The maker behind the products

I am Heikki Alakulppi, a 35-year-old entrepreneur and carpenter from Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland. I like to spend my freetime outdoors. At the moment, my responsibilities in our company include product design and manufacturing, photography and being the CEO.

With my experience, I bring strong craftsmanship and product design knowledge to our company. I graduated as a carpenter in 2006, after which I got a job at the Marttiini Oy knife factory.

I worked there for 12 years. At first, I used to make wooden knife handles. In 2013, I started to craft special knives. I specialized in making exclusive knife handles, especially from reindeer and moose antlers. Finally my main responsibility was to make the special knives, unique knives designed by me and custom knives designed by customers.

In knife making, I’m fascinated by the traditional handcrafting skills. Thanks to the old knife masters at Marttiini, my strengths are strong knowledge of materials, work methods and craftsmanship. In our company, we aim to give new forms to those skills.

My passion is doing things by hand and now it’s also my profession - it’s really great to combine handcraft with our own products and the company! When designing Kivalo’s products, I’m inspired by Finnish nature - animals, colours, shapes and natural phenomena of it. It is important to make products that are beautiful and high quality, but also functional. The best thing about product design is when a new idea evolves into a functional product.

Heikki Alakulppi

CEO, Designer & Carpenter