Activities in the office in January!

The past few months out office has been a beehive of activity. Between adding new people, new work spaces and bidding farewell to a wonderful consultant, here are all the updates:

Our wonderful MBAs Without Borders consusltant Jessica Custer finished her stay with us, shortly before Christmas. We couldn't believe how quickly the 4 months had passed, and were so impressed by all the work we had done together. With Jessica's assistance we were able to streamline a lot of the workflow in our studio, set up concrete plans for growing towards a fully sustainable wholesale model and efficiently co-ordinate with our weaving co-operatives to ensure their growth. Here are some snaps of our pre-Christmas party before Jessica left.

Cake? Homemade wine? Yes please!

Our team made a handmade towel "bouquet" for Jessica!

We were also hard at work on some exciting new orders of Anthropologie, for this spring. They are one of our favorite teams to work with and we're so excited to hear from the each time! This time around, we're adding some new tags to our products so those of you shopping at their stores can also read a little bit about the products, where they are from and how to use them. Here's a peek at the tags going on the towels:

L-R: Anthropologie home tag, Textile Committee authentication tag, our product-info tag

Some of the fun new colors for Anthropologie, getting prepped..

We also hired some new temporary team members to help us out. These wonderful women live in our neighborhood and we were more than happy to hear about their interest in working with us. To make sure there was enough room for everyone, we decided on a fun way to increase our office space quickly: we got another re-purposed shipping container! If you remember ,we had gotten a re-purposed shipping container as our storage space a few moths ago.

To make things comfortable, this container was outfitted with wooden paneling, windows, doors and fans. Additionally we also built a shed over the two containers to keep them cool in the hot sunny weather we have in Kerala. Take a peek:

The outside of the containers, with the new roof

The container, updated to a workspace, all ready for use!

Our wonderful group of assistants who are tying the tassels & checking the fabrics.

While all this activity was going on in the studio, Indu got a call to speak about our work at the TiECon event being held in Kochi this year. It was a two-day conference where more than 2000 entrepreneurs from various professions gave short talks about creating sustainable business opportunities in Kerala. She was invited to speak in the Women Entrepreneurs segment and to say she knocked it out of the park was an understatement! We're waiting for the official video, meanwhile here's a peek at a hand-held video from an audience member (apologies for the quality, but the content is well worth it!)

Indu presenting our work at Kara at the TiECon event in Kochi, December 2013

Well, that's all for this month's updates. Watch this space for more :)

xoxo, Chitra

After the long absence..

Wooden pre-looming instruments at the Weaving Co-operative

We've been absent here on the blog for a bit, cannot believe the year is ending already! Here's a peek at what we've been working on:

• The wonderful Jessica Custer from the MBAs Without Borders program has been our advisor since September until December 2013. We've been working on a number of things with her, including a marketing strategy, setting up systems to streamline work in our studio and getting our sales strategy in order. As she winds up by late December, all we can think about is how much we'll miss her! :(

• We've been working with the talented photographer, photojournalist and Fulbright scholar Seema Krishnakumar on a small video for Kara. Its still in progress, and more on that soon!

• We were invited to do a brief guest-post about our work on Kochi Post.

• Great new feature about our partner Given Goods Co. and our products on Design Crush.

• Organic yarn!! We've been working on a small sample of organic yarn from Kutch via Khamir. Excited to see where this new direction leads us.

• We've also hired some wonderful new people: Mallika, our textile designer + production lead and Sunitha, our front office co-ordinator.

• A tonne of new collaborations with some amazing people. Notably Ecru in Kuwait, School House Electric in the US, Dune Eco Group in Kochi and a few new ones that we'll be revealing on our site soon!

More regular updates on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, so catch up with us there!

New Collaborations

We've been hard at work with some new people; here are some updates:

Over the next few days, we're doing a limited edition sale with Fab.com for their Outdoors Pop-up shop, here are some images from the event:

A month back we had done an exclusive event with them, our first ever, and it was amazing to see how well the products were received:

We also did a quick event with their European segment and had a pretty good sell-out event:

 In retail, you can find our new work at MUHS Home, Anthropologie and Calypso St Barth:

The Planet Access Company store in Chicago and the Bear Foods Market in Chelan,WA stock our work, as does the SipSip store on Harbor Islands in the Bahamas and Ecru in Kuwait. 

