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Hello dear readers,

As you've noticed we've not been very regular at updating this blog. That's because we have been so busy with making new textiles and posting updates to our social media accounts. You can meet us there to see photos, videos and fun links we like, from all around the interwebs. 

Here are the places where we're now focused on:

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

See you all soon! 

-xoxo
Chitra

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!

Updates at the store

We've been working hard to make sure the prices are fair both to our shoppers and to our producers. Due to changes in cost of production and labor at our co-op partners, some product prices are set to revise on July 1st 2013.

Watch our online store for more; meanwhile our current price will be valid till midnight June 30th (EST).

Happy shopping and thanks again for all your support!

Getting personal today

I think Father's Day is the best time to tell you a whole lot about Pulickal Achyutha Menon, my grandfather, and one of our inspirations!

He was a self-made man, as several of his generation are. In the 1930s, after finishing high school, he used to tutor kids from a local wealthy family in our village Kanjiramattom. He used to pass the only newspaper in the village around between some families and got it to a reading club for his friends (that was the beginning of the Village Library and Reading room that exists even today!). One of the members of this local family who was based in Bombay was impressed with his activities and offered to take him there. He got to Mumbai circa 1938, and worked as a help-boy at Richardson Cruddas, an engineering design firm. As he served tea to his bosses, he peeked at the drawings and observed a mismatch of some dimensions in the work. His employers were impressed and offered to pay for his evening classes at the VJTI Mumbai.

This was the beginning of his engineering career. He went on to work for MECON, and in 1954 he was one of the 13 engineers sent to Germany to prepare India's first public sector steel plant in Rourkela. He loved saying that the Indian steel industry was born in his hands and was genuinely so proud of that!

My grandparents, my uncle Rajan and my mother Indu

After he retired in 1973, he decided it was his turn to serve the community around him. So he got into a number of welfare groups in the many places he lived in. When my grandparents moved in with us in Ahmedabad to take care of me (since both my parents had full-time jobs and day-cares were not too common in India at the time) was the first time I saw his activities first-hand. He set up a Malayalam class each Sunday morning, where children from the Malayali community in our neighborhood were taught the alphabet. He felt that if you could not read/write/speak your mother tongue, well then you were illiterate! So yes, I have some amazing memories of being dragged reluctantly on Sundays to learn the alphabet. But now, each time I'm at a bus-stop or restaurant in Kerala, I silently thank him for having taught me my language! 

My grandparents and me (in the 90's of-course, faux-animal print and all!)

He was involved with the rural community around our area when we lived in Ahmedabad,  setting up a school for the village children, sanitation facilities and several such initiatives. Much later on, when he moved to Kerala, he was an active member of the Senior Citizen's forum in our neighborhood. Through this he also did a lot of data collection on the lives and welfare concerns of the elderly in our area.

In my years as a college student in France and when I worked in Delhi I used to spend all my holidays with my grandparents. Most of my days were spent making drawings, taking pictures and reading books on design. Almost on a daily basis he asked me: What is the point of this education? What can you give back to this community, one which has supported you to be who you are now? Does a French/American education in Graphic Design have any relevance to the lives of people in this rural part of Kerala?

At the time Indu and I had not yet started on Kara. And I used to return his question with a pretty blank stare and tell him I made great work that made things look better. He asked me (with an urgency in his voice that was lost on me at the time) on how making things look better actually helped anyone? And then I would usually get irritated, lose my temper and leave the room.

He died a few months before I graduated from Cranbrook in 2009. The last few years of his life were in and out of awareness, and he slowly withdrew into himself. It was in these years that Kara was starting to happen and as I started to write my graduate thesis at Cranbrook I finally had my answer for the "daily question" of design's relevance that my grandpa asked.

So on this beautiful Father's day, as always, I remember and thank my Appupa for having asked me those direct, blunt and sometimes painful questions about relevance. And to have taught me that "comfortable" was not a good feeling, if you ever want to create something meaningful.

xoxo, Chitra

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!

(Marketing, Activism, Art) v/s the Audience

Yesterday I had the fun opportunity to sit in at a talk by Steve Lambert at the MIT Center for Civic Media, via Denise Cheng. I knew a bit about his work and was looking forward to this discussion on creativity, activism and the public.

He spoke about ways to engage with an audience without alienating them; how providing lots of facts about an issue can more often than not, disempower people and turn them away from engaging with you. On how narrative storytelling was one of the most powerful strategy to draw in audiences and create action.

One of Steve Lambert's most famous pieces was this "edition" of the NY Times.

These questions are something we've often thought about at Kara. I realized that we were intuitively doing some of the things mentioned in the talk. Here's how:

We care a lot about reviving and supporting the talented work of the thorthu weavers; we also care about handwoven fabrics and this long-standing tradition in our community that is quickly disappearing. 

