PETALING JAYA, Oct 9 — ‘Reach for the stars… it keeps your boobs from sagging’.
That’s just one of several hilarious quotes you will find on Kantoi’s range of Pink October reusable canvas totes to raise funds for underprivileged breast cancer patients.
All proceeds will go to the Cancer Centre of Tung Shin Hospital to aid in the treatment of breast cancer for those who can’t afford it.
Kantoi founder Min Lim and her co-founders Xian Tan and William Lo share the same sarcastic sense of humour which they translated onto their bags for a good cause.
“A lot of what we print comes either from stuff that we’ve seen or just simply made up — but always stuff that makes us laugh,” Lim told Malay Mail.
Their first collection, a fundraiser for the Women’s Aid Organisation, sold out in 10 days.
“On the back of that, we had requests come in to do a Pink October collection, which we thought was an awesome idea, so here we are,” Lim said.
“For Pink October, we wanted to do funny and sarky boob quotes because boobs in the medical sense are such a taboo thing to talk about.”
She added that many women in Malaysia are afraid to get diagnosed because they are worried about the social repercussions which is why breast cancer mortality rate in the country is so high.
When detected early, breast cancer is almost treatable.
The idea behind these bags is to get people talking about the disease to save lives.
“And so we figured that if we could get people to first laugh at these boob quotes, then maybe that would be a way of starting a conversation about them,” Lim said.
“It’s incredibly appalling to me that breast cancer is one of those things that is completely curable if it is detected early but because of the lack of awareness or perceived stigma, women don’t get themselves checked, and consequently lose their lives.”
Kantoi — an MCO success story
Known for their sarcastically phrased canvas bags, Kantoi was an accidental project born during the movement control order.
Lim, a film and television producer and production head at Double Vision, had just completed delivering Season 2 of The Bridge when the industry came to a standstill.
Like most Malaysians, she started cooking a lot in lockdown but found she didn’t have a lot of reusable bags for her supermarket trips.
“At the same time, I was talking to my regular printer and he, like many businesses, was really badly hit by Covid and so I decided that I would try and create my own brand and design a range of grocery bags for fun.
“Not only would it provide an outlet for my slightly inappropriate sense of humour and give me a new project — the baking was really ruining my waistline — but hopefully it would help him (the printer) a little bit too,” Lim said.
Initially, she made small batches and gave them to friends and family but she knew she was on to something when people started asking if they could buy the totes.
“The last thing I wanted was to start another business.
“Running one in these times is already hard enough so I roped in Xian and William and we decided that we would sell the bags but we would do it for charity.
“We agreed that we wouldn’t take any money for ourselves, this would be our way of giving back and that all the profits would go to charity,” Lim said.
Aiming to sell 1,000 bags
Tung Shin was chosen as the beneficiary for its Pink October project because of the amazing work the not-for-profit private hospital does.
“A lot of people don’t know that Tung Shin is a charity hospital — what that means is that 100 per cent of its profits are ploughed back into the hospital and it relies solely on that, as well as donations from well-wishes, to provide treatment for all kinds of patients, even those who cannot afford it.
“The Cancer Centre at Tung Shin is one of the best and most affordable out of all the private hospitals and provides all kinds of support for breast cancer patients such as help with counselling, prosthetics — they even have a wig exchange,” Lim added.
Lim and her partners at Kantoi printed 1,000 bags for this initiative but if response is good, the trio will make more to raise as much funds as possible.
Celebrities such as Sharifah Amani, Sangeeta Krishnasamy, Tong Bingyu and artist Red Hong Yi are also lending support towards the campaign.
“We’ve only got this month to do it so we’re pushing really hard,” Lim said.
And how would Kantoi convince a guy to carry one of their Pink October bags?
“If you ask Will, the token male in our team and our very eligible social media manager, he will say ‘When you and Xian force me to’.
“But jokes aside, breast cancer is actually not just a female issue — men can get it too.
“And they have boobs — so the quotes could certainly apply to them as well,” Lim said.
Sold in a box of five for RM100 or individually for RM25, the bags can be purchased through Kantoi’s Instagram page or at Journey Indoor Cycling Studio while individual bags can be purchased through kitsch.my.
Delivery is free, courtesy of Kantoi’s official Pink October initiative logistics service provider partner, Ninja Van Malaysia.
