Boris Hardi

When Boris Hardi cracked open his grandmother’s cedar chest in 2020, he found not just heirloom skeins but a mission to reboot knitting for Gen Z. The pandemic had already nudged millions toward needles, soothing lockdown angst with each rhythmic stitch. Sensing an untapped appetite, Boris coded the beta of OONIQUE.com from his Munich house, packing first-edition “Starter Sets” in recycled pizza boxes. He envisioned meal-kit simplicity for yarn lovers—the HelloFresh of knitting—delivering curated wool, bespoke patterns and video guidance for weekend creativity. By January 2021, orders were hopping like moss stitches; friends became fulfilment staff, and 2 a.m. Slack pings replaced lullabies. Word spread swiftly through Ravelry threads, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok reels, instantly turning OONIQUE’s aesthetic into a badge of modern craft cool. While incumbents like Wool and the Gang and We Are Knitters proved demand, Boris doubled down on hyper-personalisation—choosing your exact yardage, shade and needle size at checkout. Crucially, every bundle ships in compostable sleeves and carbon-offset logistics, because cool must also be kind. Fashion blogs hailed knit co-ords as 2025’s vibe, and OONIQUE merino sets synced with the trend. Today the scrappy startup has shipped over 66 000 kits, each box a gateway to our growing commuKnitty—a self-hosted community where makers livestream triumphs and troubleshoot tangled purls. Members swap color hacks, vote on new designs and even test-knit limited drops in return for equity-backed “wool points.” Global investors noticed: SevenVentures slid a term sheet across a coffee-ringed table, validating Boris’s hunch that craftsmanship can scale without losing soul. Yet every strategic diagram still starts with sharpened pencils and a skein unfurled—because OONIQUE’s superpower isn’t logistics, it’s the heartbeat stitched between customer and founder. As Boris likes to say, “Knitting isn’t old-school; it’s open-source—each loop a line of code that warms the world, one handmade row at a time—and shared joy.”