In 2022 I signed with FC Haka and moved to Valkeakoski, a small town in Finland built around a paper mill and a football club that has been there since 1934. It was my first stop in European football. I had been in the States since I was a kid, Rhode Island, then the Red Bulls, then Charleston, and this was the first time I’d play in Europe as a professional. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it was my first time in a new country, playing at a higher level, and I knew I was in for some new experiences.
What I didn’t expect was how at home I’d feel there. The Finnish community took me in. Teammates, their families, the people around the club. I made some great friends in those two seasons and a lot of memories I still think about.
One of those teammates was Eero Auvinen. We played on the same team for two years, and you get close to someone when you share a dressing room with them every day through two seasons and two Finnish winters. Through Eero I got to know his sister, Anni, and the friendships I made there are the reason I kept going back to Finland after my time at Haka ended.
On one of those trips Eero, Anni and I sat down and talked about Derma. Finland had brought me back, and from there I brought Derma to the two of them. Anni has been part of it in the United States for a long time now. She has visited many times, and she has been behind the scenes of a lot of the pivotal moments and decisions that shaped what Derma is today. The winter shoot was hers too. She stood out on a frozen lake in the middle of a Finnish January in the Northern Fleece, waiting through the cold until the shot was right. That’s the photo below, and it’s the one that ended up on the front of Derma Finland.
Derma never had a plan to expand anywhere. It started in Athens, with a ball behind the couch and my grandfather walking me to the park, and it has moved with me wherever I’ve gone since. Finland was the first place outside the US where I found out that the thing I care about travels. The game is the same, the people are different, and what it feels like to belong to a team is the same everywhere.
So I’m glad to say Derma Finland is open, and Anni and Eero are running it. They’re based there, they speak the language, they know the clubs and the culture, and they understand how a season works in Finland in a way I never fully could as a foreigner. Clubs in Finland will deal with them directly. I’ll stay close to the design and to keeping the brand what it is, but this is theirs to build.
Starting the Finnish side of Derma with two people I met because of football, in the place where I first played in Europe, feels like the right way to do it. If you’re a club in Finland, you’ll find them at dermasuomi.fi. And if you were part of those two years at Haka, thank you. More of this started with you than you probably know.
