KOMUNITI Tukang Jahit (KTJ) is a two-year old social enterprise that aims to empower women.

Founded by Yap Sue Yii, KTJ has around 50 home-based tailors, all in the Klang Valley, the majority of whom are single mothers and housewives.

The social enterprise was founded through Yap’s first fashion startup called Royal Demure.

It was a fashion production house which also helped designers to crowdfund to start their own fashion lines.

But Yap soon stumbled upon an operational issue. She discovered that many manufacturers operated on a minimum order quantity basis, but the designers in Royal Demure didn’t need such big bulk orders.

“I decided to tap into the neighbourhood tailors, the kakak-kakak and makcik-makcik who do seasonal items like the baju raya. Given this opportunity, these women started sewing more fashionable clothes,” said the 28-year-old.

Eventually, she said, these women wanted more orders from Royal Demure, but there wasn’t enough demand to go around.

“When I started receiving calls from the tailors asking me if they were going to get any more orders, I realised that there was a gap that needed to be filled,” she said

“So I started thinking ‘how do we supply them with more jobs?’ because, at that time, Royal Demure was competing with the big boys like Zalora and all these fashion giants.

“That’s when we decided to come up with a product that could be produced in bulk to help uplift the lives of these women,” she said.

Yap said KTJ was meant to give job opportunities to home-based tailors, but it eventually turned into a social enterprise when she realised that as much as some of them wanted a sustainable income, most of these women, especially housewives, craved a sense of fulfillment.

“It just felt really empowering to know that these women weren’t just doing it for money but because they wanted to feel that they were more than just mothers caring for their children and family.

“They like this feeling that every day there is a time where they get to do things they love and be by themselves without having to constantly worry over their children.”

On top of that, Sue Yii said these women were able to earn their own money without depending on anyone in their family.

Yap said these women can earn around RM300 to RM400 a week depending on orders.

“So there’s really a strong sense of fulfillment that these women get from being able to do their own things and at the same time earn a bit of money from their own hard work.”

Though the majority of KTJ’s tailors are from the B40 community, Yap said she doesn’t like to categorise them as B40 women as their income category should not define them.

“Sometimes I hear stories from these women who suddenly realise that they are actually capable of doing more things than just being a mother, that there is more to their life,” she said.

Yap, however, said tailors who are single mothers tend to work extra hard, with some of them working two to three jobs in a day.

Under KTJ, these women are provided training on how to sew several types of items, like tote bags, cup holders, laptop sleeves, pouches, and recently, masks and sanitiser holders.

With this training, KTJ provides them with an opportunity to be upskilled in sewing different types of things.

“We have a few tiers of training where it used to be a paid course, so sometimes corporate companies want us to upskill a group of women for their CSR purposes, so these companies will pay us and we will draw up a course for these tailors,” she said adding that these courses can sometimes go on for a month or two.

“However, right now, we train them for free because they are supplying our products.”

Yap said it can be a challenge to upskill home-based tailors as they are not used to sewing items other than clothes.

“There are days when tailors come in for the first time and when we hand them a fabric to sew for a sample, just to gauge how good their skills are, but then they are like ‘What? A sample?’, so upskilling becomes a bit difficult in this sense,” she said.

“Basically once we gauge that a tailor has the hand skills to do the type of sewing needed and we are confident, we will start sending them items to sew in a larger amount.

“So one needs to go through the process of learning and upskilling to be able to get more orders,” she said.

Yap hopes KTJ will grow as a community that empowers women who can teach others how to take charge of their life while also upskilling themselves in many ways.

KTJ is accredited by the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC), an agency mandated with providing start-up enterprises with community-building programmes, market and funding opportunities, and regulatory assistance.

MaGIC – which was previously overseen by the Finance Ministry, is now under the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry and recently received RM10 million in matching grants to propel social enterprises and aid qualified innovators from Mosti.

Those interested in purchasing their items may visit their Instagram account. – July 7, 2020.