Estonia is small. So small that when someone makes something genuinely good, we usually hear about it before the shop even opens its doors. But sometimes it goes the other way round: a few Estonian brands grow big and end up on Amazon and in gift baskets abroad, while we here still assume the thing must be Italian or American.
A name is a sly little thing. We are Sokisahtel, and our name leaves absolutely no doubt about where we come from. Not every brand makes that choice, and honestly it is completely understandable when the plan is to go global from day one.
Estonian brands that do not sound Estonian at all
Here are three brands that most people would never guess are Estonian. All three are made by people right here.
1. DODICI Organic, Estonia’s first zodiac based skincare
The name sounds like something born in a boutique in central Milan. “Dodici” means twelve in Italian. Twelve is exactly the number this brand is built on: twelve zodiac signs, twelve different body oils.
In reality DODICI Organic is an Estonian brand created by two women who combined a love of natural skincare with a love of astrology. The result is Estonia’s first zodiac based beauty brand.
The idea is simple and surprisingly compelling: every star sign gets its own body oil with its own essential oils, plus a rock crystal gua sha tool and a lucky crystal for the sign. The formula is organic, free of artificial additives, and the oil absorbs quickly.
Do star signs really determine what your skin needs? No idea. But as a gift it is one of those things that actually makes a person say “ohhh”, and that does not happen all that often. If you like the idea, our zodiac socks gift guide works on exactly the same logic.
Where to find it: dodiciorganic.com, Tallinn Design House and several Estonian design shops.
2. Salt’sUp, the first gourmet salt shop in the Baltics
“Salt’sUp” sounds like a Brooklyn hipster shop. Everything fits: the spelling, the apostrophe, that faint little joke inside the name.
But Salt’sUp belongs to Tallinn. The brand started in 2015 as a university project. A classic “let us make something and see what happens” story that began as an ordinary online shop. In the summer of 2020 a physical shop opened on a small street in Tallinn old town, the first salt and spice shop in the entire Baltics.
The range holds more than 60 gourmet salts and peppers gathered from different regions around the world. Fine salts, coarse salts, flakes, grinders. In the shop you can actually taste them. It feels odd for a second and then completely logical.
And if that were not enough, they also run a salt cafe in Kalamaja where the cheesecakes and breads are built around those same salts.
If you are looking for a gift for someone who “does not want anything”, the person who does not want anything usually still wants good salt. Same principle as our guide to socks as gifts.
Where to find it: saltsup.com, the shop in Tallinn old town, the cafe in Kalamaja.
3. FairTale GHANA, shea butter with an Estonian behind it
This is the most complicated of the three stories and also the most beautiful. It shows that Estonian brands do not have to be manufactured in Estonia at all.
FairTale GHANA sells raw, unrefined shea butter and cold pressed baobab oil. The product itself is as Ghanaian as it gets: the shea butter is made by hand by women in northern Ghana, using a traditional method passed down through generations. No chemistry, no refining.
Behind the brand, though, is an Estonian woman whose goal was refreshingly blunt: build a company that does good and is genuinely successful at the same time. The main partner is the Estonian NGO Mondo, which has run education projects in Ghana for years.
An honest note: the company itself is registered in New York and the products are made in Ghana. So strictly speaking this is not an “Estonian product”. But the idea, the driving force and the partner organisation are all Estonian. This is exactly where the question “what makes a brand Estonian?” gets genuinely interesting.
Shea butter, by the way, is one of those things that solves half your problems in winter: dry skin, cracked heels, an unhappy scalp. Greasy, yes. But it works.
Where to find it: fairtaleghana.shop and Amazon.
So what actually makes a brand Estonian?
Look at these three side by side and the answer is less obvious than it first seems.
DODICI is made by Estonians and sold here, but carries an Italian name. Salt’sUp imports its salt from all over the world, yet the person standing in the shop in Tallinn is Estonian. FairTale GHANA products are made in Ghana and the company is registered in America, but the engine behind the whole thing is Estonian.
We think the answer is simpler than it looks: Estonian brands are the ones whose decisions are made here. Where someone right here works out what the thing should look like, how it should taste and who it is for.
Sokisahtel took the easy road with its name. We never tried to sound like anyone else. Sokisahtel is a sock drawer, and in ten years we have not once wished we had done it differently.
So next time you see a brand in a shop whose name sounds like it came from far away, take a look at the manufacturer. Estonian brands are often much closer than they seem.
How to check whether a brand is Estonian
Once you start playing this game it gets addictive fast. Four easy ways:
- Look at the company name in the shop footer. It almost always says OÜ or AS. That is half the answer already.
- Find the phone number on the contact page. +372 is quite hard to misread.
- Search the company name in the Estonian business register. It is free and shows the founders, the location and the founding year.
- Read the Instagram comments. If half of them are in Estonian, you know.
And then there is the category where the name is so Estonian that the question never comes up. That is where we sit.
Looking for a gift whose origin needs no explaining? Not every Estonian brand hides behind a foreign name. Have a look at our Estonia collection or the Wear Art collection, where Estonian art is something you can wear every day.
