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.

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.

2013 reasons to get excited!

Its three months since my last post here and what a busy time it's been! Firstly a very Happy New Year to all of you :)

Here at Kara we've been frantically working on some great new wholesale orders as well as gearing up for our debut at the New York Gift Fair in the juried Global Handmade section!

We've divided up the work pretty evenly: Indu has been handling the production and follow up of all the weaving work in Kerala and I am working on all the trade fair set up details here in Boston. As I sit here going over my million checklists and looking at the busy few weeks ahead, I'm also giddy with excitement for all the wonderful people we'll have a chance to meet!

So if you're there, stop by booth #532 to meet us!

Notes from the IBM visit

From L-R: Lou Martin (IBM Spain), Elke Heilemann (IBM Germany) and Jennifer Williams (IBM United States)

It has been two weeks since our encouraging and motivated collaborators from IBM left. Since their departure, Indu and I have not ceased to pour through their detailed reports and have endless Skype conversations (Indu is in Kerala and I'm here in Boston) about our next steps to grow our project. Here are some images and notes from their trip here (all images and videos, except the Skype screen shots, are taken by the IBM team).

Skype, with the Cotton Ladies (Jennifer,  Lou) and Indu in Kerala with me in Boston.

Even though I could not physically be present there when the IBM team were at our studio in Kerala, we regularly communicated via emails, Skype and telephone. They adorably called themselves the Cotton Ladies and made T-shirts to commemorate, with extra ones for Indu and me!

During the four week long project with IBM, our consultant advisor Rajendra Menon also stayed on to work with Indu for the various documents that were shared with IBM. Pictured below, he was also game to get dressy, for the group shot! :)

The IBM team dons the Kara spirit, literally! (l to r: Elke, Jennifer, Lou, Rajendra, Indu and Sandhya)

One of our biggest on-going concerns with Kara is to capture a sustainable market, so we have more to promise to these talented yet grossly overlooked communities of thorthu-weavers. Our goals to set up a weaving learning center are all hinged on creating a viable business model through Kara. To start, Indu took the team to visit with our local weaving co-operative and meet the weavers who are the nexus of our work at Kara:

IBM & Kara Weaves

What do IBM and Kara Weaves have in common? Not much, you'd think, but here is how our paths are crossing, right this instant:

In December 2010, we were contacted by Kabi Sherman of the CDC Development Solutions, an organization that facilitates social outreach programs around the world, including for the IBM Corporate Service Corps in India.

CDC contacts several organizations (like small businesses, educational institutions, NGOs, advocacy organizations, associations, local governments) working in social development areas and identifies those that are in need of management and technical assistance. They then put them through to a highly skilled group of volunteers from IBM offices around the world who visit and work with them for a period of 4 weeks to provide solutions.

Sounds too good to be true, right? When Kabi visited us, we had a long discussion of what we do and what would it take us to achieve our goals, as an organization. Here's a snapshot we took as Kabi was leaving:

From left: Kabi, Lakshmi, Indu, Sandhya and myself (Chitra).

After Kabi's visit, we worked to develop a Scope of Wrok for the IBM team and finally dialed it down to two things:
• Developing a sustainable marketing strategy including b-2-b strategies.
• Working on a Fair Trade certification for our supply chain proces.

The kickoff meeting was a few days ago; our IBM-ers are Lou Martin from Spain, Elke Heilemann from Germany and Jennifer Williams from the United States. They will be working with us at the studio for 4 weeks. A short article about this collaboration can be read on the India Infoline news website too. Just four days into the project we are already amazed by the energy the IBM team brings to our studio environment! More pictures and updates on the "cotton ladies" (as they like to call themselves) soon. We are really excited about what this month of collaboration will bring; stay tuned for more IBM news from here at Kara Weaves.

Conversing about Co-operatives, Kudumbashree and Tagore

Left to right: Indu Menon, Siddharth, Prof. Darryl Reed, Prof. Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, Chitra, Dr. P Gopalakrishnan, Anup Nair

On December 17th we received some exciting guests from York University in Canada. Professors Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, Darryl Reed and their son Siddharth dropped in to visit us accompanied by Anup Nair (whom they were visiting in Kerala for research on Kudumbashree). Over chai, we had a long conversation about the role of co-operatives and independent projects such as Kara in reviving rural artisanal work and economies.

Darryl also gave us some valuable insight on a Fair Trade certification process, which would help Kara Weaves broaden our client base and seek more institutional buyers for a sustainable market. Since we are in the midst of the Fair Trade certification process, this information was so timely! Ananya shared her experience talking with the enterprising and outspoken women of the Kudumbashree network in Kerala where she found women's empowerment translated into income generation and collective farming activities.

Out of a mutual respect, adoration (and a slight crush) on Rabindranath Tagore, our conversation soon veered to the social relevance of the work of this Nobel laureate and poet. Tagore was a strong advocate of co-operatives (read Ananya's article about this here) and hand-weaving, both of which are things we at Kara endorse. We concluded with some wonderful ideas for collaborations and new directions at Kara; big thanks to Anup for bringing by such wonderful people to visit with us!

Building our Network a.k.a. Ramesh Menon

In the early days of our brainstorming sessions in Delhi (before we started the online store) we were very keen to work with larger corporate clients for wholesale orders. On one such impulse, we contacted FabIndia: their response was enthusiastic leading to several meetings to discuss possible collaborations. 

Through these meetings was when we realized how unfeasible it was, to take on a mammoth corporation from our perspective. Their needs to sustain and grow as a company were different from our goals (to progress by developing the weaving industry). Considering their large overheads of maintaining several stores all over India, the price-per-item they needed would not have made it worth the while for our specific social objectives. I'm not saying FabIndia was at fault for not understanding us, just that we were both coming from different places and had different goals as organizations. We're still a bit sad that this collaboration could not work out :(

The next direction we looked towards was that of the hospitality industry, notably some big players in the game, who had the impact to create awareness and support for our work in India. Again, the common roadblock we encountered was the wholesale price of each item being not in sync with the operational budgets of the organization. Simply put, our products were too expensive for them and they all sent back notes of regret and dismissal.

Enter Ramesh Menon, stage left.

Ramesh Menon, co-owner of Dal Roti in Fort Kochi

Growing Up & Scaling Down

Gold-trimmed shirt made of the sheer kasavu cotton fabric; a trial product we created back in 2005.

When we started Kara Weaves back in 2006-2007, we wanted it all. And like any new found passion, we went a bit overboard with having a vast product range that included not just the towels and robes (that you now see on our website), but also cushion covers, curtains, bedspreads, pillow occurs, duvet covers, bags, skirts, shirts, wraparounds, table cloths, tea cozies, table napkins with several colors and patterns for each. At the time we thought the best way to plan the inventory was to let our shoppers decide what products worked and what did not. Did that strategy work for us?