In 1967, in the small Estonian village of Villemi, a young boy sat in the public sauna beside an old man. His father, Paul Nellis, stood by the stove and threw water onto the stones.

Paul was a potter, a stove builder and a true sauna enthusiast. Like many Estonian men of his time, he had golden hands, could build and repair anything and a warm heart. Every summer, he made smaller whisks for his son, so the boy could enjoy the sauna properly when winter came.

That day, the boy held his small whisk while old Juhan sat beside him with a large one. Juhan wore woollen mittens and a leather winter hat to protect his ears from the heat. The boy, as children in the sauna often are, sat there with nothing but courage.

Juhan asked the boy how old he was. The boy straightened up proudly and answered, “Three!” The old man laughed and told him that he was eighty-three. Paul decided it was time to throw steam. The heat rose slowly from the large stove — strong, deep and full.
Then the two began to whisk themselves: one small and stubborn, the other old and wise.

The boy kept dipping his whisk into the bucket of cool water and he refused to leave the bench before Juhan did. Finally, the old man took pity on him and said to Paul, “I have been going to the sauna all my life, but I have never shared the bench with someone eighty years younger. You have a tough boy.”

Years passed, and that same boy became his father’s apprentice in building sauna stoves. From Paul, he learned that good work should last longer than the person who made it. And it did. Many of the stoves Paul built continued to warm homes long after he had passed on.

Today, COZY carries those principles forward. Together with our engineers, led by Oleg Golmakov, we continue to develop simple, efficient wood-burning sauna heaters built on everything we have learned from the past: lasting warmth, smooth steam, durability and the feeling of home that only a real sauna can give.