ABOUT US
Our Story
Our Story
A love of design, rooted in Tierra de Pinares
Woodendot began in Madrid in 2012, founded by Daniel García Sánchez and María José Vargas. They shared a love of design and a desire to make things with care. Daniel’s connection to Tierra de Pinares brought the scent of wood and the knowledge of its workshops into those first ideas.
We wanted to create versatile furniture and accessories with personality, pieces that could bring warmth to a room and make everyday life more enjoyable. Wood became our main material, a way to give form to those ideas and create designs people would want to live with for years.
Working with local woodworkers helped us turn that ambition into something tangible. Their experience and our curiosity as designers shaped pieces with a character of their own, guided by respect for the material and a commitment to more responsible production.
Where it began: the RIZO folding screen
In 2010, Spain’s economic situation made it difficult for young designers to find a place in the profession they had spent years preparing for.
Daniel and María José had met while studying industrial design. Now in their late twenties, they found that their working lives were taking a different shape from the one they had imagined.
Curiosity gave them a reason to keep designing. They began experimenting together, hoping to enter their own work in design competitions. The first idea to take shape was RIZO, a folding screen.
When it won first prize at the Habitat Awards Extremadura 2010/11, they were surprised and encouraged. Creating together had opened a possibility they wanted to explore. Only later would they recognise it as the beginning of Woodendot.
In 2010, Spain’s economic situation made it difficult for young designers to find a place in the profession they had spent years preparing for.
Daniel and María José had met while studying industrial design. Now in their late twenties, they found that their working lives were taking a different shape from the one they had imagined.
Curiosity gave them a reason to keep designing. They began experimenting together, hoping to enter their own work in design competitions. The first idea to take shape was RIZO, a folding screen.
When it won first prize at the Habitat Awards Extremadura 2010/11, they were surprised and encouraged. Creating together had opened a possibility they wanted to explore. Only later would they recognise it as the beginning of Woodendot.
RIZO folding screen
RIZO folding screen: scale and proportions
Habitat Awards flyer
Daniel and María José in 2010
Woodendot takes shape with the Ka lamp
In 2011, encouraged by RIZO’s award, Daniel and María José began to imagine a brand of their own. They spent months looking for a name while developing the piece that would become Woodendot’s first product: the Ka XL lamp.
The first prototype took shape through hands-on work, with help from family, friends and local workshops in and around Íscar. Daniel’s knowledge of wood helped them work through each challenge. They wanted a lamp that felt stable and robust while keeping a simple form. Many tests and prototypes followed before it was ready to present.
Then came everything the design needed to reach someone’s home: photographs, a website and a marketing plan. The first images were taken in their 50-square-metre flat in central Madrid. They built the website by trial and error, working at weekends around their jobs. Eventually, a shop with one product was ready to open.
A touch of wood
Woodendot alludes to the Spanish phrase “punto de madera”: a small touch of wood. The name carries the material that inspired our first pieces and the warmth we want to bring into people’s homes.
First Woodendot logo in 2012
The first order: a home in Finland
With the website ready, they shared Ka XL with the design press around the world. To their surprise, articles began to appear and visitors arrived at the shop. People were discovering the design they had spent so long developing.
A couple of weeks later, on 9 December 2012, the first order arrived. Daniel was at basketball practice when he received a PayPal notification. A customer in Finland had bought a Ka XL. After months of work, their lamp was going to become part of someone’s home.
He called María José, who was preparing dinner at home. “¡No te lo vas a creer! ¡Que funciona!” he kept repeating: “You won’t believe it! It works!” They opened the delivery address in Google Maps and looked at Street View. Seeing that place made the order feel real.
The excitement lasted several minutes before they realised how much was still to do. They had a carefully developed prototype, but no production plan, packaging or shipping arrangements. They would have to work out how to make the lamp and get it across Europe. They were determined to see it through.
Daniel working on the first Ka prototype
The Ka lamp’s synthetic-leather tray
Wooden rod prototypes
The first Ka lamp sold
Learning to make it happen
Design was the part they knew. Building a furniture company meant learning how to work with suppliers, organise production, set prices and margins, and arrange deliveries. Each step brought questions that their training as designers had not prepared them for.
In Íscar, they also had to earn the trust of local woodworkers. The designs looked different from the furniture those workshops were used to making, and it was not easy to convince them to take a young designer’s idea seriously.
Many weekends were spent with family and friends, finishing pieces, taking photographs and working out how to send them on their way. The people around them helped the small brand move from an idea to something that could reach a real home.
A month after the order, the first Ka XL arrived safely in Finland and was well received. The lamp had made the journey they had pictured on Google Maps.
Ka M and Ka S followed, completing the first collection of three lamps. Each brought the same simple design language to a different kind of light, giving people more ways to create the atmosphere they wanted at home.
Our story continues
Over the years, Daniel and María José kept developing pieces with useful details, additional functions and a character of their own, while exploring ways to make them easier to repair, reuse and live with for longer. By Woodendot’s tenth anniversary in 2022, thousands of pieces were part of homes around the world and our work had received international recognition.
In early 2025, Made to Measure began to take shape with a new team and close collaboration with one of our manufacturing partners. The idea came from the spaces people actually live in, with their own proportions and needs. We wanted to make furniture sized to those spaces more accessible, without the cost and complexity of commissioning every piece from scratch.
Today, our own design systems let you configure a piece online within the options available and see its price as you go. Each Made to Measure order is made individually in Tierra de Pinares. It is a new chapter in the same story: designing with care so that a piece feels right in the home it becomes part of.
Over the years, Daniel and María José kept developing pieces with useful details, additional functions and a character of their own, while exploring ways to make them easier to repair, reuse and live with for longer. By Woodendot’s tenth anniversary in 2022, thousands of pieces were part of homes around the world and our work had received international recognition.
In early 2025, Made to Measure began to take shape with a new team and close collaboration with one of our manufacturing partners. The idea came from the spaces people actually live in, with their own proportions and needs. We wanted to make furniture sized to those spaces more accessible, without the cost and complexity of commissioning every piece from scratch.
Today, our own design systems let you configure a piece online within the options available and see its price as you go. Each Made to Measure order is made individually in Tierra de Pinares. It is a new chapter in the same story: designing with care so that a piece feels right in the home it becomes part of.
2012-2022
Woodendot has changed our lives and the way we understand design. What began as something we wanted to create together has become a shared story with the people who make our pieces and those who live with them.
We feel proud and grateful every time one of our designs is welcomed into a home. We hope it brings something meaningful to everyday life, and we thank everyone who has given our work a place in theirs.