Friends, let’s talk limited edition! Last week, we asked the Hazelnuts (members of our loyalty program) to send us all their questions about Hazel Village limited-edition animals. Thank you to everyone who sent in a query! We received more than we could include in this blog post, but we did our best to pick a good selection.

In case you are a newer friend of Hazel Village (if so, welcome!!), here is some background info:

There are 21 animals who are permanent residents of the Village. If you take a look at the Village Map, you will see that each of these animals has a little house marked with their name. These 21 animals will always remain available for purchase on our website.

Each year, we release a number of limited-edition animal friends. Limited-edition friends only visit the Village for a short time, and typically will not be restocked after they sell out online. Hazel Village has a Guest House where these animals live during their stay. (You can take a look at our Guest Book to see what friends have visited in the past.) Sometimes old friends decide to come back to the Village for another visit – in recent years, there has been 1 official returning animal per year.

Before we move into answering questions, we have a few important ANNOUNCEMENTS! Here they are:

1. From now on, there will be multiple returning animals each year! In 2025, you can expect to see 2 returning animal visitors and 4 new animal visitors.
2. We will continue sharing hints on social media for each new animal in the lead-up to their arrival, but we will no longer be creating hints for returning animals. Anytime you see us posting hints, that means a new animal is approaching.
3. All limited-edition animals will now be priced at $54. This is because limited-edition animals take a lot more time to design and produce, so they are more expensive for us to make. Our resident animals will continue to be priced at $48.

It's exciting times, friends! Now, off we go:

 

Will you bring back my favorite animal?

This is the most common question we received and the answer is: probably! But we couldn’t tell you when it might happen. The best way to stay informed about new and returning animals is definitely to keep an eye on our email newsletter.

 

Will all visiting animals return at least once? Will they return more than once?

The animals in our Guest Book will probably all return at least once, and it is totally possible that some might return more than once.

 

How do you decide which animals to bring back and when?

We spend a lot of time pondering! Sometimes it comes down to how popular an animal was or how high the demand seems to be; other times, it comes down to an emotional decision of who Jane and our team would like to bring back. We do our best work when we are feeling truly inspired, so it’s not always productive to bring back an animal (or make a certain new animal) just because people ask us to do so.

An old friend who will be visiting again later this year has been highly requested to return, but Jane had not been feeling inspired to design a new collection for them and therefore hadn’t yet felt that the time was right to bring them back. Then last fall, the perfect idea arose – a collection that Jane has always dreamed of designing, and which fits just right with the personality of this animal. From there, it naturally fell into place that they should return.

 

 

What types of animals would never visit Hazel Village?

Any animal that visits the Village needs to be able to share clothes with their woodland friends. We are often asked if a turtle would ever visit, to which we reply that a Hazel Village turtle would need to remove its shell in order to wear clothing. Since real turtles don’t do that, we have no plans to make a turtle Villager.

Never say never, but it is unlikely that you will see animals that would feel geographically/environmentally out of place in a North American forest (such as “zoo” animals like an elephant or a polar bear).

 

Why don’t you make more limited-edition friends permanent, like Arthur Lamb?

If you ask us from a lore perspective, the animals who visit Hazel Village don’t want to move in permanently. They love to visit, but they are travelers and they want to keep having adventures elsewhere. Arthur Lamb was an exception – he became best friends with Lucas Rabbit, and felt so at home in Hazel Village that he simply had to move in for good.

From a logistical business-y perspective, the answer is that we can’t keep all those animals in stock at once because it would be much more than our production partners can handle. We considered making Florence Bat permanent after she proved so popular, but we decided it made more sense for us to just have her visit more often. It should also be noted that although we dearly love visiting friends and we have so much fun creating them for you, the heart of Hazel Village is its resident animals and we want to keep it that way.

 

How far do you decide the animals in advance?

We typically start planning animals about a year in advance of their arrival. We might not get into the weeds of designing that animal and their collection until around 8 months out, but we like to decide which animals are visiting pretty far in advance so we can make sure that the lineup is well balanced and we can build out the rest of the year’s collections around them.

 

For a new animal, how many revisions does it take to get from idea to finished product?

It really depends on the animal! Peter Badger, for instance, came together very quickly. From the first sample that our pattern maker created, we all agreed that was pretty much Peter. On the opposite end, Cyril Dragon went through many rounds of revisions and it took us about 2 full months to finalize his design.

 

Can we vote on which animals should visit next?

Maybe someday, but for now we prefer to make these decisions amongst our team. But we always welcome any suggestions or feedback you may have, so please feel free to send us an email at hello@hazelvillage.com anytime!

 

Will animals ever return with their original collection?

It is unlikely that a returning animal would ever bring back the same collection that they first launched with. However, we do take inspiration from their original collection when designing new items for them. And it’s always possible that certain older clothing items might pop up again here and there – for example, Charlotte Bear had a crocheted sweater that we just recently made again for our recent Icicle’s First Twinkle clothing collection.

 

Has HV adjusted quantities of visitors' collections so that it is a less stressful purchasing experience?

The thing about adjusting production quantities as a small business is that is has to be done gradually, or everything breaks. In the past we have scaled our quantities up or down dramatically and it has not led to good results, so we’ve learned to be cautious and take it slow. We are paying close attention to the way each collection sells (our marketing director Raquel has some very detailed spreadsheets with this data), and we are in constant communication with our artisan partners to assess their production capacities and see where we can grow (without overworking anyone or compromising on quality). We are very much hoping that 2025 will offer less stressful shopping experiences for our customers, and we appreciate you bearing with us as we work to improve.

 

Will you tell us what animals are coming next?

No spoilers! The secrecy is half the fun ♥️✨