About us
Manilla is the brainchild of Linda, a creative personality who needs to be on the move every day. Those who know her know what we mean by that, and it is this movement that has led her to Manilla in the most direct way. She loves spending time with her family, listening to music, hiking, creating, travelling, planting, celebrating and living! She often does things by listening to her gut feeling and this decision to open a shop was also based on a feeling that she had to do it and the inspiring support of those around her. To be honest, Linda never got around to writing the business plan – the moment from idea to realisation was short, suddenly finding a space, renovations and raising a little girl seemed more important than writing the business plan.
Manilla opened its doors in November 2013, six months after Linda decided that she wanted to change her career and combine her love for paper and design to create a place where you can find products that were previously unavailable in the city, create your own stationery collection, find and wrap gifts or just get inspired. Manilla’s first shop opened on Baznīcas Street, where we met many of our current loyal customers who continue to support us and from whom we draw inspiration for new products and projects. In the first months of operation we started to take the first steps to create the Manilla product line, which 10 years later we can now call quite extensive and only plan to expand. After 5 years in Baznīcas iela, we moved to a new, bigger premises in Tērbatas iela 55, where we continue to grow and develop, and at the end of 2023 we opened a children’s concept store Manilla Kids. Currently, you can dive into the world of Manilla in 3 stores in Riga and a franchise store in Milan, Italy, but who knows when another Manilla store will join the list.
Creative team
The collective power of Magija
Manilla would be unimaginable without its people and certainly not without the shop manager, Maggie, who has been a very important part of Manilla for 5 years. You will definitely spot her in the shop – like Linda, she tends to move around the shop in a light whirlwind. Maggie not only looks after our customers, but also the well-being of the Manilla team. Her superpower is to wrap a gift the fastest of all of us and to solve any customer’s wish, especially when the customer doesn’t even know what they want yet. Her constructive and rational approach to life is in perfect balance with Linda’s flight, which means we’ve just introduced you to the dream team! On a daily basis, Linda and Maggie make sure that our customers never get bored – creating new Manilla collections, attending exhibitions and looking for new and interesting products.
Calligraphy artist Kaiva
Another integral part of Manilla is Kaiva, the leader of the calligraphy classes. Linda met Kaiva before the first shop opened with a firm handshake in the café next door. We are eternally grateful that Kaiva agreed to this adventure – to start running classes in a shop that hadn’t even opened its doors yet. Calligraphy classes have permeated Manilla for all 10 years and the strong handshake has led us to friendships beyond calligraphy and classes. Kaiva’s sense of humour in stressful situations allows us to look at life a little more lightly, she looks after us so that we give ourselves a full noon and don’t get distracted by work, but Maggie and I know that between November and January this will be a challenge for her. Kaiva will measure 7 times before she cuts and she sometimes tries to slow Linda and Maggie down in their whirlwind, which just adds another facet to our core.
