MaRou produces earthy, rugged-style functional and decorative textiles from recycled and natural materials. The products are made in Lapland, in Käyrämö, entirely by hand, with passion and love for the user in mind. For example, the molds used for making children's felt slippers are also designed and manufactured in-house.
Naturalness and nature itself guide all our activities, which is why we want to work with traditional methods, respecting the old ways of working and respecting nature. We make products from materials that reduce the waste of usable materials in the environment - our activities are therefore based on a circular economy. 

The sheep's wool used in the felt products comes from Vuojärvi and from farms that have previously sent their wool to landfill. The distance from MaRou's premises to the sheep farms is about 20 km, so we use material produced as close as possible. Any dyed wool that we cannot get as close is also mainly domestically produced. We also use alpaca and lamb wool for custom-made products for rheumatism and pain patients, as well as the felted baby slippers.
Carpets and furnishing textiles are all made from discarded textiles. For example, the only new product in our HuMuFa bag is the yarn used to make the bag, everything else is a variety of discarded products such as jeans or recycled plastic. 

We process all the wool used in our products ourselves. The work starts on the sheep farm, scratching the sheep and talking to them before and after shearing. We help with the wool shearing process, where we get the wool that has been sheared. After the wool is collected, we transport it to MaRou's workshop in Käyrämö, where the wool is cleaned of hay and other debris and washed with river water without soap or detergents. We want to preserve the naturalness of the wool so that the product takes care of its user and we do not use any fragrances in our work for exactly the same reason. After rinsing, the dirtiest water of all is also put to good use - watering and fertilising the flowers in the garden. The wool is dried outdoors on slatted tables and the final drying is done in MaRou's Kässäkammer on a large table. Due to the weather conditions in Lapland, this work is mainly done in summer.
For the next step, the opening of the wool, Juha has made a swing to open the wool fibres before carding. The carding of the wool is also done on a self-made carding mill. Sheep wool comes in three main colours; black, brown and white. By combining these colours, we create exactly the product our customers want and maintain the naturalness, which is an important and core value for us. We use all of the wool, so that the colour differences add to the roughness and uniqueness of our products. Our products are felted with a gentle bar soap made in-house, which contains no dyes or fragrances.

The alpaca's wool we use is also local, from the Tallitonttu yard in the Arctic Circle. This wool is currently used for baby slippers, for people allergic to sheep's wool, for people with sensitive skin in their hats, for rheumatism sufferers, and also for slippers, mittens and outdoor shoes for pain patients. So please remember to let us know when you shop if you are allergic to sheep's wool or if your body has symptoms of sheep's wool.