When we started Tohfa Shofa, I was quite clear about the kind of brand I wanted to build.
I wanted to make well-designed objects that people could actually live with. Things with character, utility and a strong visual identity, without making them feel precious or inaccessible.
But I also wanted to start small. Deliberately.
There is something useful about beginning with a simple object. You have fewer places to hide. The idea has to work, the design has to hold its own, and the object has to justify being there in the first place.
Fridge magnets felt like a surprisingly good place to begin.
I’ve always been an avid collector myself, and I knew plenty of people who were too. They are small, affordable and often deeply personal. A magnet from a place, a trip or a particular moment can sit on your fridge for years.
They also felt like an interesting space to bring in Indian visual references without turning them into the usual souvenir-style objects.
That part mattered to me.
I wanted the products we made to feel rooted here, but not in an obvious or expected way. As an artist, that is often where my mind goes first. How do you take something familiar, look at it differently, and give it a new visual language without losing what makes it recognisable?
So we started with a handful of colourful wooden magnets.
The Dancing Bird and Feather were among the first to really connect with people. They were bright, layered and had a tactility that made them feel quite different from the usual flat printed magnet.
The making mattered just as much.
We printed the artwork directly onto the wood for longevity and added a coat of varnish to preserve the colour and protect the surface from regular handling. They were small decisions, but together they significantly changed how the finished object felt.
For the first few weeks, things moved steadily.
And then they took off.
We began receiving 50 to 100 magnet orders a day. Companies started reaching out to include them in their gifting boxes. Very quickly, something we had intentionally started small became one of the first products people recognised Tohfa Shofa for.
More importantly, it reinforced an idea that has stayed with us since.
Scale has very little to do with significance. A product doesn’t need to be large, expensive or complicated to deserve good design.
Sometimes the smallest object is enough to tell people exactly what kind of brand you intend to build.
