Our story
Mjúk means soft.
MJÚK Iceland today
Today MJÚK Iceland is an Icelandic manufacturing company with a factory, 2 workshops, 4 stores and 30 people in the team. It started from zero.
It took us many years to build the production and it was even more difficult to build the team that feels the same way about making customers happy for many years after they purchase something from us.
We don’t have bundle deals or seasonal discounts, for two reasons: 1) MJÚK prefers to work fairly and sell well: we put a small margin on our products to offer the best price possible to everyone who comes to our stores — no tricks or catchy techniques; 2) we want you to buy only what you really love and will enjoy for many years ahead. That is better for you and more sustainable for nature.
In 2024 and 2025 we got Company of the Year awards from the Minister of Innovation and the President of Iceland. We continue growing organically, developing new designs and even raw materials (our special baby Suri alpaca with silk). As a company we support Icelandic and Ukrainian charities, organize cultural events for locals and travelers, and just do our best to be a good manufacturer and employer.
We invite you to come and enjoy our murals. Our flagship store at Laugavegur 23 is in a historic house built by Guðjón Samúelsson. We have finished a full renovation of the whole exterior and expanded the original mural.
The team
The designer
Life is too short and too precious to choose things that “fit into trends or social expectations” instead of making yourself happy. I dedicate my work to designing and producing soft and cozy garments in hundreds of colors and textures, so that you can find the one that makes you feel really good. It might be too fuzzy or too romantic a color for someone else, but for you it feels just right. When a customer gasps and says “that’s my perfect beanie I have always imagined” or when you come to our store and we recognize a design we produced 10 years ago, that is what makes me obsessed with my job as a designer.
Back in 1991 I was a little girl sitting on a stack of blankets while my mother and sister were selling nuts from our garden and pickled cucumbers in −20 °C frost in a big city 2,000 km from our home. We lived in Ukraine and tried to survive the economic turbulence of the 90s. We bought locally produced woolen blankets and food and drove to sell them in Samara, where our granny lived. Times got better and worse: hyperinflation, robberies and corruption destroyed everything we had built several times, yet we always rebuilt it. Once we had to sell our apartment and ate only instant noodles for half a year, but we never failed to pay our employees and creditors. Even in the toughest times our parents took us to all the museums and theaters in Kyiv to develop us culturally. They believe that a strong spirit and belief in the beauty of the world are the most important elements of education.
My mom and sister developed the business, and I was with them all the time until I started university and corporate jobs in large multinational companies. I wanted to learn from the best and the biggest and be able to navigate this tough world. I got a Master’s degree in International Financial Management and learnt design and production in practice at the factory. From the age of 20, working at PwC and then at a huge glass production holding in Switzerland taught me a lot, and I came back to our family business with some radical ideas: 1) stop producing cheap products and switch to unique, high-quality ones; 2) risk and bet everything on exporting to the west and north. That’s how we came to Iceland for the first time in 2009. At first we failed, but after years of effort we managed to start selling our blankets and hats here. Then I moved here in 2017, and that is when things really changed. We are grateful for the opportunity to live and work in this beautiful country. In 2019 we opened our first store, in 2020 we started production here, and in 2022 our factory in Ukraine was occupied and we expanded production in Iceland.
My main job is to design and produce, but I try to work many shifts in the shops as well — to have direct conversations with customers, to understand you better and to improve my designs constantly.
Hugs,
Anna
Designer and owner of MJÚK Iceland