01 · Five Days, and Then the News

The 140th Canton Fair ran from 31 October to 4 November 2026, and for five days our team was at booth 11.3 G01–02, F47–48 in Guangzhou, meeting buyers, distributors and partners from markets around the world.

Fairs are often judged by how many conversations they produce. By that measure, this one was busy. People came to look at the wider pouch range, to open the ART Portfolio and try to fit a large sheet inside it, and to handle the new silicone pieces in the Hole series.

Then came the part we did not put on the stand: a Silver Award at the Canton Fair Design Award (CF Award). It is the kind of news that makes a team quiet for a moment, then very talkative.

02 · Why It Matters to Us

An award is not a product. It does not ship, it does not solve a customer's problem on its own, and it will not sell a range by itself. What it does is confirm a direction.

For years, a large part of our work has been producing to partners' designs — OEM, done carefully, at the quality and scale our customers expect. That work continues and remains central to what we do. But alongside it, we have been building our own development capability: looking at how people actually store things, testing materials, and designing products from the user's need rather than from the catalogue.

The Silver Award tells us that this second path is worth the investment. It is a great encouragement, and it makes the next steps easier to justify — to our team, and to partners who might want to develop something with us.

03 · What Was on the Stand

The four ranges that anchor our catalogue were all there: folders, book covers, zipper pouches and EVA mesh bags.

The zipper pouch range drew the most attention. It is much larger now — more sizes, more shapes, softer materials, and a wider palette of material finishes. The format travels well: a pouch can hold pens in a classroom, cables in an office, cosmetics at home or documents in a suitcase.

The new ART Portfolio answered a quieter problem. Artists work in A4, A3 and A2; conventional storage does not. Our portfolio is sized around the paper, from A4 up to A2, so a drawing does not have to be folded to be kept.

And the Hole series came back with many new silicone products, extending the personalisation idea into softer materials and new shapes.

04 · The Next Chapter: More ODM

If the award confirmed anything, it is that original design is where we want to put more of our energy. Over the coming period, we will invest further in ODM: working with partners from the brief stage, developing ranges around their market and channel, and building the tooling and materials needed to make those ideas real.

We are not stepping away from OEM. Many of our partners rely on us for consistent production, and that reliability is part of why they trust us with development work. The two go together: ODM ideas are only useful if a factory can make them well and repeatably.

What changes is our ambition. We want to bring more original products into the market, keep experimenting with materials, and keep improving what we already sell.

05 · Thank You

To everyone who visited the stand in Guangzhou: thank you. Thank you for the questions, the criticism, the requests for samples and the time you spent explaining your market to us.