An Interview with Let’s Curate Artisan, Nemunas Pakalnis of Wooden Boomerangs, Lithuania

Tell us about your background (academic and work background).

Before my business of boomerangs, I had completed my Bachelor in Railway engineering and had been working as senior project manager for more than 3 years. After all these years I realized that office work is not for me – I wanted to express and fulfill my creative side. That was the turning point when I started to think about boomerangs not only as my hobby but also as new business niche. Here I could have express my creative side, my ability and desire to work with wood and willingness to dig into marketing world.

What made you decide to be an independent artisan?

Well, there are three main things that made me decide to become an independent artisan:

– I was not fully satisfied with my full-time job
– Making boomerangs and playing with them was my hobby since childhood
– I was interested in learning e-commerce and web development

What inspired your love for designing boomerangs? Why boomerangs?

I was surrounded by boomerangs from my early childhood – my father is physicist. His hobby was to create boomerangs and observe its aerodynamic conditions. I clearly remember experiences when I was a kid and the fun I had testing my father’s boomerangs in parks and open fields. For me, it was always surprising how a wooden stick with no modern technology could fly, make a big circle in the air and then come right back to me.

Take us through your creative process.

I am inspired by the Lithuanian countryside, surrounded by forests and cozy nature. I can easily escape from busy and crowded city and find total peace. That kind of environment let me find and experiment with new colors and shapes of boomerangs. I also have created a workshop place for myself with all relevant equipment in order to make boomerangs – jigsaw, different kind of sanders, hand-tools, etc. So a little countryside house in the middle of forest is where the process begins.

Once the boomerangs are made, the decoration part takes place. Each boomerang is carefully painted by artists and one of them is my lovely wife.

What challenges did you face when you first began and how has it changed?

At the beginning it was hard to be noticed around so many handcrafters. Preparing boomerangs was easy but the new world of e-commerce, marketing, web development of my website www.woodenboomerangs.com, etc was the tougher task . So then my real journey began – I started to spend lots of hours digging into these undiscovered fields in order to show handcrafted boomerangs to the world.

How has Covid-19 affected your enterprise?

I have only noticed shipping delays. I was surprised by the fact that during quarantine people are even more interested in boomerangs. One of the reasons may be due to social distancing – during quarantine it became important to find activities that we can do by ourselves when we get out of the house. Boomerangs are perfect for this situation because they are designed to be used alone. You’re not throwing it to anyone like you would a Frisbee. The general guidelines are to keep minimum of a few feet away from other people. Therefore, it became relevant and especially safe sport tool lately.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming years?

My future goal is to create new designs and forms of boomerangs. I noticed that many children are attracted by boomerangs. Once they see me throwing, they stop, carefully watch, laugh and want to repeat it by themselves. Somehow this “flying stick” phenomenon is very attractive for them. I enjoy watching their reactions as well. So, I will keep on experimenting to create forms and shapes that could be easily thrown by children.

Nemunas Pakalnis, a Let’s Curate artisan is a boomerang maker from Lithuania (in the European Union). He learned the art of returning wooden boomerangs from his father and followed his passion to now be a creator of masterfully created wooden boomerangs. Click here to view and buy his exquisite creations.