When Nina Daniels returned to speak at Alex & His Sisters this March, she brought with her a story of Netflix placements, Scandinavian heritage, self-funded graft and a masterclass in making a luxury lifestyle brand work on your own terms.
There is a moment in Nina Daniels’ story — somewhere between the Stockholm suburb, the London design degree and the converted garage studio — where the threads of her upbringing, her creativity and her relentless commercial instinct pull taut into something singular. Nina D, her luxury lifestyle brand celebrated for hand-painted table linen and a distinctive Scandinavian aesthetic, is not a happy accident. It is the product of a woman who absorbed, from childhood, the lesson that you build what you want — because no one hands it to you.
Returning to the Alex & His Sisters event three years after her first appearance, Nina sat down with host Alex McCann for a wide-ranging conversation that took in Netflix drama, press strategy, garage conversions and the unspoken rules of collaboration.
What follows is the full story.
Roots: A Stockholm Suburb and a Three-Metre Kiosk
Nina’s backstory is one of those origin tales that feels almost too neatly prophetic.
Born in Stockholm and raised in a suburb fifteen minutes from the city, she grew up in what she describes as a close-knit, communal world of neighbours and dinner parties. Her British father — a Yorkshire-born chef who trained in Guernsey, travelled through Europe and ended up staying when he fell for a Swedish nurse — worked in restoration, construction and gardening, always hands-on and never behind a desk.
Her mother, meanwhile, had opened her first fashion boutique at sixteen.
“She opened her first little boutique on an island outside Stockholm. She was 16 years old, and this three by three meters kiosk on the island Gotland. She said, I’ll have that, and I’m going to turn it into a little boutique. I’m going to sew these dresses and I’m going to make jewellery. And she then entered into press — the smallest boutique in Sweden.”
The creative impulse ran deep. Nina studied set and costume design in London, and when fellow students turned to computerised design tools, she held firm to hand-drawing and hand-painting.
It is a choice that defines Nina D to this day: every design on the table is hand-painted in watercolour, with cut-out elements layered to create what she describes as a striking two-dimensional effect when photographed.
Each piece carries a personal story — from a place or person close to her heart in Sweden. The pink design is named after her mother Ida-Lilja. Others are drawn from Stockholm landmarks or her family’s Swedish summer house, Skogshyddan (The Forest Hut).
“Lots of my customers, they can resonate, and they can connect — they connect to the personal story.”
The Netflix Call That Started at 2am
If there is a single moment that encapsulates how Nina D has grown — and how Nina herself operates — it is the story of the Netflix placement in Harlan Coben’s Run Away, which aired on New Year’s Day 2026.
It began, as many of Nina’s best stories do, with a call she almost dismissed as a scam.
“In May last year, I’m busy away working, and I have a phone call saying, Hi, it’s Alexa. And I’m thinking, what — is this a fraud? Is this another scam call? And, well, it’s Alexa, you know. And I’m after linen. I need pure, soft, 100% linen, grey. And I’ve searched all over the place, and you seem to have it — linen table runners.”
A quick Google confirmed that Alexa Hartle was a real set decorator for film and television. She bought eight to ten of Nina’s linen table runners.
Before the assistant left, Nina pushed for a clue. All she was told: New Year’s Day. On TV. A cult or a set.
“New Year’s Day was coming. I knew I need to really, you know. So I was Googling, what’s airing New Year’s Day cult sect, and it was like, Runaway, Harlan Coben. And I was like, right, okay. So it aired, and I think it was 2am in the morning, and I was into Episode Five, and then it was like cult mansion coming up, and I think, oh my God — so 2am, that’s my linen on that bed.”
The kicker came in the final scene involving James Nesbitt and Minnie Driver, where a Nina D table runner appears behind the lead actress — complete with the cult’s symbol placed directly on the fabric. Nina zoomed in. She could see her own label stitched on the back.
The show hit number one on Netflix.
Rather than simply enjoying the moment, Nina went to work — jumping into every relevant Facebook group she could find, from Harlan Coben fan pages to Manchester Film and TV communities.
