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Two art school kids walk into a workshop and accidentally create a global gift empire
WHO ARE THESE CLOWNS?
IT'S A LONG STORY
I first meet Sam & Jude at exactly 3AM in an East London
lock‑up that smells of MDF, spray paint and instant noodles. Sleep is for people who don’t have ideas clawing at their skulls like squirrels in a wheelie bin. They’re both fresh out of Central Saint Martins, product design graduates, 1996 vintage, still buzzing on adrenaline, cheap lager and unemployment benefit. And they want to borrow my angle‑grinder.
But don't get caught up in the down-and-out angle-grinder chic. We all know this ends in glitz and glamour and matching tattoos and umbrellas in their drinks.
But what paid for those umbrellas? Creativity, passion and good old fashioned hard work. Not seen in London since Jagger & Richards swaggered up the Kings Road in 1976. But you would rarely find Sam & Jude floating about in silk scarfs and cowboy boot. These two figured out early on - this game is as much about hard graft and moving cardboard boxes and keeping the customer satisfied as it is about the next hit single. Not that the endless stream of hit singles didn't help. But you know all about that, otherwise you wouldn't be here. The "Greatest Gift On Earth" moniker wasn't just some dumb marketing catchphrase, goddamit.
But back to 1999 our heroes are supposed to go out and get “proper jobs”, maybe design door handles for some fancy Italian knob brand, but instead their paths cross, they compare sketchbooks, trade licks, and realise they’re both heading in the same direction: making weird, stupid stuff that shouldn’t exist but absolutely bloody should.
So they do the only rational thing:
They refuse to be adults.
They set up a workshop in a squat and start building Xmas decorations, mutant furniture and industrially-inspired objects, things that look like they fell out of a sci-fi comic and landed in strip-club...
* * * *
WHY SUCK UK?
(a name you have to say twice on the phone)
The company forms the way good bands do: by accident. One minute it’s just 2 unemployed idots messing around in a workshop, the next minute someone needs an invoice and bam. SUCK UK exists.
A name that sounds like a bad idea and a dare at the same time: SUCK UK. No one agrees where it comes from. Vacuum former? Gasp of surprise? Turkish Sausage? Random chaos? And the origin officially becomes an “urban myth” inside the company. The only confirmed fact is that it has caused years of hasty phone explanations, and they are completely unapologetic about it.
In my head, I see a 1999 landline conversation: “Hello, who is this?” “It’s Jude from SUCK.” Another prospective customer hangs up and Jude is wondering if maybe they should have called it “Nice Objects Ltd” instead. (They shouldn’t have. The name sticks like a fridge magnet to the brain.)
Sam & Jude are rock-music people, allergic to corporate stiffness, so they ditch their surnames. Just Sam & Jude, from SUCK. Like a band that happens to make conroversial teapots instead of controversial records.
* * * *
EARLY DAYS
June 2000. They drag their oddball creations to a show, the design equivalent of turning up at Glastonbury with a homemade guitar. Public reaction is ridiculous: people love it. Nobody realises that everything for sale is basically a prototype held together with double sided sticky tape. Then comes the moment every design student dreams about in the shower: Sir Terence Conran hands them an award for Most Innovative New Product. (The Conran Shop itself takes another ten months to actually stock their stuff. Reality always walks slower than awards) The blessing has been given. They start racking up prizes and a ton of press (when press was earned, not bought), the kind of trophy shelf that says, yes, your parents were wrong, you can make a living making weird objects that look like visual puns.
* * * *
WHAT EVEN IS THAT?
At the start it’s all freaky furniture that lights up and industrially-inspired pieces. Heavy, serious, with a wink. But there’s a shift. The real high is not just “chair, but cooler,” it’s objects, house things, stuff nobody strictly needs but everyone viscerally wants. Gifts.
The SUCK UK mission quietly mutates into: “Don’t make sensible products. Make the ones you’d pick for the awkward friend who already has everything.” So the workshop starts spitting out ideas like a badly calibrated confetti cannon:
Bottle openers that blend in so perfectly with the house keys in your pocket no one would suspect you of the booze fiends you obviously are.
Pencils shaped like drumsticks, for the rhythmically possessed, and anyone who knows life is better with a drum solo between emails.
Hip-flasks hidden in a Bible, which go viral (before that was a thing) when they gets written up in a lads-mag (remember them?): Bless me Father, for I have hydrated.
Absurdly fat 100-year diaries, 1000-page tomes for recording an entire life or relationship, as if your memories deserved their own brick-thick gothic novel.
Mugs printed with Pantone colour swatches so you can calibrate your tea to the perfect shade. Milk to tea ratio becomes a science. Mugs become art.
Globes made of cork so you can stab your travel plans directly into the planet with red pins. A cartographic voodoo doll for wanderlust.
Cardboard DJ decks for cats, letting your furry menace scratch vinyl like a tiny four-legged Grandmaster Flash.
Lunchboxes shaped like guitar cases, so your kids can carry their sandwiches like they are about to headline Hellfest.
