From his first prototypes at the Paris fairs, to the Tate Modern in London, Oli’s bath toys and teethers

The Tate Modern in London selected one of the products from its Fruits collection

Olimpia and Carolina Román, the founders of Oli

His company was born from an objective, sustainability, and from there his product, teethers and bath toys for babies, was born. They were clear that they wanted to use a 100% natural material, in their case it was rubber, and when they found it they saw what they could do with it, “at no time was it what we did, but how, we had always thought that we wanted to do something sustainable, something unique, different,” says Carol.

They met someone who worked with that material, and while Carol was still at school and Oli at university, they decided to try samples, “we weren’t in a hurry, in the end it was trial and error.” After a few long months with prototypes and samples, they found the one that convinced them, and it was a distributor who believed in her project and took the product to make it known at the Maison Object fair in Paris. “It was us too, since at that time we didn’t have anything to lose either, and that was the test to see that people liked our product, they were interested in how we had gotten there, our history, they valued that we were young entrepreneurs”.

That helped them learn, although they assure that at that time their designs had nothing to do with those of today. From there, Carol promoted the social media channel and with that came her first distributor in the US, a fact that triggered demand and the project began to take much more seriously.

Within the growing demand, the road was not always easy, rapid growth implies having a lot of stock and meeting delivery deadlines. The sisters say that they worked with a supplier that could not deliver all the demand they had, “we had all the orders sold, but we did not receive the quantities that we had requested from the factory, sometimes not even a third”.

Luckily, that bump encouraged them to look for new horizons and also new markets. It was then that they decided to start manufacturing their product in Asia, where they found a supplier that followed all the craftsmanship and sustainability practices, and could also keep up with their growth rate.

In the last two years, its turnover has grown by 25%, reaching 2.8 million euros in 2021. In addition, they have opened new markets in Japan and Korea and have incorporated 9 new exclusive distributors in markets such as Canada, Sweden, England, Poland, Belgium, which has made it possible to sell around half a million teethers every year throughout the world from its warehouse of more than 1,000m.

Its bath toys and teethers were born from the need to innovate on an existing product. The Roman sisters found that most baby bath products had a hole, and a lot of bacteria accumulated there. “We thought that the essential thing in our product was to cover that hole, and that’s how we made it totally safe.” In this way they managed to make their product antibacterial.

I wasn’t

His latest collection, focused on the fundamental principles of the Bauhaus movement, is opening the doors to other museums. Its objective is to bring art closer to children with geometric shapes and primary colors, the design is inspired by geometry and abstraction, trying to combine aesthetics with functionality.

Carolina and Olimpia Román consider themselves art lovers, and one of their goals is to reach museum stores, since these stores select educational products with a message behind them. “We believe that we do more than toys, we introduce families to choose products that are not made of plastic, brands that really take care of everything from beginning to end, which is what we try to do.” His intention is to continue collaborating, not only with museums, but also with designers, artists, brands or personalities that match his values, and thus be more present in more markets.