Samu Hällfors and Vesa-Matti Marjamäki were annoyed at their boss. He had a habit of making loud phone calls in their company’s open plan office, disturbing everyone as they worked.
“Vesa-Matti complained about the noise and our boss said, ‘Well, I have to call our customers, so build me a phone booth to use.’ Vesa-Matti and I decided to do exactly that,” says Hällfors.
The pair had an entrepreneurial mindset and realised this could be a great business opportunity. They founded the company Framery in 2010 to build the modern equivalent of a phone booth. From such humble beginnings, the company now has almost 500 employees and is listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki stock market. But it hasn’t been easy.
“Creating a pod was 100 times more challenging than we expected,” says Hällfors, CEO of the company. “Our first version was barely acceptable. It took us five years to get the product right.”
A product with conflicting requirements
Framery CEO Samu Hällfors sits inside one of the Finnish company’s soundproof office pods, designed to create quiet, private spaces within open-plan workplaces.Photo: Guillaume Roujas/Framery
Open plan offices are popular because they are flexible and use less space, perfect for modern hybrid working. Yet there are tradeoffs, such as a lack of privacy for important conversations or quiet for work which needs concentration.
“We had to build a product with contradictory requirements,” Hällfors explains. “It needed to be perfectly sealed for privacy. Even a 1-millimetre gap in a seal would ruin the soundproofing. However, for ventilation we needed a big hole which allows 25 litres of air per second to circulate. So in essence we became experts at soundproof ventilation systems.”
Framery needed to become experts at quite a few things, such as acoustics, lighting, climate control and product design. The end result is a selection of sleek, modern booths with seats, desks and connectivity. They don’t take up much space but appear larger from the inside thanks to the glass walls. The booths have an understated, Nordic minimalism quality to them.
Made in Finland
Photo: Framery
They offer four types of booths, ranging from a compact pod for one person up to a mini meeting room for six. While offices are the most common places to find a Framery product, the booths are surprisingly versatile. Hospitals use them for doctor-patient consultations, while podcasters have discovered their acoustic qualities. They are used in airports, malls and libraries, and even in a few private homes.
“I’ve heard an opera singer uses one of our booths to practice at home. Opera singers aren’t a big market for us, but that is still pretty cool!” Hällfors laughs.
The booths are designed and manufactured in Finland and shipped around the world. Geographically, Europe is Framery’s largest market, followed by North America and Asia.
“Finland is a very good place to be for a global business like us, with 95 percent of our revenue coming from abroad,” Hällfors says. “The Tampere area has a legacy of high-tech development dating back to when Nokia had a huge R&D presence here. Today we get a lot of our talent from the universities in Tampere.”
Making an office “smart”
Photo: Framery
Framery has plenty of experts in product development, manufacturing and supply chains, but they recently needed to find more talent when they expanded into software. They have developed smart office solutions to complement their booths, such as space management and wayfinding systems so workers can find and book offices or Framery booths.
“We are integrating more technologies into our physical products to make life easier and the experience better for the end-users,” says Hällfors. “We also have solutions for property managers to understand and optimise how their space is being used.”
It took more than four years for Framery to reach a million euros in revenue, and now they are approaching 200 million. They have developed an innovative solution for the hybrid way of working and see more success to come.
“We are investing for the future and I’m excited about the continued integration of software and physical product,” Hällfors says. “We want the Framery experience to begin as soon as a person enters a building.”
By David J. Cord, March 2026
The post Finnish entrepreneurs’ innovative office pods mix tech and design appeared first on thisisFINLAND.
