Over the years, some of the most interesting conversations I have had at Vitu Zote have started not with a finished product, but with a material, a workshop and a question:
What else could we make with this?
Working with Kenyan makers and manufacturers has gradually changed the way we think about locally made products.
Some ideas have worked quickly. Others have needed several rounds of sampling, adjustment and discussion. Occasionally, an idea that looked straightforward on paper became much more complicated once we tried to make it. At other times, something that might otherwise have been discarded became the starting point for an entirely new range of products.
Two conversations in particular have stayed with me.
In 2020, I sat down with Harpreet at Kenya Lighting Industries (KLI). We talked about steel, the manufacturing capability they already had, and a relatively simple question: rather than treating leftover material purely as waste, what useful products could we create from it?
That conversation became part of our work with Zuri by KLI.
Today, we make a broad range of Zuri recycled-steel items across different product categories, including home and kitchen accessories, organisers, wall pieces and hospitality products.
Three years later, in 2023, I remember sitting with Arif and Rahim of SunnyDaze and discussing another material that was already around us: timber offcuts.
SunnyDaze has been making furniture in Kenya for decades, and what interested me was not only the material itself, but the woodworking capability already within their wider ecosystem.
Part of that capability comes through the Odijo Foundation, which supports selected people recovering from drug addiction by helping them rebuild their lives through vocational training and woodworking.
The question we began exploring together was simple:
Could good timber left over from furniture production become useful, well-designed products rather than waste?
We began looking at chopping boards, serving boards, trays, cake stands and other kitchen and home accessories.
What I value about this partnership is that the social purpose sits behind a real product proposition. The pieces still have to be well made, functional and desirable. The objective is not for someone to buy them out of sympathy, but because they are good products — while also recognising the skill, training and opportunity involved in making them.
That experience reinforced something we have come to believe strongly at Vitu Zote: good product development can create value in more than one place at the same time — for the customer, the manufacturer, the maker and the material itself.
Those two experiences — separated by material, maker and several years — capture many of the things we have learned about making products in Kenya.
1. Sometimes the Material Should Come Before the Product
Traditional product development often begins with an object.
You decide what you want to make, draw it and then find the material and manufacturer capable of producing it.
Our experience has taught us that the process can work the other way around too. The Zuri conversation began partly with steel and manufacturing capability. The SunnyDaze conversation began partly with timber offcuts and woodworking skill. Then came the question:
What useful object could this become?
This changes the design process.
An offcut may be unsuitable for a table but ideal for a chopping board. A particular piece of steel may lend itself to a napkin holder, organiser or wall accessory. Manufacturing equipment designed for one industry can sometimes produce something entirely different.
It has made us much more interested in understanding what a workshop can already do before deciding what we want it to make.
2. Waste Can Be a Design Brief
Sustainability is an easy word to use. It becomes much more interesting when it presents an actual design constraint.
The timber at SunnyDaze was not an abstract sustainability problem. These were physical pieces of wood left after furniture production.
Some were different sizes. Some had particular grain patterns. Some were more useful than others.
So the challenge was practical:
How do we turn this material into something desirable enough that somebody actually wants to own and use it?
That distinction matters. Using waste does not automatically make a good product.
The resulting object still needs to function well, feel considered and justify its place in somebody's home.
The same principle influenced our early conversations with KLI about steel. Manufacturing inevitably creates remnants and unused material. The opportunity is not simply to announce that something has been recycled, but to use design and manufacturing capability to give that material another useful life.
Our experience with both companies has convinced me that some of the most interesting product opportunities can be found by looking at what manufacturers already have around them.
3. A Good Prototype Is Only the Beginning
Making one beautiful object is very different from making that object well, repeatedly. The first chopping board can look excellent. Then come the harder questions. Can we maintain the dimensions across a production run? How much variation in timber is acceptable? Can we reproduce the finish? What happens when we make 20 rather than one? Can the same material be sourced again? Can the product be packaged safely? Can the maker produce it at a price that works commercially?
These questions become particularly important once a product moves beyond a workshop and into retail or hospitality.
A hotel ordering several pieces expects them to perform consistently. A customer buying a product six months later should receive something made to the same functional standard.
We have therefore learned to treat the first successful sample not as the end of product development, but as the beginning of a production system.
4. Working with Kenyan Makers Means Designing Collaboratively
One of the things I have come to value most is a maker saying:
“There is a better way to do this.”
Someone who works with timber, steel or another material every day possesses knowledge that is very difficult to reproduce on a drawing.
They know where something may break. They know what will make production unnecessarily difficult. They know how the material behaves.
They often know that changing something by a few millimetres will make the product considerably easier to manufacture.
This is why I don't think the best relationship is one where we send a maker a drawing and simply ask them to reproduce it.
Vitu Zote understands the customer, how an object will be used, what people are prepared to pay and what tends to succeed or fail in retail and hospitality.
The maker understands material and production.
The strongest products tend to emerge from the conversation between those two forms of knowledge.
5. Handmade Does Not Mean Uncontrolled
Working with natural materials has also changed our understanding of consistency. No two pieces of timber are identical. Grain changes. Colour varies. Hand finishing leaves subtle differences. Those characteristics are often part of what makes an object attractive.
