Karin Yilmaz-Egger and Petra Schultz are rafinesse & tristesse. The initial idea for the company came in 2005 when we turned an old olive tin into a toy kitchen for one of our own children. Our friends liked the miniature kitchen so much that they urged us to develop other products.
We founded the company in 2006 and have been developing new products ever since. Our next product was “tin tuffet”, an upholstered stool made from an olive tin.
In April of 2007 we first exhibited our products in Berlin, and we started attending
international trade fairs.
Our breakthrough came in 2008 when we won the “Talents” competition at the design fair Ambiente in Frankfurt. After this we could no longer keep up with the demand for our stools. We have since been growing our team and now design and produce all our products in Berlin and Bern, where we collaborate closely with several social services. These include TRIVA, a work program for drug addicts in Bern and USE is a work programm for people with special needs in Berlin. |
