I can’t remember how I heard about Fabrix Cases, but frankly I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about them sooner. Perhaps it’s a failure of the startup ecochamber that a fabulous little Singaporean entrepreneurial venture with terrific design nous has so far gone little heeded.

Fabric make cases for gadgets. Luxurious, clean designed, beautifully made cases. I had been using a ‘no name’ hard case that Lucian had discovered in Funan. However one evening I took the iPad out and re-fell-in-love with the lightness and thinness of the unencumbered device. Seriously try it, you’ll be surprised at the bulk added by even the thinnest case.

My main need for any case is the protect the glass screen, but I don’t like the annoyance of a zip or tight neoprene case. Enter Fabrix.

Whilst they do offer a ‘portfolio’ style leather case I was most interested in their fabric sleeve. I found one at the Red Dot Museum. It’s perfect. Crisp Muji-esque lines, light but with plenty of padding to protect against sharp knocks. I went for the understand charcoal colour but there are brighter designs.

Immediately I wanted something similar for my new shiny 11" MacBook Air, given the size of the machine, I no longer need to be lugging around a MacBook Pro size laptop bag.

The Air-sized sleeves were all bright designs and I was hoping to match colour so I emailed the Fabrix guys. In a few hours they’d offered to custom build the case, at the same rate as one of their regular stock. Great service. A week later it arrived.

This was when I was really impressed. The bags and cases are obviously well made, but there was a level of care in the packaging that was unusual for a local company. Custom designed cardboard envelope? Check. Sharp copywriting? Check. Custom-designed bag looks like it’s part of the regular paged lineup? Check. Lovely product? Double-check.

Now this obviously reads like a love letter, but there is a good reason for that: these are awesome locally produced products, well designed and competitively priced. I would unreservedly recommend their service and products to anyone and I wish them every success. Why not buy a case?