Lara with the Batak Community
Photo by: Lara Frayre
Currently I have been working
as a graphic designer.
Gladys: Do you have a team
working for the Batak craft?
Lara: We are actually a small
Ever since then, we have been team of two, me and Jun. Jun
able to document their culture handles the on the ground
and get some interest from operations and I connect the
some countries and partner brand to the investors.
with some of them. Lately we’ve
partnered with Coopita, a mar- hGladys: What challenges have
ketplace in Singapore. Actually you overcome? Do you have
right now Coopita is helping some challenges you are facing
us fund our campaign. The right now?
process has been a bit difficult
since I funded the entire thing Lara: One challenge that we
at first. I had to go to Manila overcome is the establishment
to work and if I have enough of good relationship with the
money saved up I go back tribe.
again to Palawan. But hopeful-
ly if everything goes well, this One of the challenges we are
could be a full-time job for me. facing right now is that we need
35
me and my team going around
to different Batak settlements
just riding a motorcycle and
trekking mountains.
help in scaling. We already
have the interest abroad but in
terms of resources we currently
do not have enough manpow-
er and financial resources to
be able to cater to those inter-
ests which is why we’re crowd-
funding this campaign so that
we can collect enough start up
money to be able to produce
our first ever pioneer batch of
baskets. We have already been
selling. We’ve already sold bas-
kets to India and we’re about
to sell in Singapore but this
doesn’t guarantee of having a
physical store yet so hopefully
with the crowdfunding cam-
paign we can scale our oper-
ations and hopefully to hire
more team members and have
a steady office in Palawan.