We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Inka Mathew. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Inka below.

Hi Inka, thanks for joining us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?

One customer’s story that really left an impression in my heart was from a woman who purchased several of our t-shirts. Turned out she bought them for a very personal reason. This is what she shared with me through an email (her name has been taken out for privacy):

“A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I experienced our first pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. I wanted to let you know what a blessing your t-shirts have been to me. I own four different ones. The day I first went to the hospital when everything happened, I purposely wore the “O death, where is your sting?” Tshirt and it was such a great comfort knowing that our sweet baby is in Heaven and Jesus has overcome death. Shortly after, I wore my “Choose Hope” t-shirt as a reminder to keep my hope in the Lord. Then when I needed to get up and face things, I wore my “Talitha Koum” t-shirt as a reminder that I needed to arise and continue to live with my eyes on the Lord. This season has been a difficult one. I find myself wearing your tshirts on a weekly basis as a reminder to keep my mind on the Lord. I can’t wait to buy the stickers next month to put inside my Bible. It is amazing how much the Lord can use a t-shirt to minister to me in a season like this. I will never forget the strength and encouragement these tshirts have given me during this time. Thank you so, so much for your willingness to make these.”

Often times, my husband and I are wondering if what we create make an impact in people’s lives at all or not. I kept going back to this email, to remind me that what we’re doing is not pointless, and God is using what we create for good.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Inka Mathew, founder and designer of 139Made, a Christian apparel and lifestyle products based in Sugar Land, Texas. In 2012, I found out that Houston is one of the biggest hubs for human-trafficking. This revelation shocked me. Later I found out that this modern day slavery also runs rampant all over the globe. There’s actually more slavery today compared to any other time in human history! Isn’t that absurd? Estimated about 30 million people today are slaved for prostitution and forced labor.

God later placed a burden in my heart to do something, to join the fight for these trafficking victims. I wanted to do something using my abilities. When I thought about those young women and children, about how their lives had been robbed by their traffickers, it just really broke my heart. I could not imagine what they went through. I think it is the most horrific assault to a human being – body and soul – done by another. If I were to talk to one of these victims, I really wouldn’t know what to say, and my words will probably fall so short. This verse though, Psalm 139:14, was impressed on my heart when I think about them, and I wish I could communicate its wonderful meaning to them — that each one of them were fearfully and wonderfully created by God. He longs to see them live in freedom.

139Made clothing brand came out of the desire to do something to fight this injustice. My husband and I launched this company in the beginning of March of 2015, with the purpose of sharing God’s message and also help raise awareness on human trafficking issue in US and the world. We want to do something within our power and abilities to join the fight by supporting anti human-trafficking organizations in the way we can. We promote different anti trafficking organizations through our company. We do this by doing 3-month campaigns and 10% of our sales within that time is donated to the featured organization. To date, we have featured 28 anti-trafficking non-profits that operate internationally and nationally.

Right now, the business is only run by me and my husband. We do our own design and print productions. Thankfully we both have complementary talents! I wear a lot of hats right now — the designer, photographer, social media coordinator, copy writer, among other creative tasks. My husband is the screen printer, accountant, business manager, web developer, and occasionally… chauffeur. It is a lot to juggle, because we also have two teenagers. But, we always put family first! Our business might be growing much slower than what we would like, but we will never sacrifice our family on the altar of work.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Since the beginning of 139MADE, we have been designing our own shirts. We didn’t do the printing ourselves but I created the designs myself and made sure the shirts we chose are of high quality, comfortable to wear, and soft (I despise scratchy t-shirts!)

After discovering that often times, our vendors didn’t produce the print quality we desired, my husband decided to take screen printing class in 2017. We purchased a small screen-printing machine and set it up in our garage. It was quite challenging at first, and we made a lot of mistakes. We made the screens wrong, the ink bled too much on the shirts, or the colors didn’t come out right. But we learned from many trials and errors and became good at doing screen printing that we tried with a few experimental techniques. What makes me even happier, turns out, my software engineer husband actually enjoys screen printing!

His decision to learn screen-printing was to save cost and to get better print quality on our shirts. But he discovered that it was something that he was good at. You’ll never know or gain a new skill until you make the jump and go all in with it. You might find out that it is actually something you’ve had in you all along!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We pride ourselves in the high quality of our products. Not just in the designs and the creative part of it, but also in the production quality. We want products that we ourselves will wear or use proudly. A lot of our customers over the past 7 years have been telling us how much they love our creative designs and the quality of our shirts, handmade jewelry, and our other lifestyle products. They shared about us with their friends and families, which for us is the highest compliment! And that is how we build our reputation. My husband and I are firm believers in word-of-mouth advertising. Yes, it is slower than other type of marketing, but it is the one that is most trusted by potential new customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: 139MADE.COM
• Instagram: instagram.com/139made
• Facebook: facebook.com/139made
• Twitter: twitter.com/139made
• Other: pinterest.com/139made