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EE HANDCRAFTED PRODUCTS was launched in 2018 by Emi Endo, a designer based in Berlin and Tokyo. Since 2019, it has been managed by design studio EETY.
Our backgrounds include involvement in designing and mass production at such brands as Issey Miyake and Camper. We have had some doubts about systems of production and consumption for mass products, but by taking advantage of our backgrounds, we have arrived at a method of making our products in a necessary volume at a necessary time by combining mass production technology and our handcraft work. We have started our label by putting this method into practice.

Doubts about the existing mass production method: excess and waste 

Not only fast fashion brands but also high-end brands are facing the problem of waste due to disposal of unsold inventories because of excess production. Generally speaking, the more production processes a product requires, the larger the number of people involved in its production. If products remain unsold and are disposed of, a huge amount of invisible resources contributed by all people involved, such as time, efforts and ideas, will come to nothing. This is like paying someone for the materials and labor to serve us a meal and then carelessly throwing away the prepared meal without taking a bite. If we manage to earn profits through an approach like this, it may bring success as a business. However, as we have until now been involved in the crafting of products together with many craftsmen and technicians, we feel a strong disinclination against this kind of approach.

Our production method: minimizing waste while increasing variation possibilities

Pieces used in our products are made in the necessary volume at the time with the cooperation of factories. Using the pieces thus produced, we manually assemble all our products ourselves. Because of this method, we do not have to worry about quantity problems related to color variations and order lots, and as a result, we have minimized, to the best of our efforts, problems arising from the excess production risk that was mentioned above. Moreover, because we do not need to keep stock, increasing color or shape variations will not impose much of an additional burden on our production system. Because of this production method, we have sold some of our products as one-of-a-kind goods while maintaining a sense of uniformity in appearance and consistency in quality that are expected of mass products.

Our approach to materials: changing ordinary materials to extraordinary goods

We do not spend efforts on developing new materials for our products, because developing specialty materials could end up generating a lot of waste. We intend to approach the problem that was mentioned earlier—waste due to excess production—by using general-purpose, industrial-use materials that suit our own values instead of sustainable materials, the use of which has been spreading rapidly in recent years. We find special value in transforming familiar materials into attractive goods through resourceful ideas.

Our broad range of color variations gives people wide freedom 

We have not set any specific target group for our products in terms of fashion style, age or gender. That is why the range of color variations for each shape variation in our product lineup is very broad. A product's image changes from retailer to retailer depending on the retailer's selection of color variations.   As a result, our products have been chosen by people of all ages, from teens to grandparents in their eighties, across a wide variety of fashion styles. Every season, we adjust our lineup, for example by replacing existing products with new ones reflecting our ideas and moods. For their part, retailers will find interest in creating their own lineup of offerings by choosing variations that match their concepts from among our full line of products, including both new and existing items.