thinglink.org. (July 2006) “Making small things is great.” An all new group of cool customers got their own Outo products when the Nordic Kids web store included Outo beanies for babies and kids in their range of Nordic top brands. (August 2006) "I prefer individualized clothing." Six months in military service gave a pretty good idea what uniforms are all about. Freedom and feeling good about life are supported by showing your personality trough individual clothing. (January-July 2007) OUTO is presented in the book "Suomalaisen designin uudet mielentilat" published in September 2007 by Otava. Outo is also invited to show a collection of beanies at the Espoo City Museums exhibition of headwear. Outo Wear & Gear / Ville Lahtinen Santatie 2, FI 03250 Ojakkala Tel. +358405054540 info (a) outowear dot com