We joined Mateusz Wójcik, part-owner of the family-run brand Cumulus Wool, to chat about sustainability, all things yarn, and DHL nightmares. The brand, a knitwear business with Mother Hen Jolanta Wójcik at its core, produces dozens of visually alluring beanies, hoods, scrunchies, and cotton hats that feel even better than they look.
Based between Poland and Berlin, Cumulus Wool had its early beginnings at trade fairs in Warsaw, Poland. Jolanta, a working nurse, began things as a passion project, knitting her beloved creations with fervor and launching an Instagram account back in 2020. With an influx of orders coming through DMs, she soon realized that what may have started out as a passion project had the potential to become much more, so she enlisted the help of her son Mateusz, a graphic designer and creative director to create a website and manage most areas of the business.
When it comes to Cumulus Wool, it is clear that all you need is love, sustainable quality materials, and the rest, as they say, might just get you into a department store—if you’re prepared to make cataclysmic price markups, that is, an ambition not shared by all. “It would be super lovely to have our brand in a fancy department store, but we also just can’t afford to add another 50% to the costs of our items. I know some fashion labels do this, but for us, it would be crazy to do something like that at this point.”, says Mateusz.
“It would be super lovely to have our brand in a fancy department store, but we also just can’t afford to add another 50% to the costs of our items. I know some fashion labels do this, but for us, it would be crazy to do something like that at this point.”
When did you start your brand, and how did it all come to be?
Mateusz: So it started with my mother. My mother was knitting and posting her creations online. I have ten years of experience working in advertising, graphic design, and art direction. So she asked me for help. My sister came up with the name of the brand, and from there we made the logo, and I created the website. Since then, I’ve been doing everything from administration, social media, and advertising—everything that doesn’t involve knitting and product creation itself. The brand started seriously about two years ago. Before that, we had an Instagram account, and we were only selling items in Poland. My mother would answer direct messages from people who wanted to place orders. But this eventually became unsustainable for us, so we created a website and opened up our pool of orders too.
You’re a family-run business is that right?
Mateusz: Yes my mother is at the core of the brand, as she is the one who produces all of our accessories by hand, and I do most of the work when it comes to everything else. My sister also helps out sometimes. She was dealing with customer service and stuff like that, but she doesn’t have as much time anymore. However, she will be helping us with the search for more people to join us, as we are actually looking to hire right now.
Where is your brand based?
Mateusz: I am based in Berlin, and my mother lives in Poland.
When it comes to the roles within your brand, are they strictly defined, or do you all do a bit of everything?
Mateusz: They are strictly defined. My mother is responsible for the design and creation of all the products. I sometimes help with any additional products that we create, like the silk scarves, for example. These are a collaboration we did with tattoo artist mati2.0.tattoo. But everything else that is hand-knitted is designed by my mother.
When it comes to the materials that you use, the yarn for your balaclavas and beanies, and the silk scarves that you mentioned, where do you source them from?
Mateusz: It really depends. The scarves were printed in my hometown in Poland, actually at a place that is just 10 minutes from my mother’s place. When we can, we try to source things locally, so packaging and printing we get from Poland. Yarns we get worldwide. Right now, we are buying yarns from South Africa and have direct contact with the producers. Sometimes we use second-party dealers. As we need to order a lot of yarn, for example, we need to make orders for hundreds of balls of yarn, or say, 10 kilos. We also sometimes use Japanese silk. From India, we sometimes source silk made out of recycled saris. And we also source some yarn from Europe, mainly Norway, and Denmark.
Take us through the process of creating one of your products, because it seems like there’s a lot to do. How long does it take to produce one of your beanies, for example?
Mateusz: So, a beanie would take about 10 hours to knit for my mother, and she is like a robot right now. Before, it used to take between 15-20 hours. Hoods would take up to 3-4 days to make. But for a regular person who knits, I think it would take around a week, of knitting for about 8 hours per day. Right now, something like a hood takes around 25 hours to make, and 10 hours for a beanie. Those are our two main products that we sell. When it comes to the scarf, the illustration, including reiterations, choosing the design, and color adjustments all took about two months of daily work to complete.
When it comes to sales, do you have a studio, a store, or do you sell exclusively online?
Mateusz: We are only selling our items online right now. We are trying to open for stockists, but the provisions for what we would need to include are too high for us right now. A department store recently inquired with us about making wholesale items for them. And while of course, it would be super lovely to have our brand in a fancy store, but we also just can’t afford to add another 50% to the costs of our items. I know some fashion labels do this, but for us, it would be crazy to do something like that at this point. Having said that, we are aiming by next fall to have our items in an undisclosed tattoo store in Berlin, in Kreuzberg.
What are your thoughts on in-store shopping in general these days VS online shopping? Online shopping has been rising, especially during COVID, and has continued to grow. It is said that it currently accounts for 30% of all sales.
Mateusz: Well, with us, for example, as we have such a specific product, if someone were to ask me before we started our brand whether I thought our products would sell well online, I would have said, ‘Hell no.’ The quality of the product really comes through when you touch them and feel the yarn we use. But somehow, selling online really works for us. A lot of our customers these days actually come from the States, New York and San Francisco in particular.
So on that note, let’s talk a bit about international shipping. I would imagine that this could be one of the most nightmarish aspects of running an online business?
Mateusz: It’s true; it can be quite a hell sometimes. In the beginning, when we didn’t have a company account with DHL, it was a real nightmare, especially here in Germany. I would say that about 10% of all of our orders were lost or stolen. But since we got a company account in Poland, it has all run much more smoothly. We used to do custom orders, but we stopped that as well, as they are not returnable and they eat up a lot of time. But the main nightmares that we’ve had always came from investigating lost or stolen packages. High customer demands are also the causes of our headaches sometimes, with some customers not understanding, or being willing to understand that we are not a corporation like Zalando and cannot provide free shipping and free returns.
Have you ever had or do you have a business strategy when it comes to social media or any other aspects of your brand and business?
Mateusz: Not really. Only in the last few months have we begun to have a bit of a stronger marketing strategy, but before that, it wasn’t very precise. As I mentioned, I worked in advertising for ten years. And I also took some Instagram and Meta courses recently, so we finally have more streamlined knowledge there. But our marketing strategy has tended to be loose.
When it comes to the design of your brand, you said you have 10 years of experience working in art direction and advertising, did you study design or marketing?
Mateusz: No, actually I studied modern literature, and after that I started working as a graphic designer. My sister studied fine arts and then went on to study product design. And my mother is still a working nurse.
WOW. How does she manage her time? That’s sounds really impressive!
Mateusz: I have no idea. It is very time-consuming, but it’s also really rewarding when people are super happy with our products.
Can you give us any insights into what you have coming up this summer/autumn season?
Mateusz: This summer, we will be launching our cotton hats, scrunchies, and scarves, but we won’t be introducing any new items until the fall season.
And our last question is: you’re going on a skiing trip holiday, which Cumulus item do you pack?
Mateusz: I am not a ski pro, not even close, so I guess this hood would help to make me visible.
Okay, we lied. We actually have one more question for you. We would like to play a little game that we call “Who does the algorithm think I am?” and for this game we need you to send us a photo of your brand’s Instagram discover page…
Mateusz: Ha ha ok here you go, this is from our Cumulus Wool account.
Who do you want to see next?
