How it all started

HOW MILJÖGÅRDEN BEGAN – a story from Barbro Wihlborg, founder and former owner

From that very first impulse, through a spontaneous trade fair appearance and a sofa filled with dolls – to what Miljögården is today: an interior design favorite for thousands of homes and shops around the world.

“It all started with a small shop in Malmö, more precisely at Caroli City. We, Barbro and Ulf, ran the store with a deep passion for interior decor and gift items – but there was one thing customers absolutely adored: the mysterious, charming Pearo dolls.

The demand was sky-high, and we searched all over Sweden for more dolls. We bought everything we could find, but soon the stock was gone. That’s when we came up with the idea to go to the trade fair in Frankfurt to continue the search. There, we met a man from Taiwan holding a binder full of pictures – he had no physical samples, only photographs – but among them, we found an image of the dolls we’d been longing for. We picked out the ones we wanted. They cost $3 each – and we sold them for 225 SEK in the shop.

We ordered samples but quickly realized we’d need to order far more than we thought we could sell in our little store. We had two boxes of samples ready when, the day before the Formex fair in Stockholm, we were informed that someone had canceled. That same evening, we packed everything into the car and the horse trailer, and the next morning we drove through snow and storms to arrive late the evening before the fair opened.

With us, we brought an eye-catching red velvet sofa set with tassels – that’s where the dolls would sit. At the time, all other exhibitors had glass shelves and small display cases for their products, but our booth looked very different. The other exhibitors told us we had come to the wrong place. Not much happened when the fair opened, but in the afternoon, a man appeared – wearing rubber boots. He looked around, smiled, and placed the first order.

And that’s how Miljögården was born.”