KOCOKnitting
[IMAGE REQUIRED: artisan hands mid-stitch on bamboo needles, natural light, close crop, client-supplied only. No synthetic imagery of any person.]
Our Impact

The women who knit for KOCO.

Literacy training, seven-month paid apprenticeships, and what changes in a village when women earn.

The Work

One artisan, one garment, first stitch to last.

Each garment is knitted by a single named artisan from first stitch to last. No one hands off half-finished work. The person who begins the piece finishes it, and her name goes on the swing tag. The work uses bamboo and timber needles only, and no electricity at any stage.

The artisans work from centralised village hubs, not from home. They are craftspeople with skills and agency, not beneficiaries of a programme. The hubs are how quality and fair conditions are held, and how a woman new to the craft is supported by experienced knitters beside her.

Literacy & Numeracy

Pattern-reading is the quality mechanism.

Most of the artisans who join KOCO had never been to school. Each is taught English literacy and basic maths so she can read a written knitting pattern rather than work from a sketch. KOCO believes it is the only hand-knitting operation in the world where artisans work from written patterns.

That is not a detail of training; it is the basis of quality control. A written pattern can be checked, repeated and handed to a second knitter who will produce the same result. A sketch cannot. Each size is written as a separate pattern, with no abbreviations, running to fifty pages or more for a single size against an industry norm of four to five.

The Apprenticeship

A seven-month paid apprenticeship.

Every artisan enters through a seven-month paid apprenticeship. She is taught to read and write English to the level a written pattern requires, and the basic maths needed to count stitches, shape garments and hold gauge. She is paid throughout, not expected to train unpaid.

Hundreds of women artisans have been trained this way. The apprenticeship is how a woman with no schooling enters skilled, paid, named work, and how the method is held as the workforce grows.

The Artisans

Named, skilled, and credited on every garment.

These profiles use only supplied names and photographs with documented written consent. Where consent or imagery is not yet supplied, the placeholder states what is required. No synthetic image of any person is used on this page.

[IMAGE REQUIRED: portrait of [ARTISAN NAME REQUIRED], client-supplied with documented written consent only. No synthetic image.]

[ARTISAN NAME REQUIRED]

Village:
[Village required]
With KOCO:
[Years required]
Specialty:
[Primary stitch specialty required]

[ARTISAN PROFILE REQUIRED: supplied name and photograph with documented written consent. A short, first-person-respecting account of her craft, what she makes, and her own words if supplied. Do not invent a name, a quote, a statistic or a biographical detail.]

[IMAGE REQUIRED: portrait of [ARTISAN NAME REQUIRED], client-supplied with documented written consent only. No synthetic image.]

[ARTISAN NAME REQUIRED]

Village:
[Village required]
With KOCO:
[Years required]
Specialty:
[Primary stitch specialty required]

[ARTISAN PROFILE REQUIRED: supplied name and photograph with documented written consent. Do not invent details or supply a synthetic image.]

[IMAGE REQUIRED: portrait of [ARTISAN NAME REQUIRED], client-supplied with documented written consent only. No synthetic image.]

[ARTISAN NAME REQUIRED]

Village:
[Village required]
With KOCO:
[Years required]
Specialty:
[Primary stitch specialty required]

[ARTISAN PROFILE REQUIRED: supplied name and photograph with documented written consent. Do not invent details or supply a synthetic image.]

The Swing Tag

Every garment names its maker.

Every garment carries a swing tag identifying the artisan who made it. Traceability is not a label added afterwards; it is the structure of how the work is organised. One artisan, one garment, and her name on the piece.

The swing tag carries a link to the artisan's page, resolved through the artisan resolver. A brand, a retailer or a final customer can read the name on the tag and see who knitted the garment, and where.

How the artisan resolver works →

Make something with the women who make it.

Send your tech pack or sketch. We will come back with feasibility, indicative costing and lead times for a hand-knit production run.

Book a Production Consultation