We didn’t recycle plastic into a bag.
We turned it into a fabric that didn’t exist before.
Plenty of brands use “recycled” as a label stitched onto the same old material. IKI is the material. Industrial plastic and garment waste from factories, fused by hand into a textile we spent fifteen years developing. Only once that fabric exists does the bag-making actually start. Here’s exactly how it happens, start to finish.
1. Collected
It starts as plastic waste from garment factories, not consumer bottles, not something bought in ready-made. Industrial offcuts that were headed for landfill.
1
2
2. Cleaned
Every batch gets properly cleaned
3. Industrial textile waste, gathered
Sourced and kept ready for the next step.
3
4
4. Checked & cut
Plastic gets checked by hand and cut to size.
5. Fused into fabric
This is the moment IKI becomes IKI: the fusing process.
5
6
6. Formed into panels
The new fabric is shaped into IKI panels, the material every piece in the collection is built from.
7. Sewn by hand
Panels are sewn and assembled by our artisans in our own Cambodian workshop. Real hands, not a production line.
7
8
8. No longer waste
Finished. What started as factory offcuts is now a bag built to be carried for years.
Suddenly, it’s not waste anymore.
That’s IKI.
Shop the IKI CollectionNylon net, made for fishing and construction.
We gave ours something better to do.
Let’s be straightforward about this one: NET isn’t reclaimed from the ocean, and it isn’t factory waste like IKI’s fabric. It’s the same nylon net traditionally used for fishing or in the construction field, genuinely tough, industrial-grade material, that we’ve repurposed and made our signature. The craft is what happens next: every piece is cut by hand, then pinned and joined together colour by colour, one of the many hand phases that give each NET piece its exact mix of colour and its consistency. Nothing about it is quick.
1. Sourced in colour
Genuinely tough nylon net, the kind used for fishing and construction, repurposed as our signature material. It comes in a real rainbow of colour, on purpose.
1
2
2. Cut by hand
Every piece is cut by hand, one colour at a time, before any actual bag-making starts.
3. Colours, pinned together
This is the part our own brand book calls “magical”: different coloured pieces pinned and joined together by hand, again and again, until the mix and the consistency are right.
3
4
4. Ready for the workshop
Once the colour and consistency are right, it’s cut into panels and sewn together: the same hand-built process behind every Smateria piece.
No two rolls mix quite the same way.
Neither will your bag.
Shop the NET Collection