It's a wrap! The year 2023 deserves many attributes - challenging, sunny, eventful, turbulent. New perspectives were discovered and doors opened, insights gained and impressions made. This blog post looks back on an eventful seventh year at NIKIN - on the funny, instructive, inspiring and intense moments that delighted, engaged, inspired and amused our team and the community throughout the year. have.
NIKIN experienced two annual highlights this year: Cracking the 2 million mark of trees planted and the wedding of our co-founder Robin! The former is an incredible milestone in the history of NIKIN, which is thanks to the entire community - together we are now next heading towards 3 million trees. The second belongs in the #nikinlovestory category, as it was through NIKIN that Robin and Jasmin met in the first place. The beaming couple enjoyed the wedding in wonderful July weather together with NIKIN employees. Congratulations once again, Robin and Jasmin!
Picture: Met through NIKIN, celebrated the wedding with NIKIN!
However, this was not the only wedding where NIKIN was represented: among the many beautiful submissions from our community, there was also a customer who wore our NIKIN socks at the wedding ceremony - wonderful! Speaking of NIKIN Around the World: Since this year, a NIKIN TreeBottle accompanies actor Brad Pitt on his motorcycle tours! He bought one of our popular reusable bottles during a wellness stay in the Alps.
But we also have celebrities in our own ranks: our Challenge League footballer Michael not only shines when it comes to looking after our business customers, but also regularly graces the NIKIN team with his flat jokes (if you're reading this Michi, we're already waiting for the next one!). We have also spotted a new coaching talent as part of our new collaboration with Hockey Club Ambrì Piotta: Coach Ivan!
Picture: "The flat has to go into the square - or something..."
If the coaching career doesn't work out, we are of course also happy. Because Ivan and the rest of the content team always inspire us with breathtaking photo and video material in our releases. And speaking of releases: this year was packed with New Arrivals ! From the first circular shirt in collaboration with OceanSafe, to sleepwear, swimwear and activewear, to the Texcircle sweater, the result of a project between NIKIN and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and the first NIKIN advent calendar, we ventured into new territories. Many of these releases were one-off promotions and therefore sold out quickly, just like the fleece products in our winter collection. These were gone within 3 days, but have already been reordered! Another highlight was the new edition of the very first NIKIN (then still NIKIT) product, the TreeGym Bag, for our 7th birthday. The product team, dressed in an 'unplanned' partner look on some days, did an incredible job with the 13 releases, chapeau!
Picture: The TreeSweater Quarter Zip seems to be popular - especially with its team of designers.
In order to depict the products in a truthful and interesting way, certain props are sometimes needed. That's why we were looking for a bench for the studio pictures of the Winter Collection, which we finally found on Ricardo. The seller was delighted that the former favorite bench of his parents, who had died of old age, had become a photo star. In addition to this stylish tree-green bench, our tree-shaped NIKIN models from the fall campaign and a 'Gondeli' have recently been installed in the NIKIN office. The assembly of the Gondeli was a lot more complicated than that of an IKEA frame (although these are often more complicated than the sketches suggest), but it made for a fun team event.
Picture: The Gondeli under construction.
It's nothing new that the NIKIN team has a lot of fun together: whether packing a few thousand goodie bags for our crowd investors, dressing up for the Halloween release party of the Winter Collection (Robin is hiding under the toilet paper mummy, by the way), writing Christmas cards together or feeding the subliminal mate addiction; laughter and jokes are constant companions - just like at the first workshop with our tree relationship coach, the 'Guru', who was hired on April 1.
Image: Humorous, spooky and imaginative - the costumes at the Halloween release aperitif.
While we took you up on April 1 with this Tree Relationship Coach, we organized educational and fun events together in nature on other occasions. For example, we held two TreePlanting Days, where 60 participants planted a total of 800 trees, two CleanUp Days with a total of 70 people from NIKIN Community and a forest workshop with 15 people who braved the nasty autumn weather. We were also represented at the St. Gallen Openair and the Gurtenfestival, as well as at three Christmas markets in Aarau, Bern and Zurich. It was a great pleasure to experience the commitment of the NIKIN community up close in 2023 and we are looking forward to future events together - big things are planned for 2024, stay tuned!
We would like to thank you, our amazing community, because without you, there would be no NIKIN and the 2 million (and counting) trees planted! We wish you a wonderful, captivating, soul-stirring, fulfilling and outdoor-filled 2024 - see you soon!