These aren’t just products; they’re punchlines you can put on a shelf. The design approach is simple: take something normal, twist it until it’s funny and oddly elegant, then package it like it deserves a spot in a design museum.
* * * *
BUILDING A CULT
By the mid-2000s, SUCK UK has gone global. They’re in all the “name” department stores plus a long tail of indie galleries and gift shops that loved them before it was cool. The operation grows into a small cult: A team of talented creatives, illustrators, product designers, developers, odd geniuses from everywhere, with Sam & Jude as the constant heart of the beast. “If it’s Sam & Jude and a revolving team of talented creatives, it’s SUCK UK”. They give a leg-up to young designers and collaborate with cool brands, all funneled through the SUCK UK filter of fun.
Headquarters still in East London despite the fact that you cant buy a pint for less than ten quid and coffee all tastes a bit botanical. But also warehouses in the UK, USA and HK, because apparently you need logistics if you want to ship a drumstick pencil to Hawaii or a sun jar to Hong Kong.
* * * *
SUCKIES
(The Luckies merger)
Decades roll by. The brand survives trend cycles, financial crises, Borris Johnson, Yuppy Flu, and who-even-knows-what else by staying weird, witty, and relentlessly giftable. Then, in 2022, the universe folds in on itself a little: SUCK UK merges with longtime frenemies Luckies of London, another design-gift powerhouse. Luckies founder later describes it as combining two competing product design and wholesale empires into one Frankenstein’s monster of ideas. From the outside, it just looks like Suck UK suddenly has even more stuff: scratch maps, smartphone projectors, travel gadgets, socks that look good enough to drink, and other artifacts from the expanded gift multiverse.
Internally, I imagine the meeting went like this: “So… we’re both making ridiculous but well-designed gifts for people who hate boring presents?” “Yep.” “Should we just… stop competing and build a bigger circus?” “Yep.” And they did.
* * * *
FOUR FACTS
All we can really know about Sam & Jude, stripped of the smoke, neon mirrors and sarcasm, is this:
They’re Central Saint Martins product design drop-outs who discovered their brains were mis-wired in the same strange direction.
They started with hand-crafted furniture and industrial-flavoured objects in a London warehouse, then pivoted into giftware and designy home goods.
They chose a deliberately provocative, faintly chaotic name whose true origin no one at the company will admit, and they’ve spent 25 years leaning into the joke rather than walking it back.
They built a global brand out of small, witty, well-made objects that turn everyday life into a slightly more surreal place.
Everything else, the late nights, the bad coffee, the arguments over Pantone swatches, the feeling of walking past a shop window and seeing your glow-in-the-dark monkey-shaped scratch-n-sniff tea-cosey staring back at you, that’s the part we have to imagine. But if you squint at the story, SUCK UK is basically two stubborn design kids refusing to grow up in the approved way and accidentally dragging half the gift industry along with them.
I never did get my angle‑grinder back.
But don't get caught up in the down-and-out angle-grinder chic. We all know this ends in glitz and glamour and matching tattoos and umbrellas in their drinks.
But what paid for those umbrellas? Creativity, passion and good old fashioned hard work. Not seen in London since Jagger & Richards swaggered up the Kings Road in 1976. But you would rarely find Sam & Jude floating about in silk scarfs and cowboy boot. These two figured out early on - this game is as much about hard graft and moving cardboard boxes and keeping the customer satisfied as it is about the next hit single. Not that the endless stream of hit singles didn't help. But you know all about that, otherwise you wouldn't be here. The "Greatest Gift On Earth" moniker wasn't just some dumb marketing catchphrase, goddamit.
But back to 1999 our heroes are supposed to go out and get “proper jobs”, maybe design door handles for some fancy Italian knob brand, but instead their paths cross, they compare sketchbooks, trade licks, and realise they’re both heading in the same direction: making weird, stupid stuff that shouldn’t exist but absolutely bloody should.
So they do the only rational thing:
They refuse to be adults.
They set up a workshop in a squat and start building Xmas decorations, mutant furniture and industrially-inspired objects, things that look like they fell out of a sci-fi comic and landed in strip-club...
* * * *
WHY SUCK UK?
(a name you have to say twice on the phone)
The company forms the way good bands do: by accident. One minute it’s just 2 unemployed idots messing around in a workshop, the next minute someone needs an invoice and bam. SUCK UK exists.
A name that sounds like a bad idea and a dare at the same time: SUCK UK. No one agrees where it comes from. Vacuum former? Gasp of surprise? Turkish Sausage? Random chaos? And the origin officially becomes an “urban myth” inside the company. The only confirmed fact is that it has caused years of hasty phone explanations, and they are completely unapologetic about it.
In my head, I see a 1999 landline conversation: “Hello, who is this?” “It’s Jude from SUCK.” Another prospective customer hangs up and Jude is wondering if maybe they should have called it “Nice Objects Ltd” instead. (They shouldn’t have. The name sticks like a fridge magnet to the brain.)
Sam & Jude are rock-music people, allergic to corporate stiffness, so they ditch their surnames. Just Sam & Jude, from SUCK. Like a band that happens to make conroversial teapots instead of controversial records.
