We, Jesse and Thijs, each have our own strengths and pitfalls. We’ve been friends since the very first day of secondary school at Het Amsterdams Lyceum, and by now we know each other inside out. Around 2013, we both started the BSc programme in Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft. A perfect combination of learning theory and applying it in practice — with both head and hands. We spent a lot of time in the workshop there, building prototypes for courses or things we simply wanted to make for ourselves.

Thijs completed the MSc in Integrated Product Design within the IDE programme, while Jesse founded Everlab in 2019. Thijs initially worked for Everlab through his own company, but since 2022 he has also been a co-owner — and that works very well!

We were warned by various people about working together with friends, and we understand why. Still, we find that it actually helps us enormously. In 2023, we moved from our office in The Hague to our Office + Workshop in De Pijp, Amsterdam. We now have one of the last truly authentic workshops in the city. Gradually, we’re expanding the workshop with machines and tools we need for a project — or simply because we think they’re great, and we’ll figure out later how and if we can use them.

“That’s really a Thijs task.” We have a strong sense of where our core strengths lie and divide the design process in a way that allows us to work efficiently. While Jesse keeps an overview of the entire timeline, Thijs can lose himself in the details late into the night. We’re similar in many ways, different enough in others, and always there for each other — which makes us a very strong team. And besides being effective and efficient, we have a lot of fun in what we do — because why else would we?