“We often tend to wield our pride bringing up heritages like the Mt. Everest and the birthplace of Gautam Buddha, places that lie within Nepal as a matter of incidence. But, we seldom bring up the unique art forms and architectural structures while flaunting the national pride and are slowly letting it die.” says Sabin Bhandari, the founder of Butta.

Butta is a sister company to Threadpaints, an e-commerce company that initially sold t-shirts with their own designs. When buyers wanted t-shirts with custom designs, Threadpaints could not cater to them under the same brand because they were heading towards becoming a clothing solution to suit the taste of many.

The way for Butta, meaning designs, was paved in this very gap. They chose a name that Nepalese are familiar with to create a platform where for the artists, who cannot stop creating, to can express themselves.

Inside the Web

When you log onto the website, butta.us,  you are presented with six sections; Home, Shop, Personalize, Lookbook, Be an Artist and Blog.

 When you click on shop, you will find the prints that has already been created for you to put it on different kinds of t-shirts, mugs or bags of different colors. The amount that you have to pay for it is also displayed.

 Under ‘Personalize’, you can request a print of any design no copyrights required whatsoever . This section caters to the needs of customers who are not artists but want a design of their own for themselves or for the people they are gifting it to. Birthday gifts, anniversary presents of sorts for instance.

 If you’re not sure how the designs are going to turn out, you can check Lookbook to see how well other customers are wearing it.

 Especially designed for the artists is the ‘Be an Artist’ section. Here you can upload your art to feature in the tshirts, mugs and bags to be sold from the website itself. If the design art is original, it will be patented and the artist can have his/her share of profit when sold.

 Butta will print whichever design you choose on whatever product you want it printed on. They will also deliver it to the location of your convenience. So far, they have served around 900 customers and 30% of them were residents from out of valley.  

What lies ahead

“People seem to find a part of themselves in our designs and we want them to find a part of themselves in more of everyday things that they use like mugs, notebooks, phone cases shoes and so on.” said Bhandari. But, the reason Butta really delivers is the vision of having quality materials manufactured in Nepal. Commodities like shoes, bags and t-shirts are manufactured in Nepal but most of the raw materials are imported in the process. Butta has not been able to deliver custom printed phone cases because the cases that could be made in Nepal are not really good in terms of quality. People wouldn't order it twice no matter how good the print is.

 More often than not, people would choose a foreign made product over its Nepal made counterpart. This is not a case of lacking patriotism but a case of rational consumption. Bhandari does not claim that Butta can alone be the driving force behind the production of quality products but he believes that Butta will be one of  the reasons for it.