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In the age where everything is replicable,

the warmth and genuine goodwill of the handicrafts

are irreplaceable by pieces of machinery and production lines. 

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Introduction:

Not a Conventional Finance Man

I'm Paul Chan, the founder and CEO of CRAFT La. Much similar to most finance graduate, whose first initiatives is to work in a regular financial field. However, with my extrovert personality, the repetitive day to day work-life makes me felt like an 8-years duration but it was just 8 months only.

If we stand in other nations' perspectives, such as the European region, Japanese, or even Taiwan, domestic craftsmanship or bespoke output are emphasized and protected by the government with sustainable development. Compared to Malaysia as a whole, local craftsmanship is, unfortunately, receiving less awareness as supposedly in this era where genuine craftsmanship is facing difficulties in inheriting the passion. Moreover, with boredom and repetitive tasks in my previous job, my inner passion has woken up to rectify this social pain-point as this opportunity has surged with business possibility. The path of change is to give up certain things, and the "things" will be my fixated job where my father believes this job is my "metal bowl". Sounds of rejections from my family members are inevitable which they believe this path will bring tough times in terms of seeking income and unsustainability. Not to justify me like a nobleman, but there is only one purpose for this initiative: to solve the neglected society problem and do what I believe is right, which allows me to dedicate back to society.

Hence, the concept of selling handcraft products on an online platform was born.

Back in April 2017 where I have zero knowledge in online marketing, RM3000 on hand only and no budget to develop a website, my only strength is to "thicken my cheeks" and seek collaboration with local craftsmen. Honestly, the result was not delightful as most of them still unable to truly understand the overall concept. To prove my sincerity, I have spent almost all of my capital buying 100 handcraft dolls. Combining digital, copywriting, photography, and branding strategy skills from my Tag La mentor to sell the dolls via brand marketing. Surprisingly, the response was incredible as 100 handcraft dolls sell out within 2 weeks with RM69 for each unit.

 

My Project: Let the Warmth of Handicraft Conveyed to Everyone in Our Life

The vigorous development of Taiwan's craftmanship relied on their commercial branding. Although our domestic craftsmen are full of ideas and creativity and a pair of skilful hand, most of them are weak in deciding business strategy and branding. Due to passion, many people in this world insist on their way without having regards to time and cost, It is their love and passion warming up their creation, and I wish I could deliver this warmth to everyone in life.

Therefore, CRAFT La is not just selling a lifeless product, but the stories and value behind the creation.

Recently, the local demand for handicrafts has shifted from price measuring 4 years ago to the demand of uniqueness and options for customizability. This is the reason why the market size of handmade craft continuously increases.

CRAFT La utilises economy sharing business model, where we bond the benefits of the Craftsmen and our platform together.  We do not hoard any product, our platform will have revenue only when Craftsman makes money with their creation.

In July 2018, we launched Offline Handmade Crafts Workshop. We believed, comparing with the traditional marketing approach which requires a higher cost to attract potential leads, the experiential marketing of the workshop allows clients to have a sense of trusts and identification with the individual craftsman, and hence promotes the purchase behaviour.

Perhaps due to the tedious and boring life pace, peoples tend to listen to the story behind handmade creation.

 

Continous Venturing of Business Possibility – 3 Consecutive Hopping of the Platform

The most welcoming workshop constraints many limitations such as time, venue, fees and …etc. The Crafts mentor also reported that participants in great number will affect the quality of physical education. All these limitations make me think, am I able to remove constraints such as time and location to create a workshop that can be participated anywhere or anytime?

Furthermore, the thriving performance of e-commerce platforms has also reached a plateau: the production of craftsmen are limited. For example, a craftsman can only produce 2 dolls per day as each doll require 5 hours to complete. If the market share is increasing that requires him/her to work exceed her performance, the quality of production will get disrupted.

According to the US platform - Techjury, the handicraft industry has reached a market value of $187.97 billion in the year 2019. Forecasting in the year 2026, handcraft's total market value will increase towards $376 billion. The worldwide handcrafts growth rate will soar with a 14.6% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). 

(Souce: https://techjury.net/blog/elearning-statistics/)

These are the reasons why we shifted 90% of our strategy into an online workshop and the idea of the online handicraft workshop initiated.

In February 2019, CRAFT La officially launched the online workshop platform through a crowdfunding framework with an average fee ranging from RM80-RM150. By removing the physical constraints, our total budget can reduce half the amount from the original budget. 

