Why on earth would anyone want to build a factory in Puolanka?

People often ask us what this “Puolanka factory” thing actually is and, if they don't take it as a straight-up joke, then at the very least they ask with a smirk when it's opening.

For us, this is about something bigger than a physical place. The Puolanka headphone factory is the idea that you can still make things here too. Not just design, consult, and make slides that say “enabling growth”. But actually build something, fix something, sell something, and employ people. Boring stuff. The kind that keeps a country standing.

Valco's headphones aren't made in Finland yet. Best to say that out loud before some troll in the comments figures it out and thinks they've won a Pulitzer. We're a Finnish company. Design, sound tuning, customer service, and service are in Finland. Manufacturing is still elsewhere.

But the Puolanka factory is the direction we want to go in.

We don't know if we'll ever manage to build the factory. It may be too expensive, too difficult, and too insane. All the classic reasons are there. They always are. In Finland, we're endlessly good at explaining why nothing is worth doing.

That's exactly what pisses us off here.

A lot of us have seen up close what happens when that one factory, sawmill, workshop, or other place where people make real things with their hands and their heads disappears from a small town. First they say manufacturing in Finland isn't worth it. Then it isn't worth it in Estonia either. Then production moves somewhere even cheaper. In the end the whole company withers away. What's left is an empty hall, a broken parking lot, and boards nailed over the doors.

It's always the same hymn: nothing is worth making here.

We just don't really agree to accept that.

If the world can sell a handbag for 50,000 euros, then it can't be some law of nature that everything has to be made in the cheapest possible place for the cheapest possible price. Yes, we understand costs. We understand margins. We even understand that manufacturing in Europe is sometimes about as financially smart as trying to melt a frozen lake with a hair dryer.

But still.

At some point this turned into a need to prove something. Not the kind where you pose next to a rented Bugatti on Instagram and talk about your morning routine. We can't be bothered waking up at five to get inspired. We want to build a healthy, growing company in a place many have already managed to declare dead.

In Finland, a company usually gets noticed around the moment it's sold abroad. To us, producing in Finland would be a bigger achievement than any exit speech, investor deck, or leather-upholstered sports car.

So the Puolanka factory is a symbol. Maybe one day also a building. Hopefully a building. But already now, to us, it means that we don't just want to leave places the second things get hard. We want to prove that you can still make things here.

Maybe it looks insane on paper.

Most things worth doing look insane right up until some idiot does them and everyone else comes along afterward explaining how this was obviously inevitable.