Our Story.

CommonKind is the culmination of years of thinking and hours of conversations between Kelly Olatunji and Olive Riley. 

We met at Massey University a decade ago and mused CommonKind into existence through a passion for community, fibre and textiles. With the drive to do something outside of ourselves, we went about setting up a social enterprise.

CommonKind began by creating fun, bright, snuggly homewares that share joy and warmth. With our get one, gift one model, every purchase also provides a specially-designed-for-kids Common blanket, distributed to children through community organisations in Aotearoa. After all, everyone deserves access to warmth.

Over time, our work has grown to include contracting and consulting for the Aotearoa fibre sector and supporting textile projects for community-led organisations. We offer independent project management, strategy, circular economy guidance, sustainability, marketing, communications, research, and design expertise. Our goal is to connect the value chain, improve access to essential textiles in New Zealand, and help close the loop across the fibre industry.

Our objective will comes back to sharing joy and warmth, whether through our blankets or our collaborative work with the fibre and textile sector. We’re building a business that is open to opportunities to connect, collaborate, and create benefits that ripple far beyond the business itself.

Meet the Team

  • Kelly Olatunji

    Kelly Olatunji

    CO-FOUNDER

    Kelly is an experienced programme manager with a strong interest in systems design, circular economy strategies, bio-based materials and sustainable design practice.

    Over the past 12 years, Kelly has led innovation and sustainability projects including circular strategic change implementation, life cycle assessment studies and methodology development, Environmental Product Declarations, continuous improvement quality assurance, material flow analysis, industry mapping and cross-sector workshop delivery. 

    She is an advocate for collaboration within the NZ fibre and textile value chain and community-led design. 

  • Olive Riley

    Olive Riley

    CO-FOUNDER

    Olive is a communications strategist with extensive experience in audience analysis, brand storytelling and digital marketing. She delves into market and audience data, using this information to develop pathways that connect stakeholders and their communities.

    Strong technical skills in UX optimisation, content management systems, and marketing tools enable her to create engaging and intuitive digital experiences.

    Olive is enthusiastic about using storytelling and purposeful design to strengthen New Zealand’s fibre systems and promote industry collaboration.