A Message From kikki.K

To our kikki.K community,

We wanted to start this post by reiterating that we never have and never will condone any form of racism or racial hate, whether in Australia where we are based, our spiritual home of Sweden or any other country around the world. We wholeheartedly believe in equality in all its forms and deeply and profoundly believe that Black Lives Matter.

Recent events have been heartbreaking and we like many others around the globe have been moved to question ourselves – and all we do – and we’re genuinely and sincerely in the process of examining and acting on what we need to do better in all aspects of diversity and inclusion.

We’ll publicly share our journey on that and we welcome any and all feedback – which we’ll also actively seek. And we expect to be held accountable by our team and community.

You may or may not have read some industry news recently reporting on the outcome of a kikki.K Creditors Meeting held on the 25^th June 2020. The outcome of the meeting was that creditors voted overwhelmingly in favour for kikki.K to enter a Deed Of Company Arrangement (DOCA) to secure our future, after being placed into Voluntary Administration in March.

For the last 4 months kikki.K has been controlled and run by Receivers, Cor Cordis, while our founders and a small team have assisted but have had no direct control over the business. As a small team we have been fighting with every ounce of our beings to save the company and brand and the jobs of the 450 wonderful and diverse people who have worked with us for years creating beautiful and meaningful everyday use products for millions of people like you in over 150 countries worldwide.

The result of the creditors meeting yesterday was momentous for us, because the vote from over 99% of creditors – many we’ve been partnering with for many years – was overwhelmingly in favour of saving kikki.K. Thankfully, the result should allow our beautiful brand to survive, preserving hundreds of jobs and allowing us to remain independently creating and sharing products that inspire and empower people in small and big ways.

The DOCA has been agreed with the leading bidder in an international sale process conducted by the Receivers over the last four months. The Receivers decided the purchaser of kikki.K to be US-based company, E.C. Designs LLC, which also operates as Erin Condren Design.

We know that many of you will be aware of Erin Condren so we wanted to take a moment to address a conversation circulating online which for valid reasons has led to many highly passionate comments on social media. In the last days it has prompted some of our own customers and team members to rightly draw our attention to the issue.

We’ve become aware of the hurt, anger and deep disappointment shared by a large number of Erin Condren customers in the wake of a recent event the brand’s founder, Erin, helped organise to commemorate the high school graduation of her children. We’ve done our own investigation and understand that whilst the company was not aware or involved in the organisation of the event, EC Design CEO Tonia Misvaer has the firm belief that Erin’s decisions and comments relating to the event were careless and dangerous – a sentiment echoed by Erin herself.

For anyone wanting to know more, Tonia has outlined her views in a statement issued on the Erin Condren website and a video on Instagram and has shared the actions they are taking as a business to address the valid concerns raised by many in the wake of this event that has caused deep offence to supporters of the BLM movement and people concerned about public safety in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Erin has since issued a public apology to the many people who have been hurt by her actions and taken the significant decision to take a leave of absence from the company she founded and loves.

From what we have come to understand of the circumstances after speaking with Tonia several times in the last 24 hours, we agree with Tonia’s view and the actions she is taking. We can clearly see in the circumstances how valid it is for many people to feel angry and hurt as a result of what they have read about it.

While we understand clearly that many have differing views, our experience leads us to believe that the apologies from Tonia and Erin are sincere, and that Tonia’s plans to act authentically in support of equality in all of its forms are genuine.

We’ve also been made aware and so wanted to point you in the direction of a significant clarification made by the Publisher of the original news article detailing the event, should this be useful in you understanding more about it.

We are not shying away from the fact that like many other people across the world, with regards to issues surrounding racial injustice and white privilege in particular, there is a lot for us as individuals and a business to learn, unlearn and do better. We are absolutely committed to actioning these things and being an influence for positive and fast social change.

As you may have seen weeks ago, we have reiterated this sentiment with our team and our community in social media and begun an education process as a first step in making these changes. We have listened, noted feedback and created a kikki.K Diversity & Equality Committee to help champion and implement meaningful change as our business emerges from Voluntary Administration. We’ve also reached out to a diverse range of people external to kikki.K to help advise our committee – and if you or someone you know is interested in assisting us we’d love to hear from you so please let us know in the comments below.

Should the partnership with EC Design be finalised by the Receivers as planned, giving kikki.K a future, we are absolutely committed to continuing being a catalyst for profound and effective positive social change to help bring about equality for all humanity in our lifetime. After the discussions we’ve had with Tonia, we genuinely believe Tonia will walk her talk on that too.

At the core of our beliefs in humanity and our dream of inspiring and empowering millions around the world – as well as being at the core of our own kikki.K team culture – is the belief that we all make mistakes and we all deserve a chance to learn, grow and make good. We are close to kikki.K getting a second chance and we hope in time those who are passionately critiquing Erin and EC Design will give them a second chance too.

We have faith that most in our community would agree that kikki.K is an authentic brand, run by good people, that seeks to do good in the world and deserves to exist. You’ve seen it in action. We clearly understand that some of you are concerned by our pending partnership with a brand whose namesake many believe has done wrong. From our understanding of the circumstances we feel that Erin’s actions were careless and dangerous, so does she herself, Tonia and the EC team. We believe they are all sincerely committed to doing better, as are we.

If our partnership with EC Design goes ahead – and we believe it will – kikki.K will have a future, led independently by our founders again with the opportunity to keep pursuing our dream of having a positive impact on the world.

We’re open for dialogue on this so please share your comments, questions and thoughts below.