When Suzanne and I were trying to come up with a name for our company we wanted it to reflect our unconventional approach to conventional furniture. We wanted it to say something about the home or house and to represent our global upbringing. As Suzanne spent her early years growing up in Africa, I looked for the word house in several African languages and came across ‘ulo’, which in Igbo means house or home.

We liked the word but weren’t crazy with how it looked on paper. Suzanne, being very visual, played around and came up with ulloo which we both loved for its meaning and symmetry.

We wanted a number after the name simply because it was catchy. ‘42’ comes from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: the number represents an asterisk*, which is a symbol – meaning that any formula can be entered. So, in Hitchhikers Guide, when the computer was asked the meaning of life, it came up with 42 – meaning that it can be anything you want it to be. And so Ulloo 42 was born.