sifr 2011 : hong kong sourcing day 2.3

One of our last videos from Hong Kong!

This video takes us inside the sample room that we are currently working with out of Kowloon. So after a year of producing with Indonesia exclusively we've finally made a comeback into China. We're doing several styles with the sample room captured in the video and we're looking to grow that selection in the coming collections. Besides producing out of this great sample room we're also doing our first batch of knitwear out of HK! We were more than happy when some of the samples that the knitwear supplier showed us from their portfolio had Flippa K tags attached.

If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments section below!

Next up we have some footage from our recent shoot for our new project and we will be shooting some out of this world footage straight from Jakarta with our new footwear and clothing manufacturers.



Sincerely,
sifr

Recommended Reading: The Basic Handbook of APPAREL

Finally after months and months of sourcing in and around Jakarta, our man on the ground, our factory roadwarrior; Suraj Suresh Melwani has found the mother-load of all sources. He's found some amazing factories and workshops out and around Jakarta.

This one however is the #1 of all time sources we have found in our short lifespan. The source is the next level of reasonably scaled manufacturing meaning we are able to produce great quality product on short production runs, something that we've been searching for since we left China last year.

We're so proud of this find that we want to share the book that our vendor wrote with anyone who is interested in purchasing it at K.I.N for a paltry sum of $25. The book provides an in depth look at production from information on fabric to how to containerize your goods to be shipped out to the client. We're still in the midst of finishing the book to brush up and to extract the wealth of information that this production bible provides.





Sincerely,
sifr

Travel: A Glimmer of Tokyo

This last trip to Tokyo trip I brought two cameras, an Olympus EP-1 and a Horizon Perfekt. Despite having two cameras I did not take that many photographs. I keep arguing in my mind about the relevance of capturing all the details of my trip and what the significance of 1000 digital images will be after the trip is over. The whole argument of ,"being in the moment versus capturing the moment", has been bothering me. Regardless of what I am thinking in my head I will still bring a camera on every trip I embark on, however the usage and depth of thought in documenting will vary depending on which side of the argument is louder.

The basis of this last trip was to use an existing ticket that was purchased but had to be rescheduled due to unforeseen personal circumstances (injured my knee playing football). To sum up my trip: met two amazing fabric contacts, I partied with an UK artist doing a gig there, met some unexpected people from Tokyo and out of town, ran into 2 sets of friends from Singapore unplanned, one of the sets I travelled to visit some architectural sites with, discovered an amazing cul de sac of bars, and found my future residences in Tokyo. All in all a pretty damn good weekend +2.

A small set of photos that captured a nice tiny slice of my trip. (No party photos unfortunately, if anyone wants to donate a compact hotshoe flash, please leave info in the comments.)

If you get anything at all out of this post, the next time you are in Tokyo go to Nakameguro and check out Golden Gai in Shinjuku.


Probably my last time using the Narita Express due to the advent of the new Haneda airport which is closer to the city.


I hope that sooner rather than later I will be using their fabrics, I touched this 60s supima dungaree, the handfeel is out of this world.

Meeting with the bigboss since the whole team was at Premier Vision. It was an interesting, a lost in translation moment but we got along just fine in the end.


I couldn't believe that this is their fabric showroom in Tokyo, it looked more like an art gallery.





If you love football, this is a must go. (Weston Corp you guys are still my number one, but if there's any other city you can do something better than KAMO it's Singapore.)

Prayers



Mountain Research, Naval Research, Research Research!



Cowbooks is my favorite shop in the whole world and I don't know why.












I can't imagine how Nakameguro looks in the spring.


This is a beautiful, need to get one of these for home.




You are mine SS11

Spiral is amazing, a wide spectrum of products highly curated. Furniture to fragrances.







MON MON MON MON



Would just like to throw a heads up to all our readers that are still with us after the dearth of posts on this blog. We will be porting the blog over to a wordpress format! Nothing crazy, getting a few more guest bloggers on board and going to streamline the design of the blog into something simple and a little more organized.

Leave your name and email in the comments and we'll tell you how you can get a free sifr item if you live in Singapore.

Happy Holidays,
sifr