Guides and tips, news and other stories from Garantell.

In an old black and white film, a man is seen carrying a coil of metal wire on his crooked back. He enters a greying wooden shed, a wire-drawing mill powered by a waterwheel beside a fast-flowing stream.

When I cycle to Garantell in the mornings, I pedal through a typical Småland landscape (if you’re curious about Småland, open a book by Astrid Lindgren: our national hero and Pippi Longstocking’s mom). Astrid Lindgren’s descriptions of the Småland landscape are still accurate today: forests, gravel roads, cows feeding in pastures, red cottages with white trim, all accompanied by birdsong. Foxes and deer are frequently spotted, and if you hear a loud crack and crash in the forest, it’s guaranteed to be a moose or wild boar. I also cycle alongside Lake Vidöstern and, if I’m lucky, I see a naked Smålander enjoying a morning dip. For us Swedes, a morning dip is quite natural, but my colleagues have said to me that it’s a quintessentially Swedish thing to do. So what is a morning dip? Basically, you get out of bed and go down to the lake (wearing a bathrobe if you have neighbours, naked if you don’t). In Småland, the lakes are placid and dark, and an early morning swim in the light of dawn is something absolutely amazing that I hope you all get the chance to experience at some point.

There is no doubt that climate change is shaping our history. Each and every one of us must take action to lighten the load on our planet. For an individual company, however, finding ways to make a real difference may seem challenging.

It may seem that Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs and the Wright brothers have little in common, but they had an important common denominator: They had a clear why for doing what they did.

When I started working at Garantell as a Belgian city girl, I was introduced to a lot of new habits and routines on the work floor. Swedish style. Yes, some are more peculiar than others. One of these habits is eating breakfast together with all the Garantell employees. Every day, at 9 o’clock on the dot, a bunch of sandwiches, eggs and yoghurt is waiting for us, joined by the fresh smell of a cup of coffee. The latter seems a detail, but it is serious business this coffee: Swedes are famous for their coffee drinking. As a food lover, I surely appreciate the fact of getting a paid breakfast, but the most important fact about this company breakfast is not the food, but the talk.