OVERVIEW
MYKITA’s defining move was not a Berlin aesthetic, but building a manufacturing system because no existing factory could make the design it wanted
MYKITA is easily recognised through thin stainless steel, exposed spiral hinges and Berlin design culture. But the more important origin lies behind the product. Founded in Berlin in 2003, the company says it could not find a manufacturer capable of producing its unconventional construction, so it created independent in-house production and developed the tools and processes required to realise the designs.
MYKITA presents this decision as the foundation of its ‘Modern Manufactory.’ Manufacturing was not treated as a service that followed design; it became part of design itself. When a concept demanded a process that did not yet exist, the process also had to be developed.
The philosophy was visible from the first collection. Thin spring stainless steel and the openly displayed proprietary spiral hinge did not hide how the frame worked. MYKITA later formulated the guiding principle that the technical solution must also be aesthetic.
The company’s deeper asset is therefore larger than one hinge. It is the ability to co-develop product and production: design, tooling, prototyping, material research, handwork, quality and retail form a learning network rather than a linear handoff.
01 · ORIGIN
Founded in a former Kita in 2003, MYKITA began outside the conventions of an established eyewear factory
MYKITA was founded in Berlin in 2003. Its first premises occupied a former children’s day-care centre—a Kita in German—which inspired the name ‘My Kita.’ The company says the location also influenced a culture of curiosity, learning and doing things independently.
The early obstacle was production. MYKITA had a clear aesthetic direction, but says no suitable manufacturer could realise the unconventional construction. The response was not to redesign the product around an existing supplier’s limitations, but to build independent production.
Founder Moritz Krueger later described the necessity in more direct terms: the company had to industrialise itself, developing its own tools and processes. What began as a constraint became the organising principle of the company.
Independence at MYKITA is therefore best understood as manufacturing knowledge, not simply ownership. The strategic question is whether the organisation can invent a process when the design requires one.
02 · VISIBLE CONSTRUCTION
The spiral hinge made operating logic, rather than a logo, the most recognisable part of the brand
MYKITA’s first collection used thin stainless-steel sheet and an openly displayed spiral hinge. The official Design page describes the original hinge as patented and identifies it as the source of a guiding rule: a technical solution should also be an aesthetic one.
Many products conceal construction behind decorative covers or conventional hardware. MYKITA did the opposite. The frame makes its assembly readable. The hinge is not an engineering detail to hide; it becomes part of the visual language.
Spring stainless steel supports that approach through flexibility and tensile strength. MYKITA uses the material to make thin, lightweight and adjustable structures while allowing folds and formed geometry to carry mechanical function.
This is why the frames can remain relatively quiet in branding while still being identifiable. Construction itself becomes brand identity, a principle that continues through core steel collections such as NO1 and LITE.
03 · MYKITA HAUS
‘Everything under one roof’ is an organisational loop designed to shorten the distance between an idea and the factory floor
In 2014 MYKITA moved into a historic building in Berlin-Kreuzberg and developed MYKITA HAUS as an integrated hub. The company described manufacturing, product design, prototyping, quality, marketing, logistics, sales and retail functions working in the same environment.
The value is not merely that the company owns a factory. A designer can prototype quickly, manufacturing can expose a constraint, quality can return an issue to engineering, and a process can be revised without crossing multiple contractual boundaries.
MYKITA moved again in 2024 to a 3,800-square-metre historic site beside the Spree. The company says more than 110 skilled artisans make frames there, while roughly 240 people of 35 nationalities work at the HAUS and the global team numbers about 350.
HAUS is therefore better read as an operating model than a building name. Its purpose is to keep different disciplines in continuous contact so that product and process develop together.
04 · MODERN MANUFACTORY
Craft and advanced technology coexist because MYKITA selects the most useful tool for each process, not because it needs a ‘handmade’ image
MYKITA calls its production model the Modern Manufactory. Official material describes specialised craftsmanship combined with adapted technologies and cross-industry technology transfer as central to the company’s innovation.
The current FAQ and responsibility pages add an important nuance. Frames are handcrafted at MYKITA HAUS in Berlin, while some material processes take place at other manufacturing facilities within the EU. It would therefore be inaccurate to claim that every physical operation happens inside one Berlin building. What is integrated is the manufacturing responsibility and knowledge network.
