Hi Everyone! We have recently registered a new company, a social enterprise, under this name THECREATIVECLAYCO. We have considered a long while to do this. Why? We figured: "Why just slog to meet the double-bottomline? Happiness is not just dependent on making money. Why not involve the less priviledged in our quest to return something back to society?"
Thus the birth of THECREATIVECLAYCO. We aim to benefit people with disabilities by employing them, training them to use air-dry clay to create beautiful art objects for sale. This will generate income for themselves. In this way, they have gainful employment, get training in lifeskills and in the process become self-confident.
This, we feel, is very much aligned to our government's aim of creating opportunities for the less priviledged in Singapore.We feel very much that this is not just a commercial strategy but deep down inside us, we want to do this. So we need your support as well. The special needs staff will learn workplace communication skills and other relevant skills which will enable and empower them to be effective contributors in the Singapore workforce.
On 2/12/2012, our blog will be changed to THECREATIVECLAY.BLOGSPOT.COM to reflect the change in our business identity.
Will we survive in this cut-throat industry? We think so! Firstly, we are versatile with many types of air-dry clay. We started out with the Korean brand but the price started to increase astronomically. At the same time, so many varieties of air-dry clay emerged in the market.
Secondly, we believe innovation is surpreme in the art and craft industry, just like in any area of business. The real innovation is not hiding behind patents and sueing people who infringe them. True innovation is in one's brains. I quote Dr Ting Choon Meng, HealthStats International CEO, who has 80 patents to his name. More importantly, he's a doctor with a heart - his inventions tackle the scourge of diabetes, one of the main killers here in sweet Singapore (no pun intended).
I quote him in today's Straits Times - Opinion Page, A37. He says: " In research institutes, the KPI tends to be filing patents. To them, IP equals patents and patents equals IP. This could not be further from the truth. Look at Coca-Cola. Its recipe, a trade secret, is kept inside the safe. Imagine if it filed a patent, the whole world would know what Coca-Cola is made of. You need an IP strategy, which means thinking of the business model, then working backwards to decide what to do - to file, not file, keep secret, brand, whatever.
The second thing about IP is that everybody thinks we file a patent, have the product we can sell, then protect it, enforce it and sue infringers. But that is a very low form of IP. The highest form is in the licensing of IP. That means i don't even need to make products; the IP is the product."
That's space-age thinking for all of us.
Thirdly, we will survive because we are not a big organisation. We are still a small fry who aims to do good. In our case - we help people with disabilities. It is not a business strategy per se. It's a human condition which we want to see met. Big businesses are only concerned about profits - however necesary they might be. Big people take a big hammer and hammer smaller people with a mallet. They also take time to change and adapt. Usually they do not have time to innovate, be creative, learn how to work and emphatise with the less fortunate. For organisations who do not speak the international language - which is still English, add in 5-10 more years for them to innovate.
Whatever, the case may be, we have moved on from using one type of clay to the dynamic use of many types of clay to suit different types of clay works. What's more important is that we want to help people with disabilities by giving them opportunities. That's why we need your support!
One More Thing: Please LIKE us on Facebook!
https://www.facebook.com/TheCreativeClayCo?ref=hl
Thank you and we look forward to an exciting start in our social enterprise, THECREATIVECLAYCO
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