Take the tour
Welcome. Mind the conveyor belt. Please don't touch the gears — they're only decorative, but they'd like you to think otherwise.
The factory
Somewhere between a toy shop and a workshop sits the Oompa Loompa Wonder Factory. It is not a very big factory. It has no chocolate river, no glass elevator and, as far as we can tell, no secret ingredient. What it has is a set of rooms, a conveyor belt that runs past all of them, and a rule that nothing reaches the end of the belt unless a real child would actually play with it.
The rooms
The Play Room is where the wooden things live — music tables, busy boards, pull-along animals, the odd fire truck that comes apart on purpose. The Little Lab is the Montessori corner: quiet, orderly, unreasonably good at holding a three-year-old's attention. The Art Room is not tidy and does not intend to be. The School Department handles bottles, lunch boxes, bags and pencil cases for the daily run. The Gift Wrapping Room does return gifts by the dozen. The Big Present Room builds hampers. The Paper Lab prints worksheets and printables you download and print at home. And The Festive Workshop opens its shutters a few weeks before every big festival, then closes again until the next one.
There is also a Secret Room. We are not going to tell you what is in it. That's rather the point.
How things get on the belt
Everything is chosen by hand, by the humans who run the place. The test is simple and slightly unfair: would a child pick it up a second time without being asked? If yes, it goes on the belt. If it only looks good on a shelf, it stays off. If it beeps, we think very hard about it first.
How things leave the belt
Orders are packed by actual humans, who check them twice and occasionally add a note. If you'd like something gift-wrapped, say so at checkout and the Gift Wrapping Room will take it from there. Details on dispatch, delivery times and returns live on the Shipping and Returns pages in the footer, where they're kept up to date.
Small batches, on purpose
The factory buys in small runs. That means things sell out — usually the thing you wanted — and come back when they come back. The Secret Room is where the new and the nearly-gone tend to appear first.
About the name
Yes, it's a nod to a certain fictional factory. No, we don't have the workforce, the songs or the river. What stuck was the feeling: a small place, a lot of boxes, and a handful of people taking children's things far more seriously than anyone strictly needs to.
Come and say hello
Write to oompaloompa.in@gmail.com and a human will answer. Or find us on Instagram at @oompaloompa.in — that's where things happen outside the factory.
Built for curious little humans. Packed by actual humans.