But here's the thing: If I came to you and told you about our cause and how scary it was that this centuries old tradition was going away; you might feel some empathy towards me, but you'd be like "That's awful! But now I've gotta go walk my dog/feed my kids/go to work, etc"

On the other hand, if I came to you with our beautiful textiles and told you about how incredibly practical they are, how fun the design is, and how it is preserving a centuries-old tradition, you'd be like "Yay, I totally want some fun table linens and beach towels!". 

At the beach later, you'd think to yourself: "Oh man, this towel is so amazing! So happy I could help out these ladies with their social cause..." 

See what I just did? Got you to take part in my social cause, but without overwhelming you with the uphill task we face. You're going to need new towels and table napkins at some point; but by getting ours you not only get some stellar stuff, but also contribute you $$ meaningfully.

Its one part capitalism, one part socialism and lots of parts of ethics, love and commitment. That's our simple, un-freaky activism strategy; welcome onboard!

I chatted with Steve Lambert after the talk and the most valuable question he asked was "So say you've achieved this goal of preserving this culture, empowering this community, providing them financial stability and everything else on your list. What's next?!" 

In the past 6 months or so, we've been so caught up with new things that we haven't had time to think about this. Thanks Steve, for jump-starting our brain with this!

I'll now leave you with this amazing poem he read out:

“Utopia lies at the horizon.

When I draw nearer by two steps,

it retreats two steps.

If I proceed ten steps forward, it

swiftly slips ten steps ahead.

No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.

What, then, is the purpose of utopia? 

It is to cause us to advance.”  

-Eduardo Hughes Galeano 

xoxo, Chitra.

Our new metallic friend

So the past few months, we've been slowly growing our team and office-space as we work with a steadily growing list of clients (yay!)

The most visible change, if you came to visit our studio, would be a re-purposed shipping container sitting next to our office space. Take a peek:

The container in its new avatar as our studio annexe.

Here's why we did it:
• We needed more storage space.
• We had no time to make a new building.
• We did not want to disrupt the land and trees by new construction.
• We wanted a cost-effective and eco-friendly option
• The new space had to be airtight and waterproof to protect our fabrics. 

Since Kochi is a port city, we met with some folks who were repurposing shipping containers and this seemed to be an obvious solution. They cut out a window on one side for ventilation, fitted some metal shelves in it, painted it all over and voila: Instant-office!

Here is the container before it got glammed-up:

Here it is in the shipyard, waiting to be adopted!

This is our container's birth-certificate of sorts. Excited to see its path to our doorstep!

Two weeks ago, a big ol' truck showed up with our freshly repainted container atop it. A tough little crane was waiting to pick it up and drop it off next to our office.

I think they're pondering how this is going to work. Can you see the hook of the crane on top left of this photo?

Here's the big-little crane that picked it off the truck and put it in our yard.

Here's a cellphone-video that my dad took, of this whole process. The scary parts of a suspended container in mid-air are at the end of the video :)

It was plenty of drama, plenty of excitement, but everything worked out and now we've got an amazing new annexe to our studio.

Yay for more shelves!

Here is a view of its back window as it rests on cinder-blocks next to the studio.

I'm deciding what to paint on it, maybe our fabric patterns? Let us know if you have any fun ideas for this blank canvas. xo, Chitra.

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)

NY and the GF debut

Here are some updates from our first ever trade fair in NYC this past weekend:

This was our entire luggage for our booth set up, products and our clothes for the week!

The time is 6 am, I'm a bundle of nerves, Prashant is probably looking through our latest planning updates

Our booth, as we found it 2 days before the event. So much work, so much potential (and so much stress!)

Here I'm stringing up the hand-lettered signage, Prashant is making hooks to hang them: DIY + improv!

This was the messiest it looked, before it all got better!

This view helped as we worked non-stop to get the space lookin spiffy!

Day 1: hello New York, all bright and sunny!

The newspaper-head wearing the hair towel added a lot of quirkiness to our install, hehe!

Super happy with the way our fabric and re-purposed cardboard signs turned out!

We got a lot of compliments for using the yarn as a simple and fun way to hang up our fabrics :)

These dudes looked ridiculously tropical in the sunlight!

Cardboard, white markers and twine = friendly handmade signs

The daylight at the Javits center did a lot to promote the outdoor and comfy nature of these fabrics!

This little Ganesha kept an eye on our stuff for us; thank you sir!  ♥

We also had a bunch of friends stop by our space too: thanks Shivangi, Brookes and Nupur for all the fun conversation and help with everything! Carli came by with her team to do a little interview about our work for Quirky; here's the article, yay!

So grateful that our little debut was so warmly recieved, cant wait for what's next! xo, Chitra.