Since 1998 I have done one thing: buttons. What began as one factory's sample boards is now a 28-year archive — every board kept, every style numbered.
"Anyone can say 28 years. We kept the boards, the website and the certificate — so you can check."
Left: a board photographed in 1999. Right: a sample board from this year. Same discipline — every style numbered, every board kept.
No acquisitions, no rebrands to hide behind. The same trade, the same numbering system, the same shelves.
First job, in a button factory. Style numbers start at 10000 — and they are still running today.
The factory's first English sample-board website, built by hand on FrontPage 3.0 in August. The Internet Archive kept a copy from 31 October 2001.
OEKO-TEX certification and a full range photographed across 20 product lines. Test report HKAO 055801 — the original is still in the cabinet.
Senfa Mfg. 11 testing machines, batch-coded bags, retained samples — and the same archive on the same shelves.
Seven years after the boards above, the range photographed again — across 20 product lines. Look at the series below: resin, imitation shell, natural shell and horn, wood and coconut, recycled polyester, metal hardware, snap fasteners, leather-wrapped buttons, frog closures, urea. They are not categories we added last year. Every family we quote today was already on a sample card in 2008.
What this means for a buyer. When you qualify a trims supplier, the hard question is not "can you make it" — it is "will lot three match the approval sample, and will the paperwork hold up in our audit". Continuity is how you answer it. The numbering on these cards is the same system we quote from today. The certificate above was issued to the same trade, by the same institute, under the same standard your compliance team screens against.
Approval sample discipline. Then as now: nothing goes to bulk before a physical sample is signed off, and a retained reference of every lot stays on file. The 2008 cards below are that discipline, seventeen years old.
Check it, don't trust it. Pick any series below and ask what the current sample looks like — we photograph the present-day button against the 2008 card and send you both. Counter samples are pulled from the same shelves.
Twelve of the twenty lines photographed in 2008. Send us the series name and we will pull the current sample against the card — you approve a physical reference before bulk, the same way it was done then.
Click any board to open it full size. Inside, click a button cell to zoom in — the style number is printed on the board and shown in the corner.
Age claims are cheap. These are not.
An early English sample-board site, preserved by the Internet Archive. The date is theirs, not ours.
Ask us — we'll send the archive link ↗Test report HKAO 055801 (TESTEX). The original certificate is on file — ask and we will send it with your quote.
Request the report ↗Salt spray, XRF heavy metals, wash and rub fastness, tensile to 2000 N. Every lot batch-coded, every sample retained.
See the machines ↗Short answers, checkable facts.
The boards above are physical objects on our shelves, not stock photos. Come and see them — or ask us to photograph any style number you pick, holding a printed note with today's date. We do that on request.
Two ways. Pick any style number from the boards above and ask us what it looked like — we will pull the board and the retained sample. And the Internet Archive has held a copy of the factory's first English sample-board site since 31 October 2001; ask us for the link.
Many of them, yes — that is why the boards are kept. Tell us the style number and size, and we will confirm within one working day whether it is still in production or needs a refreshed sample.
It means your reorders are traceable. A style number quoted in 1999 still refers to the same button today. No renumbering means no guessing when you repeat an order years later.
Because continuity is the part of quality you cannot photograph on a product page. The series we quote today were photographed in 1999 and 2008, the style numbering never restarted, and certificates on file go back to 2008. When your brand audits its trims supply chain, that paper trail answers questions a newly founded trading company cannot.
No, and we say so plainly: it is a historical record, issued March 2008, valid to January 2009. We keep it because it is part of the trail, not because it replaces today's paperwork. Current GRS and OEKO-TEX scoped certification covers the supply chain we ship under now — ask and we send the current documents with your quote.
Or just ask: "what did style 11908 look like in 1999?" — we can answer that.