“It was absolutely phenomenal. So when you’re in the heat of it, and that’s gone on and aired and number one Netflix and everything, every single Facebook group, Harlan Coben’s Facebook group, every single Manchester Film TV Facebook group — so because everyone promoted this, I hopped on and I commented on every single one in the threads. Linked it. My linen table runners featured in there, and it drove incredible traffic. Grab that opportunity.”
The First Wow Moment
Before Netflix, before ELLE Italia, before the Retail Bulletin conference, there was a gate at Stockholm airport.
Around two or three years into the business, Nina was waiting to board a flight home when a woman approached her.
“She said: You’re Nina with the placemats. I follow you. I love what you do.”
But the moments Nina seems to value most are quieter than press features or TV placements. She speaks with visible warmth about the customers who write to tell her that her tableware has changed something in their homes — brought teenagers downstairs from their rooms, gathered a family around a table.
“My teenage sons are not up in the room anymore. They’re coming — because we started setting the table, and it’s thanks to you.”
Those messages, she says, are the recognition that really matters.
The Garage That Became a Studio
Three years ago, when Nina last spoke at Alex & His Sisters, she was dreaming aloud about the kind of shop she wanted.
Now she has it — on her own terms, in her own building, rent-free.
“Up to my shop or studio, the home was — it was one of those kitchen table floors leading up to Christmas, my son would — like, it was just boxes, orders, and I felt I know this can’t carry on. It doesn’t work. I need a physical space. My products are so tactile, and I think it’s about meeting me and learning about my brand, my story, a space to connect. And I refuse to pay a landlord huge amounts of money and not be able to sleep at night.”
The solution: convert the garage.
She owns it, her son is upstairs, and she is downstairs — opening by appointment, hosting intimate events, and maintaining the personal experience that underpins her brand.
The studio has been open a year and a half. It has hosted wreath-making workshops with a Nordic twist, and last December a collaboration with Urmston’s The English Rose Bakery brought macaron-decorating workshops with Swedish flavours.
The events are deliberately small — seven or eight tickets, carefully managed, with parking advice given to every guest.
“I love that,” she says, with the directness of someone who has thought carefully about every decision. “I can play shop.”
Press: The System That Actually Works
Ask Nina about press and she gives you the kind of granular, earned detail that comes from years of trial, error and iteration.
She is candid about the missteps — including an early experience with a PR agency model that consumed hours of her time composing tailored pitches to editors, with strict rules about never emailing on Monday mornings or after 12 noon on a Friday.
“It took forever, and I didn’t really — I just didn’t progress. And it took so much of my time being one person.”
The system she now uses is Press Loft — a platform where editors and journalists search for product images directly.
Nina has around 100 images on her portal. When a magazine downloads one, she receives a notification.
She cross-references this with Readly, a digital newsstand subscription costing eight or nine pounds a month, which she uses almost daily to search her own name and website across newspapers and magazines worldwide.
“I go on almost daily, and I search my website, I search Nina D, and then I’ve got the list of — okay, who’s downloaded images, when are they about to happen, and I search their magazines, and I just quickly scroll through. Yes, I’m in. So this works for me, brilliant.”
She estimates that marketing — press, social media, networking events and speaking engagements — accounts for around 70% of her working week.
It is a significant commitment, but for Nina it is not optional.
The Human Voice in an AI Room
When Nina took to the stage at The Retail Bulletin’s Retail Ecom North conference, she found herself on a panel alongside Amazon and a company that had flown in from Mumbai to talk exclusively about AI and ChatGPT.
“I’m thinking, oh, here comes Nina D homeware, you know, Swedish upbringing, the human contact in a brand, personal touch. And I was surrounded by all the — there was a whole business who had flown in from Mumbai, and it’s all AI tech, all about ChatGPT, and they said, scrap everything else. That’s all you need.”
Nina’s counter-argument was simply herself: the story behind a product, the personality behind a brand.
“I think when they organise that, they also want someone with a bit of human flair and touch. And, you know, it’s about human connection. We can’t — all the AI, VR, and you know, what kind of life is that? Because we’re human beings.”
Collaboration: The 50/50 Rule
Nina is known for being one of the most active collaborators in the Altrincham independent business community — but she is equally clear-eyed about what makes collaborations succeed and what makes them fail.
