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Creations for kids and Christmas
By Ayesha Inoon
Bringing out the colour and brightness of the festive season through charming decorative objects, Samanthi Tanabe, Managing Director of Taka International (Pvt) Ltd., creates a range of items in her home-based business which includes toys and decorative items, as well as décor for children’s rooms.
An engineer, Samanthi gave up her job at Nippon Koeik Company Ltd, shortly after her son was born in 2000, to turn what was previously a hobby into a full-time career. Initially starting with designing soft toys she gradually moved on to other avenues that would best utilize her creativity.

She named the company Taka, after her young son, which literally means, rising. Presently busy with fashioning decorations to cater to the themes of various clients for the festive season, Samanthi says it is necessary to start early, as the process of finalizing and coming up with the finished product that caters exactly to the customer’s requirements can be time consuming. When the customer specifies the theme of the décor, and gives her an idea of the objects needed, she first designs a sample. This sample is shown to the customer, whose suggestions are then added, and the final order is sublet to others who make the required number of items.

“For some, Christmas is always white, for some it’s colourful, and some want more natural products in their decorations,” says Samanthi, who adds that she uses only local materials in her products. Her raw materials, which include coir, sand, twigs, dried berries, etc., are collected from all over the country. Using these she fashions items such as Christmas wreaths, poinsettia, gift boxes with handmade wrapping paper, Christmas trees, table décor, and more.

Samanthi says that she picks up ideas on her frequent travels to England, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia and attempts to recreate the quality and beauty of what she sees in her own unique style, using local materials.
Her clients have included the JAIC Hilton, Crescat Residencies, Mobitel (Pvt) Ltd, United Motors Ltd., and John Keells Holdings, as well as individual clients.
Decorating children’s rooms is also something she enjoys, and her son’s room is testimony to this, with a colourful mural of Thomas the Tank Engine brightening one wall.

Sometimes she weaves in an entire story onto a wall or a curtain, she says, remarking that she recently sewed a series of images of Winnie the Pooh onto the curtains of a child’s room.

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