We are two Dutchmen who got tired of cutting mats that curl.
Elan started selling in 2019, and the honest version is that we spotted a gap. There was plenty of demand in arts and crafts and not much good supply, so we started sourcing cutting mats. They did well. So we built a brand around them, and added the tools that belong on the same table.
That is Oswin and Peter, friends since childhood, both out of finance, both with more appetite for building something than for spreadsheets.
How things are made
Everything is designed in the Netherlands and made in China and Taiwan. Every production run is checked by an independent inspection company before it ships. That is unusual at our size, and it is a large part of why our ratings hold up.
A cutting mat is five layers of recycled PVC, three millimetres thick, with a metric grid printed on both sides, dark on one and light on the other, so your lines read against pale fabric and against dark card. The middle layer is what lets the surface close behind the blade.
We did not want to write “eco-friendly” and leave it there, so we had the mats audited. GreenCircle certified our A4 to A1 mats as 83% recycled plastic, and the A0 and larger sizes at more than 51%. Those are their numbers, not ours. The mats also carry Amazon’s Climate Pledge Friendly label.
Our canvases are 100% cotton, acid-free and triple primed on solid wood frames, under FSC certificate C181637, a number you can look up.
Why we sell through Amazon
We do not run our own shop. Everything Elan makes is sold through Amazon in your country, which means your order is picked, shipped and, if it comes to it, returned by an operation that does this better than we could. It also means you pay Amazon’s price, rather than ours with a warehouse built into it. We would rather spend our time on the products.
Where we have got to
More than 500,000 items shipped, to 77 countries, and over 19,000 Amazon ratings averaging 4.6.