There are projects that keep you busy, and then there are projects that make you pause and realize how far your small studio has come. This one was the latter. In the first week of June, we began work on a fully custom merchandise line - designed, printed, stitched, and branded entirely to specification - created in collaboration with IIT Mandi for the IIT Madras store and outlet. To be trusted by an institution of this stature was, for all of us, a genuine honour.
The order was a complete lifestyle and stationery collection, each piece custom-fabric and custom-tagged to match the brand. It included a puffy pouch, an A6 journal and an A5 journal, laptop sleeves in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, a cushion cover, and a boxy tote bag - with a few thoughtful modifications along the way to suit the client's exact requirements. Nothing was pulled off a shelf. Every item started as a blank canvas and was built up to fit the brief.
Big orders reward patience, and this one taught us plenty of it. We began by sending across samples so the team at the institution could see and feel the quality before committing. Approval took roughly a week to ten working days - a stretch that felt long in the moment but was exactly the kind of careful checking a good partnership deserves. Once the samples were signed off, the order was confirmed.
Next came the fabric. The print was selected directly by the client, and because it was a screen-printed fabric, it took its time - around twenty to twenty-five working days to arrive. Screen printing rewards you with depth and richness of colour that faster methods simply can't match, so the wait was well worth it.
Running alongside the fabric were the tags: a custom metal tag and a custom cloth tag, each made specially for this line, taking about ten to twelve working days. This was the part of the process where we hit a few hurdles - the kind that come with anything made to order for the first time - but the team worked through them calmly and smoothly, and the tags came out looking exactly as they should. Around this week, the production process is coming to a close, and the finished products are ready to be dispatched.
Beyond the honour of working with such a large and respected institution, this order stretched us creatively. The cushion cover was something new for us - a design format we hadn't produced before - and taking on that challenge added a fresh skill to what our studio can offer. That kind of design exposure is exactly what helps a small team grow.
We also learned a lot about how good collaborations actually work. Micro-level discussions around every customisation matter enormously; the more clearly the small details are talked through, the fewer surprises later. And perhaps the biggest lesson: when a client extends trust and hands over decision-making power rather than checking in at every single step, the work flows more smoothly and the pressure stays healthy. Trust, it turns out, is a production tool of its own.
None of this happens without people, and this is the part we are proudest of. The stitching was carried out by ten women artisans, who worked four to five hours a day over roughly fifteen days to manufacture the entire line. Another fifteen women artisans handled the stationery and packaging, working around four hours a day across five days. This is real, dignified work reaching real households — and seeing it go out under the banner of an institution this size is deeply meaningful to us.
As a team, we're simply happy to carry sustainable, handmade products onto a platform this large, where so many people can discover and use them. This project also proved something to us about our own growth: our turnaround and lead times are shorter, our production capacity has expanded, and the coordination between every team — samples, fabric, tags, stitching, and packaging - was efficient and in sync from start to finish. Good things really are worth the wait. And when the whole team moves together, they arrive right on time.