Few days ago we just shipped out some of our products to the Austin-based retailer Sound and True; looking forward to seeing them here too! 

More updates on our Stockists page and via Facebook; stay tuned!

University of Hawaii visit

Pretty excited to share with you the details of my trip to Hawaii; I was invited by the Department of Architecture at the University of Hawaii to do workshops on design as well as present my work at Kara. I don't think a blog-post would do justice to this experience, but here's a short photo-essay:

I stayed on a quite part of this spectacular coastline in Waikiki.

Sunrise over the beautiful Kapiolani park and Diamond Head Crater Park

Monday started bright and early at the Dept of Architecture at the Univ of Hawaii

They're working on a small project in branding I did with them over the week.

Loved seeing their stuff lying around; reminds me of my studio desk most days!

We divided them into small groups for reviewing each other's work.

I'm getting ready for my talk here; was super thrilled to see the turnout and the Q&A afterwards!

Maria Simon (l) and Erin Yuasa (r) were kind enough to take me on a tour of the University; Maria teaches in the Dept of Architecture; Erin teaches in the Ceramic Dept. Both are fellow alums from my grad school, the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Beautiful textures in remnants of a clay piece by Phoebe Cummings

This tree, outside the art department, was incredible to look at!

Erin makes beautiful work about re-purposed clay stepping stones, made in the shapes of found containers

These beautiful stemware by Erin's boyfriend Mark Mitsuda, a talented glass-artist and educator

Erin and Mark in his office at Punahou High School. They were kind enough to take me on a tour of this amazing institution!

This beautiful school is also where President Obama went to school at!

This is the Glass and Ceramic workshop areas of the school; loved the airy spacious space!

Here are some other fun things I did:

Lazy Sunday breakfast underneath the lychee tree with Aki (l) and Maria (r)

En route to Bellows beach, near the historic air force station with the same name

Nomoola does some incredible work on sustainable food practices; found their stand at the lunch-stop.

The sunken warship USS Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial; the colors are from the oil seeping out of the ship.

I also did a solo road-trip to the north shore of Oʻahu; the landscape was spectacular!

This lil dude was sunning himself on the coast when I got there; hello Sea Turtle!

Did I say how incredibly simple and delicious the food was? :)

Some life-truths I picked up:

Nature is the best pedicure, ever!

All food tastes great, if you're at the beach with friends! (with Tim & Maria)

Traveling in an open jeep can can make your face & hair happy! (with Aki & Maria)

Our fabric works with any lifestyle, any part of the world! (here Aki confirms it with the Infini)

All things Fair

Detail of a new drawing "One Billion Waiting and Watching" by Chitra

Today is known the world over as the International Women's Day. Historically its the day when garment workers in New York city in 1857 took to the streets to demand better working conditions and pay. In some parts of the world an equal rights issue is a thing of the past, in others its very much a current issue, if not a distant dream.

We, at Kara, are not specifically a women's organization (a number of our team and co-op members are men too), but we are definitely an organization that understands the challenges women face as they manage work and their families. This Women's Day we are thinking about the rights we all enjoy as humans. And to not forget those who are denied the basic respect, equality and dignity simply on the basis of gender.

This is one of the reasons why we feel today is an important day to share this milestone with you:

Our letter of acceptance to be a member of FTF India

The Fair Trade certification is more to us than a letter and a stamp; its a visible platform where we let our collaborators know that our fabrics are not only designed with lots of care but are created ethically and respectfully. We are so proud to be a part of this group and are inspired to see how good design and fair trade practices can revive an ancient artform!

Signing off with some images from Indu's latest visit to our weaving and tailoring co-ops. Have a wonderful day!

Indu with a couple of the co-op members

Indu at the tailoring co-op with its President (right) and team member (left)

The pre-looming team at work in the co-op.

A peaceful afternoon as the yarn hangs to dry (foreground) and the pre-looming goes on (background)