The protagonists of today’s post are, once again, two young entrepreneurial women who one day decided to create Palopalú and who chose Bilbao to place their business in. Down below, I’m going to tell you a little bit about them and their creations.
Rosalía Fernández and Elena Murillo studied Fine Arts at the University of the Basque Country, one is a restorer and the other one an illustrator; one is from Cantabria and the other one from La Rioja, but destiny wanted both of them to end up sharing a student flat (they still share it) and their paths to be interlaced once their studies where finished and wanted them to create their own business based on their passion.
Their case is not much different from the other E.P. that one day decided to take the plunge and start an entrepreneurial adventure, the one which started approximately 11 years ago. We can say that their first work experience was as members of an artistic group together with other colleagues, but the truth is that, for some of them, it was more like something “complementary” or a hobby. It was then when our protagonists decided to work on their own accounts and go further. 
They started looking for subsidies to undertake, a place to work in (maybe some coworking), and that’s how in 2015 after going through Lanbide, they ended up in Bilbao Ekintza. They started giving shape to their artistic collaborative project thanks to one of their subsidies. At the start, their idea was to start with a workshop but the training they received made the idea change into something functional. What they did have clear is that they wanted to work with wood (their work material) through toys and decoration. It was a way to give shape to their creativity
They achieved that by creating artistic and functional pieces in which they put illustrations and designs in decorations; art toys; creative, educational (advised by pedagogues and teachers) and sustainable (with the environment) toys and puzzles and other personalized objects. By the way, they always work with limited series and exclusive collections.
Nowadays, Rosalía and Elena share a shop in Bilbao (Bizkaia), in calle Cortes, nº”9-6ºFA, where they design, produce, make and even sell their magnificent creations made by hand under the Palopalú brand. I invite you to go into their website.
In Rosalía’s and Elena’s words:
“In a moment where the usual thing is to find us with a range of industrial, made in series impersonal products with a globalized design, we want to assert the object made by hand with love and respect towards the materials. We want to bring back the handcrafted, the unique object made with materials more natural like wood and always maintaining the originality of the design”.
Rosalía has a strong personality, she loves order, is very demanding and constant when achieving the perfect product (which is getting better). Elena, for her part, is the more calm and patient part. Both of them complement each other very well: they are very creative, imaginative and innovative, very hardworking and responsible, with many ideas, a big initiative, willing to carry out the product they opt for with sense, compromised, decisive and who know “what’s all about”.
I met them a few years ago, when they were participating in one of the first pop ups of the Design Pop Up Bilbao and I have to confess that I love their job. By the way, they arrived to this event together with Eva and Ana, from the Lágrimas de cocodrilo brand, which I have already talked to you about but about whom I’ll have to talk to you more in detail soon. It was the Würth Museum of Logroño which united them.
If you want to contact them you can do it by phone (+34) 626 204 402 or through info@palopalu.com, whether it is to take a look at their creations or to buy one of them through the online shop. Oh, and if not, you can also visit them at their workshop or go to one of the shops where they sell their work.
For the moment, you can find them in November during their participation at the Fair Saturday where the old H&M in Moyua was, as well as in the next Design Pop Up Bilbao during the month of December.
Keep enjoying the last days of November.
Translated by María Ubierna Quintanilla and supervised by Arantza Arruti.