But there is an important difference between natural variation and poor consistency.
A chopping board should sit properly on a counter. A tray should be stable. An edge should be properly finished. Dimensions should remain within sensible tolerances. Hardware should be secure.
The objective should not necessarily be to make a handmade product look as though it came from a machine.
Instead, we have learned to establish clear standards around the things that matter while allowing the material to retain some of its individuality.
I increasingly think of this as controlled variation.
6. The Details People Don't Immediately See Often Determine Quality
Many of the decisions that make a product good are surprisingly unglamorous. Sanding. Edges. Joining. Material thickness. The underside of a product. Surface finishing. Packaging. The way a product feels when you pick it up. These are rarely the things that attract someone to a product photograph.
But they often determine whether that person is still happy with the product several years later.
Working with manufacturers has made us much more interested in these details. It has also taught us that quality is rarely created by one spectacular feature. More often, it is the accumulation of dozens of small decisions being made properly.
7. Product Design Has to Respect Manufacturing Reality
There is also a temptation when developing products to draw something precisely as we imagine it and expect the workshop to reproduce it.
Materials have other ideas. Wood moves. Steel has thickness. Tools have limits. Processes have tolerances.
A design that looks beautifully simple on paper can sometimes require an unnecessarily complicated manufacturing process.
This is another reason our relationship with makers has become increasingly collaborative. The objective is not to dilute the design until it becomes easy to manufacture. Nor is it to insist on complexity simply because something looked good in a drawing.
The challenge is finding the point where design intent and manufacturing knowledge reinforce each other.
That is usually where the best product sits.
8. Kenyan Manufacturing Has to Make Commercial Sense
There is understandable enthusiasm around buying locally made products in Kenya. We share it.
But I don't believe the long-term future of Kenyan manufacturing can depend on people purchasing something simply because it was made here.
The product still has to earn its place. It needs to be useful. It needs to be desirable. The workmanship needs to be good. The price has to make sense. And crucially, the economics need to work for the maker as well.
A product that a manufacturer cannot profitably continue making is not sustainable, regardless of how good the original idea was.
Equally, continually pushing a maker's price down until good materials and workmanship are impossible does not build a healthy manufacturing ecosystem.
The strongest outcome is when everybody benefits: the maker, the retailer or hospitality customer, and the person ultimately using the product.
9. Iteration Is Not Failure
Some of the products we are happiest with did not begin that way. The first sample may have been too large. A handle didn't quite feel right. The material behaved differently from what we expected. Something was unnecessarily difficult to manufacture. The proportions looked good on a screen but wrong once the object was sitting on a table. So we changed it. And sometimes changed it again. I have become much more comfortable with that process. A sample that reveals a problem has done something useful. It has taught us something.
The improvement between the first and final version may eventually be obvious, or it might be only a few millimetres, a different edge or a more appropriate finish.
Those changes matter.
10. “Made in Kenya” Should Be a Source of Confidence, Not an Excuse
Perhaps this is the lesson I feel most strongly about. The ambition should be considerably higher than simply making something locally.
A Kenyan-made product should be able to sit alongside a product made anywhere else and be judged on the same things:
Design. Function. Material. Workmanship. Durability. Value.
Its Kenyan origin can add another layer of meaning. But origin should never have to excuse shortcomings in the product.
Our experience with companies such as KLI and SunnyDaze has reinforced my belief that the manufacturing knowledge and talent already exist here.
The more interesting question is what happens when that capability is combined with good product thinking, patient development and a real understanding of the market.
Looking Ahead
When I think back to that conversation with Harpreet in 2020, or sitting with Arif and Rahim three years later discussing what their timber offcuts might become, the thing that interests me most is how ordinary the starting point was.
There was no grand announcement. There was a material. There was manufacturing knowledge. And there was a conversation about possibilities.
Some of those conversations eventually became products that are now sitting in homes, offices, hotels and restaurants.
There is still a great deal for us to learn.
Kenyan manufacturing faces real challenges around materials, equipment, consistency, capacity and scale. We shouldn't romanticise those difficulties.
But after working through them with different makers, I am increasingly convinced that the opportunity is much bigger than simply substituting an imported product with something locally produced.
The opportunity is to develop better products here. Products where material is considered carefully. Where makers contribute knowledge rather than simply labour. Where waste can sometimes become an input rather than an endpoint. Where commercial viability and good design reinforce one another.
And ultimately, products that deserve their place in people's homes because they are good products first — and that happen, proudly, to have been made in Kenya.
Articles by Aaron
What We’ve Learned from Working with Kenyan Makers
Discover how partnering with local Kenyan artisans and manufacturers—from transforming leftover steel and timber offcuts into refined homeware to championing collaborative design—has reshaped our approach to creating products that are beautifully functional, commercially sustainable, and proudly made in Kenya.
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Discover Vitu Zote’s Made in Kenya collection, including products from Zuri by KLI, SunnyDaze, QP and other Kenyan makers.
Read more about SunnyDaze and its wood products created from furniture-production offcuts.
