Nadia Okonjo
Design
Draws every set and argues with the test panel about the ones they reject. Was a furniture designer for eleven years.
Since 2019, Hackney
Nadia designs them, Sam makes them work, and about two hundred children decide whether they were any good.
The first one
Our daughter wanted a crane whose arm actually rotated. Everything on the shelf was moulded plastic with a sticker of a crane on the side, so Sam cut one out of scrap ply on the kitchen table and it lasted about four days. The eleventh version lasted a year, and by then nine other parents at the nursery had asked for one.
That is still how a set starts: a specific complaint from a specific child, a rough prototype within the fortnight, and a test panel that has no interest whatsoever in our feelings. About half of what we prototype never makes it to a run.
House rules
Children decide, not us
Two hundred and ten kids across eleven nurseries get the prototypes for a fortnight. If they stop reaching for it we do not make it, however clever the mechanism is.
Small runs, honestly small
Five hundred means five hundred. We do not quietly reprint a sold-out set under a new name, and we say on the product page when something is coming back.
A set is never finished
We hold spare parts for every run we have ever made. A toy that becomes rubbish the moment one piece goes missing is a toy with a fortnight of life in it.
Materials you can name
FSC birch ply, beech dowel, water-based paint, recycled greyboard. If we cannot explain what something is made of on one line, we do not use it.
Kitchen table to workshop
Eleven cranes
Sam cuts prototype after prototype on the kitchen table. The eleventh survives a year of a four-year-old, and nine parents at the nursery ask where to buy one.
2019
Run 01, forty boxes
Nadia leaves her studio job. We make forty numbered cranes in a rented railway arch, sell them in a weekend, and spend the money on a better saw.
2021
The test panel
Two nurseries agree to take prototypes for a fortnight at a time in exchange for the toys afterwards. It is the single best decision we have made.
2023
Hackney workshop
Four of us, one CNC router we do not fully understand yet, and a shelf of spare parts for every run since 01.
2024
Run 07 and counting
Forty-one thousand boxes posted, ninety-six percent of buyers come back, and we still make five hundred at a time.
2026
Four people, one router
Sam Wren
Making
Runs the router, the finishing bench and the spare-parts shelf. Built the first crane on a kitchen table in 2019.
Hana Petrov
Safety & testing
Owns the twelve tests and the paperwork behind them. Will happily explain the difference between EN 71-1 and EN 71-3 to anyone.
Eli Ferreira
Packing & post
Stamps every box with its number and writes the gift cards. If a piece went missing, Eli is the one who posts you another.
The boring important bit
Every Gumball set is certified to EN 71 and ASTM F963 before it gets a run number, and we keep the reports. Ask for one and Hana will send it over the same day.