The company says frames pass around 15 major quality checks during production. It also publishes examples in which a stainless-steel optical frame requires more than 80 manual steps. Those numbers matter less as spectacle than as evidence of repeated links between cutting, forming, finishing, assembly and inspection.
At MYKITA, handwork and high-tech production are not opposites. Manual adjustment and finishing, repeatable digital processes and experimental material technologies are combined according to what each stage requires.
05 · MYLON
MYKITA took an automotive 3D-printing process in 2007 and turned it into a wearable material and finishing system by 2011
MYKITA says it began experimenting with polyamide and selective laser sintering in 2007. SLS was then familiar from automotive prototyping, including small engine parts. The company’s task was not merely to print a spectacle shape, but to transform the rough sintered surface into something durable, tactile and wearable.
The result was MYLON. The material/process received an iF material award in 2011 and MYKITA states that the eyewear material was introduced that year. Fine polyamide powder is fused layer by layer through laser sintering from a digital data set.
MYKITA currently states that MYLON is about 30% lighter than acetate, allowing more volume with lower mass and enabling slender constructions or functional details that would be difficult in conventional acetate.
The more important story is technology transfer. A process created for another industry was pulled into eyewear, then surrounded with proprietary smoothing, colouring and sealing steps until it became a production language of its own.
06 · MATERIAL CIRCULARITY
Recent MYKITA work extends design from choosing materials to designing how production waste returns to the supply chain
Spring stainless steel has been central to MYKITA since the first collection and still represents a major share of the portfolio. The current stainless-steel material page states that its steel contains 95% recycled content and 5% raw material required to reach the specified medical-grade quality. Some older MYKITA pages still mention 90%, so the current material page is the safer reference for the present specification.
The more distinctive step is the waste loop. MYKITA says leftover cuts from frame production are returned to supplier Alleima’s recycling plant and re-enter production of the same steel grade. Circularity is therefore not only a purchasing claim; it includes the destination of manufacturing scrap.
MYKITA has made a similar move in acetate. It states that all acetate frames and parts now use Eastman Acetate Renew and claims to have been the first eyewear company to switch its acetate supply completely to the material. The material combines wood-pulp cellulose with recycled-plastic content allocated through molecular recycling and mass-balance certification.
The structural point is that sustainability becomes part of manufacturing design: sourcing, traceability, scrap recovery, product durability and aftercare have to connect if circularity is to become more than a material label.
07 · RETAIL & OPTICS
The MYKITA Shop acts less like a fashion endpoint and more like the final production stage where frame, lens and face are brought together
MYKITA extends its integrated philosophy into retail. Its Shop Concept states that in-house optometrists perform eye tests, create customised optical profiles and fit frame and lenses to the wearer. Some shops include a ZEISS-equipped Relaxed Vision Center.
This blurs the line between a fashion eyewear label and an optical product company. The frame is not considered complete when it leaves manufacturing; prescription, lens choice, wearing position and final fitting still determine the product the customer actually experiences.
MYKITA also develops the shop architecture itself, using perforated metal systems and repurposed objects in ways that echo the frames’ visible-construction philosophy.
The shop is therefore both sales channel and feedback channel. It closes the loop between structural design, optical performance and real-world wear.
GLANOS VIEW
MYKITA’s moat is not ‘made in Berlin’; it is the speed at which the company can learn a new manufacturing process when a design demands one
It is easy to interpret independent manufacturing as a simple refusal to outsource. The more useful distinction is learning speed. When a company is not confined to an external factory’s existing tooling, minimums and standard processes, a new design can trigger a new manufacturing experiment.
The first steel frames required MYKITA to develop tools and processes for sheet construction and the spiral hinge. MYLON required transferring SLS from automotive prototyping and inventing a wearable finishing chain. More recently, circular steel and Acetate Renew extended manufacturing questions into supply-chain design. As products change, the factory learns with them.
This reduces information loss between design, manufacturing, quality and retail. A designer can ask whether a structure is possible; production can answer with a new method; retail can report where the frame still needs adjustment. The more of that loop is retained, the more product knowledge accumulates inside the company.
For GLANOS, the relevant lesson is that manufacturing capability is not the same as owning many machines. The deeper capability is knowing which process to invent, which external technology to import, and which judgment to standardise so the next product starts from a higher base.
