One of the newcomers in Helsinki’s shopping map is Lumi on 14, a flagship store of bag and accessories label Lumi Accessories. In addition to the company’s own bag collections Lumi (snow in English) Accessories and Mhann, the shop also includes several individual clothing and accessories label from Finland and abroad.

Lumi on 14 was born after its owner couple Sanna Kantola and Bruno Beaugrand moved from New York to Helsinki earlier this year. Also the headquarters of Lumi Accessories moved to Helsinki and is now situated in connection to Lumi on 14.

”Lumi is an international label with functions all over the world. International business doesn’t depend on the home town of the company”, argues Sanna Kantola of moving to Helsinki.

“We were able to improve our quality of life by moving to Helsinki”, she continues. ”We still visit Paris and New York several times a year. This way we can get the best of each cities.”

”We have to hire more people in the future and we feel that we’ll find the right people in Finland”, says Bruno Beaugrand. ”We don’t want to be an American label, but come to Europe and Finland instead. Here people are also interested in the story of the product, not just in how the product looks like. Japan is also a good market for us, but we preferred moving to Helsinki.”

Individuality and high quality

Sanna Kantola is a fashion designer born in Finland and studied fashion design at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Bruno Beaugrand is a French-born industrial designer. The couple established Lumi Accessories in New York in 2000. For the first two years, Sanna Kantola worked as a bag designer for Ralph Lauren and Bruno Beaugrand designed watches for Tiffany & Co.

Both started to work full-time for Lumi Accessories in 2002, in the same year they started to go to fairs in Europe. Four years later they launched Mhann, a bag collection for men. Today both collections go hand in hand – men might even buy Lumi and women Mhann.

Sanna Kantola is the designer behind Lumi and its trendier line called Chesterfield and Bruno Beaugrand designs Mhann. Both collections are made for “people, who are aesthetically educated and who are not after trends, but personality and quality”, as Beaugrand puts it. This mainly means designers, architects, media people and graphic designers.

The collections have also found their clientele. Especially Mhann for men has found its place in the luxury street wear market. The bags are functional and of high quality, but relaxed and not too defined. The leathers of the bags have been carefully picked up and coloured to find exactly the desired colour. The materials in men’s bags are often quite rough, and the minor failures in the leather might have been intentionally cut to be seen in the final product.

Visions for the future

Lumi Accessories currently employs 5 to 7 people and several freelancers, such as graphic designers and photographers. Lumi and Mhann bags are sold in 20 countries, but as Sanna Kantola reminds, the amount of countries does not make a company big. Lumi Accessories produces about 10 000 bags a year and has a turnover of about 650.000–700.000 euros.

Lumi Accessories produces bags, but also purses, wallets and gloves. “We would like to become a company like Orla Kiely or Donna Karan”, says Sanna Kantola. “Orla Kiely is a British label which started with bags but has expanded to other products and become a fashion house.”

”Now we have our own store in Helsinki, later perhaps also in Paris, New York and Tokyo”, she continues. ”The next turn could be leather clothing or home ware instead of expanding to clothes made of fabric.”

Lumi on 14 is located in Pursimiehenkatu 14, Helsinki. The website of the shop will be opened by the end of the year in www.lumion14.com.