* * * *
EARLY DAYS
June 2000. They drag their oddball creations to a show, the design equivalent of turning up at Glastonbury with a homemade guitar. Public reaction is ridiculous: people love it. Nobody realises that everything for sale is basically a prototype held together with double sided sticky tape. Then comes the moment every design student dreams about in the shower: Sir Terence Conran hands them an award for Most Innovative New Product. (The Conran Shop itself takes another ten months to actually stock their stuff. Reality always walks slower than awards) The blessing has been given. They start racking up prizes and a ton of press (when press was earned, not bought), the kind of trophy shelf that says, yes, your parents were wrong, you can make a living making weird objects that look like visual puns.
* * * *
WHAT EVEN IS THAT?
At the start it’s all freaky furniture that lights up and industrially-inspired pieces. Heavy, serious, with a wink. But there’s a shift. The real high is not just “chair, but cooler,” it’s objects, house things, stuff nobody strictly needs but everyone viscerally wants. Gifts.
The SUCK UK mission quietly mutates into: “Don’t make sensible products. Make the ones you’d pick for the awkward friend who already has everything.” So the workshop starts spitting out ideas like a badly calibrated confetti cannon:
Bottle openers that blend in so perfectly with the house keys in your pocket no one would suspect you of the booze fiends you obviously are.
Pencils shaped like drumsticks, for the rhythmically possessed, and anyone who knows life is better with a drum solo between emails.
Hip-flasks hidden in a Bible, which go viral (before that was a thing) when they gets written up in a lads-mag (remember them?): Bless me Father, for I have hydrated.
Absurdly fat 100-year diaries, 1000-page tomes for recording an entire life or relationship, as if your memories deserved their own brick-thick gothic novel.
Mugs printed with Pantone colour swatches so you can calibrate your tea to the perfect shade. Milk to tea ratio becomes a science. Mugs become art.
Globes made of cork so you can stab your travel plans directly into the planet with red pins. A cartographic voodoo doll for wanderlust.
Cardboard DJ decks for cats, letting your furry menace scratch vinyl like a tiny four-legged Grandmaster Flash.
Lunchboxes shaped like guitar cases, so your kids can carry their sandwiches like they are about to headline Hellfest.
These aren’t just products; they’re punchlines you can put on a shelf. The design approach is simple: take something normal, twist it until it’s funny and oddly elegant, then package it like it deserves a spot in a design museum.
* * * *
BUILDING A CULT
By the mid-2000s, SUCK UK has gone global. They’re in all the “name” department stores plus a long tail of indie galleries and gift shops that loved them before it was cool. The operation grows into a small cult: A team of talented creatives, illustrators, product designers, developers, odd geniuses from everywhere, with Sam & Jude as the constant heart of the beast. “If it’s Sam & Jude and a revolving team of talented creatives, it’s SUCK UK”. They give a leg-up to young designers and collaborate with cool brands, all funneled through the SUCK UK filter of fun.
Headquarters still in East London despite the fact that you cant buy a pint for less than ten quid and coffee all tastes a bit botanical. But also warehouses in the UK, USA and HK, because apparently you need logistics if you want to ship a drumstick pencil to Hawaii or a sun jar to Hong Kong.
* * * *
SUCKIES
(The Luckies merger)
Decades roll by. The brand survives trend cycles, financial crises, Borris Johnson, Yuppy Flu, and who-even-knows-what else by staying weird, witty, and relentlessly giftable. Then, in 2022, the universe folds in on itself a little: SUCK UK merges with longtime frenemies Luckies of London, another design-gift powerhouse. Luckies founder later describes it as combining two competing product design and wholesale empires into one Frankenstein’s monster of ideas. From the outside, it just looks like Suck UK suddenly has even more stuff: scratch maps, smartphone projectors, travel gadgets, socks that look good enough to drink, and other artifacts from the expanded gift multiverse.
Internally, I imagine the meeting went like this: “So… we’re both making ridiculous but well-designed gifts for people who hate boring presents?” “Yep.” “Should we just… stop competing and build a bigger circus?” “Yep.” And they did.
* * * *
FOUR FACTS
All we can really know about Sam & Jude, stripped of the smoke, neon mirrors and sarcasm, is this:
They’re Central Saint Martins product design drop-outs who discovered their brains were mis-wired in the same strange direction.
They started with hand-crafted furniture and industrial-flavoured objects in a London warehouse, then pivoted into giftware and designy home goods.
They chose a deliberately provocative, faintly chaotic name whose true origin no one at the company will admit, and they’ve spent 25 years leaning into the joke rather than walking it back.
They built a global brand out of small, witty, well-made objects that turn everyday life into a slightly more surreal place.
Everything else, the late nights, the bad coffee, the arguments over Pantone swatches, the feeling of walking past a shop window and seeing your glow-in-the-dark monkey-shaped scratch-n-sniff tea-cosey staring back at you, that’s the part we have to imagine. But if you squint at the story, SUCK UK is basically two stubborn design kids refusing to grow up in the approved way and accidentally dragging half the gift industry along with them.
I never did get my angle‑grinder back.
Katey Money