That is why ‘the brand that built the factory first’ works as more than a slogan. The factory was not merely a building. It became a learning system for converting an aesthetic idea into repeatable product reality.
BRAND PROFILE
Brand Profile
- Founded
- 2003 · Berlin, Germany
- Founding team (2003)
- Moritz Krueger · Harald Gottschling · Philipp Haffmans · Daniel Haffmans
- Current official founder wording
- MYKITA's current official content foregrounds Moritz Krueger as founder
- Name origin
- The first premises were in a former Kita, the German term for a day-care centre
- Core manufacturing idea
- Independent in-house production with proprietary tools and processes created when no suitable manufacturer could realise the original designs
- Signature construction
- Thin spring stainless-steel construction + openly displayed proprietary spiral hinge
- Manufacturing model
- MYKITA HAUS in Berlin; some material processes at other EU manufacturing facilities
- MYLON
- SLS polyamide research from 2007 · introduced 2011 · iF material award 2011
- Current MYKITA HAUS
- Moved in 2024 to a 3,800 m² historic site beside the Spree
- Current official scale
- 110+ skilled artisans; about 240 people from 35 nationalities at the HAUS; global team about 350
- Material direction
- Circular stainless steel, Acetate Renew, MYLON
SOURCES
Sources & References
Founder wording is separated between the current official narrative and the early record. MYKITA's current site foregrounds Moritz Krueger as founder, while the 2003 founding team is widely documented as Moritz Krueger, Harald Gottschling, Philipp Haffmans and Daniel Haffmans. An early 2004 eyewear-frame patent assigned to MYKITA GmbH also names all four as inventors. The Brand Profile therefore separates 'Founding team (2003)' from 'Current official founder wording'.
MYKITA first-party corporate, material and journal sources were prioritised for the 2003 founding, Kita name origin, decision to build independent production, visible spiral hinge, MYKITA HAUS, MYLON, circular stainless steel, Acetate Renew and optical retail services.
Some older MYKITA pages still state 90% recycled content for the stainless steel. The current Stainless Steel material page states 95% recycled content and 5% raw material, which is the figure used here. Priority claims such as being first in the eyewear industry to switch completely to Acetate Renew are treated as MYKITA’s own official claims.
- MYKITA · The Story2003 founding, Kita name origin, lack of a suitable manufacturer, and the decision to develop in-house production, tools and processes
- MYKITA · The DesignThe first collection’s visible patented spiral hinge and the principle that a technical solution should also be aesthetic
- MYKITA · AboutModern Manufactory, integrated disciplines, technology transfer and holistic operating philosophy
- MYKITA · New HAUS 2024The 2024 3,800 m² site, 110+ artisans, roughly 240 staff from 35 nationalities and global team scale
- MYKITA · Under a New RoofThe 2014 Kreuzberg HAUS and its integrated manufacturing, design, quality, logistics and retail structure
- MYKITA · ResponsibilityIndependent manufacturing, EU material processes, durability, aftercare and transparent manufacturing policy
- MYKITA · FAQIndependent production, around 15 major quality checks and current manufacturing/material guidance
- MYKITA · Stainless SteelCurrent 95% recycled stainless steel, Alleima sourcing and closed-loop scrap return
- MYKITA · Circular Story of Stainless SteelSpring-steel circularity and return of manufacturing offcuts to Alleima
- MYKITA · Acetate RenewFull switch to Acetate Renew, material composition, molecular recycling and MYKITA’s first-in-industry claim
- MYKITA · MYLONSLS polyamide, automotive technology transfer and material/finishing development
- MYKITA · The Modern ExplorerMYLON experimentation from 2007 and introduction in 2011
- MYKITA · Design AwardsOfficial 2011 iF material award record for MYLON
- MYKITA · Shop ConceptIn-house optometrists, optical profiles, ZEISS-equipped Relaxed Vision Center and retail concept
- MYKITA · Moritz Krueger interviewFounder’s explanation that the company had to industrialise itself and develop tools and processes internally
- German Patent · DE102004027013B4MYKITA GmbH early eyewear-frame patent DE102004027013B4 — names Harald Gottschling, Moritz Krueger, Philipp Haffmans and Daniel Haffmans as inventors