What curators do?

KoLe curators are in charge of finding items based on our philosophy. Also the goods they believe in the products or the producers/artists are worth introducing to the world.

Not only they do curating products, they also collect stories from the producers, artists and showrooms to tell them to you. You can not be a KoLe curator unless you are passionate about products, artists / producers and showrooms.

There is a curator called Head Curator. Head Curator is in charge of what we list on our product catalog, exporting and finding retail partners who agree to be our showrooms, on top of curators’ work.

If you have any questions about KoLe service, ask KoLe curator.

It will make your KoLe experience 10 times better, if you know these.

On this page, you can view almost everything what KoLe is about. We truly appreciate if you could take time to read them. Because, we believe if you know it, it will make your KoLe experience so much better.

Curation philosophy : These are what is in Curators’ mind when we search for the products and why this service started.

Curation Criteria : Based on our philosophy, we have a few criteria when we decide if products are for us.

Why curate products from small producers: This might puzzle some of you. But we try to explain.


50 Years from today…

I want this planet to be the place still habitable and nurturing blossoming culture and vibrant economic activity.

I want the world to be the place my child and grandchild generations can dream about something spectacular, regardless of their age.

I want the society to allow anyone to make one’s dream come true if the person willingly wish for it and work hard among healthy competitions.

I want the general sense of value to be what living humans create are still beautiful and valuable for people.

I might not be around in 50 years from now to see it. However, if I could be even a drop of the flow to make it happen, I believe pouring all my professional effort into KoLe project is more than well worth it.

KoLe Head Curator,

Satoko Kamada


Curation Criteria

The curation themes

We put up curation themes on above basic curation criteria. All year around and basic Curation theme is “Colors of Shikoku”. Curation themes are decided accordingly to events we run or per requests from our showroom.

All products have to meet 2 or more of the criteria

Unless the product was curated under the special curation theme, the all products have to meet at least 2 of these criteria.

The products which is not easy for foreign buyers to discover

We prioritize to put on our catalog if the products are not easy for foreign buyers to be discovered. Otherwise there is no point for our curators to be eyes and ears for you and our showrooms.


Why we do curate from small producers.

We are not in foreign trade business. We are in service industry.

When Japanese producers aim markets in abroad, often language and complexity of exporting regulation and paperwork become the biggest obstacle.

KoLe is a service of taking the part of marketing and exporting items on behalf of producers. This way, they do not have to worry about marketing in abroad and exporting. So that they can concentrate and spend maximum time doing what they are already brilliant at, “creating”.

In this sense, we are more of service provider than regular trading companies. If we are chasing after only the amount of profit, we will go for producer who can mass produce and lower the price.

Middle size and big size companies have more chance to be able to afford costs of time, human resource and fund, comparing to smaller companies and self-employed producers.

We would like to offer our service to the ones who can benefit the most from us. That is more likely to be smaller producers and self-employed producers.


Satoko Kamada

Pon&Con Kikaku, Inc. SP&AP4C div. Head Curator & Head International Sales

Born and grew up in Marugame city, Kagawa, Shikoku, JAPAN. Her earliest memory of her life was drawing when she was 2 or 3 years old. She went to a high school specilized in Fine Art. Then she went to Dublin, Ireland to learn English for 5 years. After gaining experieces in different fields, she joined us as a designer specialized in working for small business/ solo trader. Now, she made a decision to change our design devision to current style.