SANGKHUM. The workshop behind every piece

SANGKHUM (សង្គម in Khmer, meaning "society" or "community") is the workshop in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that makes everything we sell. SANGKHUM is the real story here — Upcyclisten is the distribution side, but the craft, the design, and the actual making happen at SANGKHUM.

How SANGKHUM started

SANGKHUM was founded in 2015 by a group of Cambodian artisans, with operational and initial funding support from a Cambodian NGO partner. The original premise was practical: Phnom Penh has a significant problem with industrial waste (cement bags from construction sites, fishing nets from the Tonle Sap fisheries, military-surplus textiles from regional supplies), and a workforce of skilled tailors and leatherworkers whose options for steady fair-wage work are limited.

The founders connected the two. The workshop opened with seven people; today it employs 25, with three lead designers and a rotating training cohort that brings in new staff from the local community.

What "fair-trade" actually means here

We use the phrase "fair-trade" because it's the most-recognised shorthand, but specifics matter:

• Wages: SANGKHUM pays well above the Cambodian garment-industry minimum wage. Workers receive monthly base wages plus production bonuses based on workshop revenue (not individual piece-rate). The lowest-paid SANGKHUM worker earns roughly 2.4× the legal minimum wage for the sector.
• Working hours: 40 hours per week standard, with overtime paid at 150% rate (Cambodian law requires 130%). No mandatory overtime.
• Benefits: Cambodian National Social Security registration for all workers, health insurance contribution, paid annual leave (15 days), paid public holidays.
• Worker representation: SANGKHUM operates with an elected worker representative council that meets monthly with the management. The council has input on production decisions, workshop policy, and any worker disputes.
• Training: ongoing technical training is built into the workshop schedule. New workers spend their first 3 months in a supervised training program before joining standard production.

The materials

SANGKHUM uses three primary reclaimed materials:

Cement-bag canvas

Industrial cement bags from Phnom Penh construction sites. The bags are designed to be water-resistant (cement powder mustn't get wet during transport), which makes them excellent material for outdoor-durable bags. After collection from construction sites, the bags are cleaned, inspected for damage, sorted by colour pattern, and stored until needed in production.

Each cement bag yields about one day bag's worth of material, so every cement-canvas piece is one-of-a-kind. The colour pattern depends on the specific bag.

Fishing nets

From the Tonle Sap fishing industry. Damaged nets, end-of-life nets, and offcuts are collected, cleaned (often a multi-day saltwater removal process), then unraveled and rewoven into a flat fabric. The resulting "fishing-net weave" has a distinctive textured appearance and is exceptionally strong.

Cleaning fishing nets is labor-intensive: about 8 hours of cleaning per net before it's usable. This is one of the reasons fishing-net-weave pieces cost more than cement-canvas pieces.

Reclaimed leather and military-surplus textiles

The leather comes from offcuts of larger Cambodian garment-industry leather manufacturers — pieces too small to be used in commercial leather goods but plenty large enough for wallets and small accessories. Military-surplus textiles come from regional army-surplus markets and are particularly suited for hardwearing bag construction (canvas straps, reinforced panels).

How the supply chain works

1. SANGKHUM workers and designers in Phnom Penh design and prototype new pieces. Final designs are signed off by the workshop's design lead.
2. Production runs are scheduled based on Upcyclisten's quarterly stock orders plus a small amount of speculative production for the Phnom Penh local market.
3. Materials are sourced from local collection networks. Cement bags from construction-site partners, fishing nets from Tonle Sap collectives, leather from regional garment manufacturers.
4. Finished pieces are quality-checked, packaged (in reused cardboard, naturally), and shipped to us in Berlin via sea freight roughly every 12 weeks.
5. We receive, photograph, list, and dispatch from our small Berlin storage facility.
6. About 75% of the sale price (after EU VAT, shipping, and our overhead) goes back to SANGKHUM. We publish the full breakdown on an annual basis in our impact report.

Visiting SANGKHUM

The workshop welcomes visitors — both customers travelling in Southeast Asia and journalists / researchers / students writing about fair-trade manufacturing. Visits are by appointment, typically arranged through Upcyclisten for German-language coordination or directly with SANGKHUM for English/Khmer-speaking visitors.

The workshop is in central Phnom Penh, about 15 minutes by tuk-tuk from the central markets.

Annual impact report

We publish an annual report each March covering:

• Workshop staffing, wages, and turnover
• Material volume reclaimed and converted into product
• Sales by product line and price-share-back to SANGKHUM
• Specific challenges from the year and how we addressed them

The most recent report is available on request — email [email protected].

Getting involved

If you'd like to support SANGKHUM beyond buying products:

• The workshop occasionally hosts apprenticeships and short-term skill-sharing programmes. Contact directly for current openings.
• Bulk wholesale orders from European retailers help stabilise production planning. We coordinate the European side; you'd work with SANGKHUM directly on design specifications.
• The NGO partner that helped seed SANGKHUM still does work in the broader Cambodian artisan sector. We can connect you if you're interested in supporting that wider work.