I am a big David Bowie fan, and since his untimely death last year his song Changes has been the song rattling around inside my head more than any other, kicked off I guess by the end of an era with his passing, and continued by what we have been doing here at Kapit Mas over the last year lots of changes! Changes, was I think the first track on the first Bowie album I ever bought – and I remember the album well, CHANGESONEBOWIE, a classic, it certainly changed my life!
And so to the changes we have been going though here, it is farewell to some old staff and welcome to some new faces,and with that bringing new skills, strengths and and loads of experience, we are also now at the trialling stage of our comphrensive new ERP data control system, it has all the bells and whistles a geek could want, and lots more yet for us to explore. It is certainly going to help us become more efficient, improve and speed up our communication’s with customers, phase II which we will start later in the year will have even greater benefits for our sales partners, as we will provide the chance to interact seamlessly with us online to place and monitor orders and sample development. .. more coming!
I always believe periods of change are good times to re-evaluate, look at where you have come from see where you are and where you are going, the decisions you make at change time must be lined up to create a better future, Our changes are very much geared towards answering the questions – how can we do a better job for our customers, how can we ensure our customers customers, the people who wear product we make are going to love wearing it, good questions to ask in time of change!
The changes our world is undergoing are fast moving, In 1971 (a mere second or two on the evolutionary clock, but in terms of life changes it truly is aeons ago) when Bowie first released Changes (on the Album Hunky Dory which is perhaps my favourite Bowie album of all time, I play the song Kook’s to my kids all the time, I am sure their teachers hate it!) was a great time to be alive, but if we we were still making jewellery now the way we were then, then we would be like the dinosaurs, long gone, I look back now at jewellery we were making 15 years ago, and even those changes are huge, not to mention the way we are selling it and interacting with our wider circle of associates, Social media? Web marketing SEO optimisation., mail groups? – sending out a newsletter to 1,000 people all around the world when Changes was released would have mean a lot of paper folding and a small fortune in postage stamps, and in some cases the news being very old when finally received!
Kapit Mas in 2005
Kapit Mas in 2017
In 2015-2016 our changes and Kapit Mas were mainly concerned with bringing in new equipment and technology, updating, and now that we are pretty strong in that area our focus has shifted to upgrading systems and personal, At the end of 2015 and also at the end of 2016 we sent questionnaires out to many of our clients to get some feedback and evaluation of how well you feel we are doing and where we can improve, the feedback was hugely positive and supportive – I guess as you would expect from loyal clients 🙂 but also a big thanks to those who pointed out areas were we can do better, and this is what is driving our current changes, we do appreciate your feedback, it does help us to help you more. Please keep it coming in. And as change continues we now move into a period of consolidation of our changes, and with that it will be time for me to get a new song in my head, and after a year, I am looking forward to that!
I would like to take a little minute here to introduce some of our new staff members, who are bringing in wealth of experience and knowledge to our team and are helping to make good changes happen.
We have brought in 3 new senior members to our casting team, lead by Muhammad Syaifurrizal, Rizal who between them have over 40 years of casting experience at the very top level, they are doing great things to our casting Department, which is really the starting base of jewellery production. Good castings make every other step along the way easier and give better results, and we are seeing the benefits of this already.
Also in order to improve our development team, Flemming Silleborg has joined us, Flemming has the experience, the technical skills and ability, for interpreting design and turning it into into great jewellery.
And I would also like to Introduce David Santoso who has joined us General Manager, to run the day to day operations of the company, and hopefully give me a little extra time to oversee and guide the changes we want to make at Kapit Mas so we can continue to change, evolve and provide better service to our customers.
You may read more about David, Flemming and Rizal by checking their bio’s on our website,
Many good wishes, and please keep your feedback coming in it really does help us to help you better,
Ben Morice