“It’s about having a couple of meetings and seeing — are you on the same page here? Are you both driven? Are you both in making this work and create this event or collaborating together? There has been times where I thought, I don’t think we’re going to quite get there together. It can’t be 70% one and 30% the other. We have to go 50/50.”
“Key is communication. I can’t tell you — it’s about setting up a WhatsApp, but you communicate. You can’t be read, your silence, and the other one is going to panic.”
She looks for independent, creative businesses where the products and audiences genuinely complement each other. If both parties promote properly, she says, you double or triple the reach.
She has walked away from collaborations that weren’t working, and she is unapologetic about it.
Social Media: Quality Over the Algorithm
Nina is one of the most visible independent business owners on social media in the Altrincham area — posting regularly, commenting generously on others’ content and lifting up new businesses with a consistency that not everyone in the community matches.
She is candid about the ones who don’t reciprocate.
“I can sort of feel, you know, if I’m welcoming a new business — welcome to the community, would love to meet — or if there’s nothing back, I don’t spend much more time on that.”
“And some I actually just kind of unfollowed because I think, well, you know, here’s your window, here’s your chance.”
For a brand built on design and visual identity, her posts cannot be dashed off. She does not schedule content a month in advance.
“I simply can’t. It doesn’t work for me.”
Instagram Stories run as a constant thread. Feed posts appear two or three times a week — thought through rather than reactive.
“When I post on Instagram or LinkedIn, I think about the post so I don’t just do it for the doing — because I just think it needs quality, it needs to be a depth. I’ve thought this through… I rather have that, much more regularly.”
“I just follow who I am and what I create, and my inspiration, and I create it myself. I don’t feel that I follow a set structure somewhere… I’ve always been a bit, I’m going to do it my way.”
The Breadwinner’s Calculus
Every creative decision Nina makes is threaded through with a very specific reality: she is a single mother, the sole breadwinner, and her business is not a vanity project.
It must work as a business.
She has structured her finances accordingly — a personal budget that covers her and her son’s outgoings, and a separate business budget — keeping risk compartmentalised without letting it become an excuse for coasting.
“In my situation, I, in order for me to have started what I’m doing, I have a personal budget, and I have a business budget. So my personal budget, it just means that me and my son are covered — with all that outgoing I haven’t got that risk factor.”
“I’m actually so driven and setting my targets and levels to now, at this time this year, I’m ready to scale up.”
The resilience, she says, goes back generations.
Her maternal grandparents fled the Second World War from near Leningrad — her grandmother Russian, her grandfather Finnish — crossing the Baltic Sea by fishing boat at night and arriving in Sweden with nothing but the clothes they wore.
They built a successful fish-smoking business from scratch, supplying some of the finest restaurants in Stockholm.
Her mother opened a boutique at sixteen. Her father built a life in a foreign country with no safety net.
The lesson absorbed across those generations is one Nina carries into every business decision she makes.
“I think it just goes back in the generation of — if you do it, you know it. No one’s going to give it to you. No one’s just going to hand that to you, what you want. You work for it, and you learn the process as you grow.”
What’s Next
2026 is a year of scaling for Nina D.
Her eleventh design, Viktor & Maria — inspired by her grandparents, who lived on the Swedish island of Gotland — is set to launch this year, celebrating family heritage and the kind of timeless traditions that run through every piece she creates.
Bigger meetings, broader ambitions and the conversation with the British Retail Association are all in motion.
What will not change is the thing that has always defined Nina D: the insistence that behind every product there is a person, a place and a story.
In a conference room full of AI evangelists, or a Netflix production needing authentic linen for a cult set, or an airport gate where a stranger recognises you from your placemats — that turns out to be enough.
Follow Nina D and connect here
https://nina-d.co.uk/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nina-d-homeware/
https://www.instagram.com/ninadhome/
https://www.facebook.com/ninadillustrationheminspiration
With over 80 attendees, Alex & His Sisters continues to be a standout networking event in Altrincham, bringing together inspiring speakers like Nina D who share their real-world insights and practical advice. A big thank you to Nina for here engaging talk, and to all the attendees who make these events so impactful!
Follow On Eventbrite here
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/alex-mccann-18007752018
Event Photos by Katie Lucas
https://www.katielucasphotography.co.uk/