CRAFT La's 3 main highlights of online craft workshop:

1. Distinguishing from Google and Youtube, CRAFT La emphasizes better interaction on both craftsmen and students, and among students themselves. We plan to shift the experience of the offline workshop to online, students now have the accessibility to publish any problem they face in handcrafts through the platform and teachers can provide instant response.
2. Students can customize their learning progress according to their pace or preferable languages.
3. Quality assurance of creative workshop (including handcraft material）

 

Since the first month of launching, we have accumulated 100 students whereby our most famous workshop has achieved 400 participants in just 3 days. This pandemic had already caused most of the industry back in 2020, but it won't stop us from growing. As of April 2020, CRAFT La has achieved the milestone of 3000+ students who purchase the online course and 8000+ students till this January.

 

 

This online workshop is more popular than expected.  

 

Traction: Leveraging Relationship with Partners and to Achieve Win-Win Strategy

 

CRAFT La has also reached a strategic consensus on expanding online courses with its partners: buying Stabilo products can participate in its sponsored hand-made courses, and offering courses for female members of Sewing World Gallery to learn embroidery skills and HaHow’s cooperation to combine Taiwan’s craftsmanship with Marketing techniques are introduced into our country.

The Warmth of Handmade Crafts: Accompanying Depression Patients on the Road to Recovery

What I didn't expect most was that the warmth that our online courses wanted to convey would help depressed patients who have been under long-term work pressure to save themselves.

Due to the heavy workload as an Accountant, he often has abnormal work and a rest schedule, By chance, he participated in our [Mind Healing] Three-dimensional Landscape Painting Course.

Due to the flexibility for online learning, the crafting course he learnt in his spare time allowed him to precipitate himself, learn to relax and gradually walked out of the shadow of depression. In the meantime of finding his self, he also met a group of like-minded buddies in our community. In this cold and fast mechanized life pace, agglomerated by handmade craft, they comfort and warm each other.

The course is dominated by feelings and experience-customers are no longer faced with hand-made work, we push the craftsmen to the front of the lecture, through various salons and courses, instil craftsmanship new Life, and also allows customers to familiarize themselves with the brand beliefs of craftsmen mentor. From experiencing the process of hand-made, the relationship between craftsmen and customers is no longer pure trading but sublimated into a relationship between master and apprentice, which in turn produces the brand adhesion we wanted the most.

 

Business Model and Strength of CRAFT La

CRAFT La acquires 60% of the profit from each online workshop published, whereby all our online workshops are recognized with the protection of Intellectual Property. We will diversify the content of e-learning courses to incorporate skills in more fields and launch more technical tutorials.

Foreigners accounted for 9% of the students register for handicraft classes. They are from Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. CRAFT La allows students to freely choose to pay for the course fees in Singapore dollars, US dollars and Malaysian Ringgit. 

Last year, our revenue totalled RM500,000, and this year we expected to grow to RM1 million.

In the next 4 years, our blueprint is to produce more than 300 video courses in Malay, Chinese and English, expand from Malaysia to 5 countries to open hand-made master skills advanced courses and increase the number of users from the original 18,000 to 300,000 users.

There is no domestic e-commerce and online course platform with the same attributes as CRAFT La at the moment: we have combined Etsy's e-commerce advantages, and also integrated the teaching of European and American online courses such as Craftsy. Education-oriented and the situational experience marketing model can attract leads and also strengthen the connection between CRAFT La with its students and customers.

Why Crowdfunding: Expansion of syllabus of online course

Starting from handcraft, CRAFT La started to organize singing, dancing and film editing online lessons are slowly emerging on our online platform. 

Our market is not only handicraft but the whole artistic section.

We would like to fundraise RM500,000 to RM1.5 million for this Equity Crowdfunding campaign. The segregation of the fund will be diverting into segments where both marketing purpose and expansion of team will account 30% each from the fund, 15% will be account for filming workshop, development for both user experience and application will be accounted for 25%

We wish to assist more people in need of, either emotional release, hobbies or creative cultivation, Even under the premise of zero foundation, one can feel the warmth bring out anytime and anywhere in the boring life journey, and fall in love with art.

 

CRAFT La, a platform that not only for a cultural inheritance of craftsman, most importantly, everyone can convey the warmth convey to ourselves and everyone we love!

Craft La Website：https://craftla.co/
Craft La Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/craftlaedu/
Craft La IG: https://www.instagram.com/craftlamy/?hl=en

 

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Core Team

 

 

 

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Term Sheet

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Founder's Pitch Deck