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The maker · 24 September 2026
From a bulb factory to a lighting brand
ILKW started in Daegu in 1962 and became a lighting brand along the way.
ILKW began in Daegu, South Korea, in 1962, founded by Mangyu Kim. For its first sixty years the factory made one thing: incandescent bulbs.
It stopped making them in 2022, after 624,037,840 of them.
From bulbs to lamps
The change took a decade. In 2013 the company recast itself as a design bulb maker, and in 2021 as a design lighting maker. The SNOWMAN series launched that same year, starting with SNOWMAN22 in table and floor versions.
The SNOWMAN series
SNOWMAN is a family of rounded forms, from an 8 cm portable lamp to a 70 cm pendant, in table, floor, pendant, wall and ceiling versions. Materials and detailing differ from model to model.
In April 2025 ILKW showed fourteen of them at Salone del Mobile / Euroluce in Milan.
The whole collection is in the products section.
