The short version:
a grandmother,
five sheep,
and a sauna.
CozyRozy started as a birthday present. Rozika made her grandson a wool felt hat for his thirtieth; he wore it to the sauna; a friend asked where to get one; that was two years ago. This is the longer version of that answer.
First there are sheep.
Five farms, all within an hour’s drive.
Jezersko–Solčava sheep
The Jezersko–Solčava is a stubborn, woolly, distinctly unfashionable animal that has been grazing these valleys since the 13th century. Its fleece is coarse by commercial standards — which, for felting, is a feature. The fibers lock together tightly and keep their shape for decades.
We buy from five farms within an hour of Bohinj: Srednja Vas, Studor, Stara Fužina, Ukanc, and Koprivnik. Janez at Srednja Vas does the biggest share; Ana at Koprivnik has twelve sheep and treats each of them like a small dog.
Every spring, Rozika’s grandson Luka drives a van to each farm and collects the fleeces. We weigh them, note the farm, and scour them at home. No industrial washing, no bleaching, no dye unless the hat needs it.
Then there is Rozika,
her kitchen table, and a wooden hat form.
The workshop is her kitchen. Eleven hours to make a Classic Cone, twelve for a Dome, fourteen for a Moon Phase with embroidery. The wooden form was her mother’s.
Rozika is 68. She worked in a textile mill in Kranj until 1997, then stopped working. She started felting as a hobby in 2011 because her retirement pension didn’t cover the heating.
Each hat is pencil-signed on the inside band: the batch number, the piece number, and R for Rozika. When the band stops being legible — in about ten years of regular sauna use — we’ll sew a new one in for free.
documentary · window light
Five founders.
Four of us are not Rozika.
Luka is Rozika’s grandson; he takes the photos and negotiates with the farms. Jure is a physiotherapist who kept telling patients to sit in saunas and noticed nobody had a hat. Simon and Ana write the code and run the studio. Rozika makes everything.
Rozika
Felt. Everything. Also strong opinions on which sheep give the best wool. (Ana’s.)
Luka
Photography, wool sourcing, logistics. Drives the van in the spring.
Jure
The reason we exist. Still seeing patients in Ljubljana three days a week.
Simon
Writes the site, answers the emails, gets told off for typos.
Ana
Runs the waitlist, the Kickstarter, and the kitchen schedule.
What we believe,
and what we refuse.
We will never make 10,000 hats a year. If demand outstrips Rozika, we teach one apprentice. If it outstrips two, we close the waitlist.
We don’t sell accessories. We sell the conditions for a fifteen-minute pause. Everything we write assumes you are already inside the sauna.
We post our margins. We name the farms. We’ll tell you when we’re out of a color and not try to sell you a different one.
No countdown timers. No “only 3 left!” banners. The batch is the batch. If you miss it, wait for the next one.
No chakras, no affirmations, no curated self-care bundles. A hat is a hat. The sauna does the rest.
We would rather miss a launch date than ship a bad hat. The felt decides the calendar.