Interview With Matthew Hiebert from Aroundsquare Ltd.

1. How did the idea of aroundsquare begin?

Aroundsquare was just a hobby initially. I’ve always enjoyed designing and making things, but had no real interest in selling them. When I first incorporated Aroundsquare as a business, it was mainly so that I would have a brand to connect with my designs, rather than using my own name. My earliest designs were wooden toys, including unconventional building blocks, and a skill toy called Dubulo, which is similar to a yo-yo.

 

2. It was easy for you to find new materials, ways and the quality that you want for your new products?

Although most stores these days seem to be full of cheap quality disposable products, it just requires a bit of patience and perseverance to find good quality materials and manufacturers. I’m always looking out for new and interesting materials that would work well with our products. Some exotic materials can be challenging to track down, but we’ve worked in everything from 24k gold and platinum, to layered “Damascus” style titanium, to space age plastics, to various organic materials like jade Bodhi seeds.

3. How you can describe aroundsquare with one phrase?

How about: Aroundsquare is a social engineering company with a mind control problem. Or maybe: Aroundsquaree creates an eclectic range of unconventional goods for better living. Describing our brand in one phrase is a challenge because we have such a broad range of products and initiatives, but everything comes back to body and mind. While many of our products could be classified as skill toys, we view them more as mindfulness and creativity tools, and this connects them more naturally to things like our stationery products and others in our range.

4. How did you learn how to play all these kinds of skill toys?

One by one, and with practice. What’s special about most of our skill toys is that they are (i) small and easy to carry, and (ii) beautiful and ergnomic, so, it’s easy to carry them, and people actually want to carry them. They integrate very naturally into daily life, and so it is relatively easy to end up playing them for literally hour each day, without even realizing it. With that much time in the hands, the hands just sort of figure things out.

5. I know that you have a big audience and followers that love aroundsquare, how does you feel about this?

It’s an honour, and we just try to do justice to the community and share the passion. Our followers and customers are almost all organic–people who have stumbled onto our stuff or learned of us through word of mouth (rather than any sort of advertising). The community isn’t very big, but it is very engaged, and we feel a strong connection and responsibility.. it’s a kind of kinship, we all have this common value which is hard to articulate, but nonetheless palpable. Since the beginning, the community and relationships have been the most satisfying and compelling aspects this work, and we’ve always just tried to put the community first in our decision-making.

6. What is the vision of the aroundsquare?

The vision is constantly evolving, but we’ve always been most interested in human potential, cultural development, and education–that sort of thing. This may seem strange for a play-oriented lifestyle brand, but the lifestyle component is very much linked to culture, and our early products were all about creativity and critical thinking. We’ve been focusing on physical goods for the past few years, and we have an active interest in balancing that out with other types of content creation, knowledge products, and community initiatives.

7. Which is your favorite material and skill toy?

Titanium is my go to material for pretty much everything in my EDC (everyday carry) kit. I usually carry a few skill toys in my pocket, and probably my most loved is a simple set of MKUltras, which is our adaptation of the traditional komboloi. I’ve always loved wood and organic materials, but the durability and graceful aging of metal for EDC is such a cherished characteristic.

8. What plans do you have for the future?

We launch new products almost every month, and we have a ton of new things in our pipeline, including new product categories. We have a pocket knife coming out this fall that I’m very excited about. We also have some exciting plans for knowledge products and community initiatives. There are loads of possibilities, and we try to keep an open mind and go with the flow wherever there seems to be interesting options and good energy.

9. Where we can find and buy some staff from aroundsquare?

We have a small number of retail partners around the world, but our focus has always just been our own website: www.aroundsquare.com