Mutants are taking over the shop! Morphing into bags, toys and strange zip and sling purses, catch them before they disappear. A Maki Squarepatch collection in collaboration with Kelvin Tan.

Only at Maki Squarepatch: hello eco!, 33 Bali Lane (2nd storey). Shop’s open Tue - Sat 1.00 - 8.00pm, Sun 2.00 - 7.00pm. Tel: 6292 2248

See you!

For tourists and Singaporeans who get as lost as I do on home grounds, here’s how to get to our shop!

Hello and We’re Opening!

Thank you for your calls and emails asking after us and wondering when we’ll be open again! We’ve found a new home in a conservation area at darling Bali Lane hence the cleaning up and renovation has taken us more time than expected.

We’re opening this Saturday, 19 April and our opening hours are: Tues - Sat 1.00 - 8.00pm, Sun 2.00 - 7.00pm. We’re closed on Mondays and Public Holidays (but sometimes we’ll still there slogging away :D). We hope to see you then! Stay posted for your opening party invite!

With fabrics and colored paint,
Enqi & Xin (affectionately known as the maki sisters)

P/S We currently accept cash transactions only. Our NETS and credit card machines will only be ready sometime end April. Apologies for the inconvenience!

Xin’s latest zine is out, birthed out of her solo exhibition. If you missed the opening, you can still view it at Night & Day Gallery cos it’s on till the 20th April

To buy the zine, click on the image below!

Support your local designers and artists! For those travelling to Singapore over this weekend, this is a must go cos it’s Singapore’s first and coolest market for local works Happening only every first weekend of the month.

You’re invited to an Exhibition Preview Solo Art Exhibition by Xin, artist/designer of Maki Squarepatch.

This year’s Singapore Fashion Festival has a Go Green fringe event happening at Raffles City. Go check it out if you can! Happening this friday.

I’ve worked with Wei Tao before on a Green Carnival within the NUS (National University of Singapore) campus. Great to see how they managed to get the students and lecturers involved in the event, promoting green awareness AND action within campus itself. Always takes a small step to walk a distance. Recently I received an email from him in protest against an advertisement he saw in the papers. It was the same ad that disturbed me. I’m glad to see action taken. From what I know, we’re still waiting for response from the relevant company.

This was sent to promo@fraserscentrepoint.com; ir@fraserandneave.com

—

Dear Sir/Madam

We refer to the advertisement on page 36 of The Straits Times, 8 March 2008, Saturday, entitled, “Do you know you can save Planet Earth?“

While we are glad to see environmental initiatives happening at a corporate level, we are extremely concerned with the way this advertisement uses environmentalism. The following statements stand out:

Shop To Save Planet Earth

With a minimum of $100 spent, you can get a $5 Metro Voucher.

Green Winnings

Spend a minimum of $50 and stand a chance to bring home these exciting prizes. What’s more, you could be the lucky winner of our grand prize, a Chevrolet Spark 1.0L!

While it has been the practice of business entities to encourage the purchase of their products, and even as it becomes increasingly common that businesses publicize their environmental efforts while doing so, these two statements stand out from the norm. Excessive consumption leads to higher carbon emissions and an increased strain on Earth’s natural resources. These statements go completely against the grain in its suggestion that consumption saves the planet. They do not explain how consumption helps the environment.

We understand that part of the agenda of this initiative is to encourage the use of reusable bags. However, the result of increased usage of reusable bags does not offset the additional ecological footprints increased consumption brings about. Moreover, buyers qualify for these reusable bags only if they meet the condition of “minimum spending”. While we do not possess the data to show it, it is likely that a good portion of buyers would not meet this level of spending and therefore do not qualify for such environmentally friendly bags.

Furthermore, the use of reusable bags, while important, is in fact of relatively less concern than excessive consumption. It is undeniable that current levels of consumption are unsustainable and will damage the environment we live in severely if carried on. While we recognize that companies exist for the purpose of profit, and that it is through the encouragement of consumption that companies gain this profit, the advertisement misleads the public into the belief that increased consumption is in itself an environmentally friendly practice.

It is with a significant sense of urgency that we raise this issue. This advertisement reaches a vast readership that must be credited with the intelligence to tell if an advertisement is simply greenwashing. Allowing this advertisement to run without explicitly explaining the link between purchases and environmental sustainability suggests insincerity on the part of the corporations involved in it. This will cause cynicism in the public mind and jeopardize belief in and willingness to participate in genuine sustainable practices in the long run.

It will also damage the reputations of the companies involved as they will be perceived as insincere companies who would buy an environmental lie thinking it would improve their profit margin.

Therefore, we hope that the companies involved in the advertisement will rethink this advertisement campaign with haste to prevent further damage to the environmentalist cause, the environment itself and their own reputations.

We would like, however, to express appreciation, despite the misleading advertisement herein mentioned, towards the companies with regards to the recycling workshops and exhibitions organised.

We, the undersigned, comprising five student organisations, await your favourable reply.

Yours Sincerely,

ONG Weitao (MR)/LOO Deliang (MR)/Alexander YANG (MR)

On behalf of:

NUS Students’ Union Students Against Violation of the Earth (SAVE)

NUS Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Student Movement

NUS Southeast Asian Studies Society

NTU Earthlink

SMU Verts

I chanced upon this EcoFriend Award that NEA (National Environment Agency) is doing and thought I’d share it with my fellow green friends in Singapore.

Everybody has a part to play in taking care of the environment that we all live in and share. Some have done more than others, passionately and protesting against poor environmental habits. If you know of somebody like that (in Singapore only, sorry), do consider them for this nomination

“What is the business of business? To create wealth? To inspire the economy? To create jobs? To meet the needs of society? Yes. But there is more. The final goal of any human activity, and any business must show us how to be effective, is to create a world moral order - a world ethics network.” - Peter Koestenbaum

One of the books that have inspired me even while I was reading up on inspirational entrepreneurs has to be Anita Roddick’s Business as Unusual. This woman is filled with drive and passion for the cause she lives for till the very end. Even though her business was later run by a board of management, the heart and soul of Body Shop still lies in Roddick, where the corporation is being fueled by what she strong believes in.

A mission-driven business. That’s what it’s about. And that’s what it really is for Maki Squarepatch too.

Some history. When my sister and I were kids, probably aged 10 - 12, in the times where we were still playing with the neighbour kids downstairs, we’ve already ventured into business. We would gather stuff that we don’t want from home and put up a little garage sale for people to come and buy at our apartment door. Sometimes we’d give a shot at selling our drawings but nobody wanted our A4-sized drawings at $2 each. But we had fun, we tried our hands at sale, and we also learned a little about the value of art. Our first little failure perhaps.

Some years down the road, Maki Squarepatch was unofficially set up in year 2001, selling printed tees at markets. We had a printer who botched up the job, t-shirts with honestly great prints but nobody was snapping up. Our $1000 pretty much went to waste and we decided to focus on academia instead.

Today, Maki Squarepatch is set up as a business with an intended mission. We weren’t keen to be solely a profit-making business. Sure, it’s nice to have a little extra cash at times but even if it’s generating truckloads of money selling cute stuff, that would be flat and soulless (to us). It is during one of these moments where we wonder if such a business model even makes sense - an environmental and socially conscious business, where the costs are high and profits are highly invisible at this point. I found the above quote on Business as Unusual which really resonated in my heart.

My hope is to see businesses with a conscience at work. And to authentically do so.