Yak farmers providing the latest Shanghai fashion

At Shokay’s flagship store in Tianzifang, local shoppers can find soft, hand-knit down products. The surprise? The knits they’re looking at are made from yak wool. 

Beyond the unusual material, Shokay's owners also connect customers to those behind the products. Shokay knit's are far from a generic Chinese factory product. The store brings together communities across China, in a socially responsible business model. 

Every hand-knit Shokay product comes with a tag that explains the background of the knitter who made the products. It’s not just gloves, pillows or scarves -- it's a person and a story. 

The tags are one of the ways that Shokay educates local consumers about the rural Tibetan and Chongming Island communities that play an integral role in the creation of the products they’re buying.

The products also help a community of subsistence farmers support themselves.

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Shokay co-founder Marie So with the herders who provide her company with yak fur.

The yak factor

In 2006, while at the Harvard Kennedy School, Shokay co-founders Marie So and Carol Chyau were, according to Chyau, “trying to understand issues of poverty, and how [they] could apply sustainable solutions to the Chinese context.”

On a trip to Yunnan province in western China they discovered communities of yak herders and the idea for Shokay began to take shape.

So and Chyau saw the potential to help the herders supplement their incomes -- often a mere RMB 1,200 annually -- through the sourcing of warm and super-soft yak fur for use in Shokay products. 

We’re teaching women to spin yak fur using a different method from what they’ve traditionally learned, which increases productivity, bringing them additional income.— Keena Fletcher, Shokay creative director

Creating a blend of yak down that could be put to practical use was a challenge, but eventually the pair found a perfect mix.

The next challenge was how to turn the spun yarn into a final product. 

The answer came in the form of a small community of women on Chongming Island near Shanghai.

Shokay's local edge

Chongming Island is home to a disproportionate number of women who were relocated there during the anti-Japanese War during World War II.

They survive on subsistence farming while their husbands work in nearby Shanghai. But, says Shokay creative director Keena Fletcher, the women also possessed an untapped and valuable skill: knitting.

Now, Shokay helps around 40 Chongming women earn an additional income by knitting the products bought by Shanghai consumers.

“Shokay has given me a great sense of accomplishment,” says Viola Zhang, one of the knitters on Chongming Island.

Many of the women are putting their additional earnings towards better education for their children.

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Some of the herders from Qinghai province that Shokay works with. Cate Carter (back row, third from the left) trains the women to hand-spin yak fur into usable yarn.

Paying it forward

Not content with the status quo, Shokay is continuing to grow its socially responsible projects, with a number of new ideas already in the pipeline.

Fletcher, who has a background in textile production, is working with Chyau and So to take the yarn production process out of factories. Their goal is to teach women in Yunnan Province to spin the yarn collected by the yak herders to a grade that can be used in Shokay knit products. 

“We’re teaching women to spin yak fur using a different method from what they’ve traditionally learned, which increases productivity, bringing them an additional income,” says Fletcher.

So is also working on a women’s health education initiative designed to teach the women in the yak-herding communities to recognize signs of illness, a vital skill in an area with a population of 10,000 which is served by just eight doctors.

She plans to ask the men of the community to "step aside" to allow for a frank discussion of women’s health issues in a community where women tend to put others’ needs before their own.

Shokay is now expanding to reach consumers in Japan, Europe and the United States.