Doing business by doing good
Williamstown woman selling refugee crafts
By Sally Patterson, Special to The Eagle
Sunday, September 10
WILLIAMSTOWN
Can candles and artisanal jewelry make a difference to the world? Amber Chand is betting her livelihood upon it. A former partner in Eziba, a Berkshire-based dot-com that marketed high quality Third World crafts via the Internet, Chand has started her new venture small. So far she is handling only a few carefully designed items as "The Amber Chand Collection: Global Gifts for Peace and Understanding."
But her vision is nothing if not grand in its determination to link personal gain to bettering the fortunes of others.
She is importing and selling goods made by women - many of them refugees - who have suffered from war, civil strife, genocide and natural disasters. She sees her enterprise as a partnership, in which everyone will win.
"The underlying mission is that women's economic security is a vital foundation for families, communities and societies," she emphasizes. "Women's hands are a force for peace. All over the world, there are women creating beautiful objects."
This is a way of helping them find markets.
Chand, who works out of her home with one assistant, a cell phone and a laptop, has several larger-than-business goals, some of them outgrowths of what she did at Eziba.
By hiring refugee craftswomen, she believes she can give them a chance to improve their lives with dignified labor.
By focusing on regions in conflict, she hopes to ignite a glimmer of cooperation and build small bridges to peace.
By overseeing the quality of the items she sells, she seeks to disabuse American consumers of the notion that Third-World goods are shoddy or second-rate.
Chand has good reason to be aware of the plight of refugees.
She was one herself, forced to from her native Uganda in 1972, when dictator Idi Amin ordered all East Indians out of the country.
As refugees go, Chand was among the fortunate. Her family had been progressive and believed in educating their girls as well as their boys. She had attended school in England and college in Uganda. Her mother had been a ground-breaker - becoming a lawyer and dressing in Western clothing.
Chand was, therefore, not untutored in the ways of the world when she was thrust into exile. She received a scholarship to study anthropology at the University of Michigan, where she earned her master's degree in 1975.
Later, after marrying and settling in Boston with her husband, Thomas Plunkett, she worked in the marketing division of a linguistics company, translating ads for global marketers.
"It was there that I got sense of what it was to market," she said.
Then, preferring to raise a family - they have two daughters - outside an urban environment, Chand and Plunkett moved in 1983 to Williamstown, where his sister and brother-in-law were already living.
Although she found a safe haven in the United States, Chand has always felt somewhat culturally displaced, a woman without a country, or at least with more of a global outlook than a sense of total belonging anywhere.
So it was natural for her to bring a multicultural aesthetic to her business life.
She worked for a time at the Center for Development Economics at Williams College, then she ran the gift shop at the Williams College Museum of Art, learning hands-on about retailing by buying and selling global art products.
In 1999, she joined her brother-in-law, Richard Sabot, a Williams College economist and a founder of Tripod, a successful dot-com company, in establishing Eziba. The multimillion dollar venture progressed with dizzying speed - perhaps trying for too much too fast, she admits in hindsight - and then crashed last year with equal abruptness.
Her current endeavor, launched last October, nine months after Eziba folded, takes the remnants of that business concept in a different direction and on a much less headlong scale.
It is more collaborative, more considerate and purposeful. It is also less "testosterone-driven," Chand says with a wry chuckle.
Whereas Eziba plowed large amounts of money into quick fame and recognition, she said she is growing this business slowly and organically - from her dining room table, using the powerful tools of the Internet and word-of-mouth.
This is a more feminine business strategy, she says, adding that she would like eventually to attract some investors - especially women.
Recently separated from her husband, she said she was also motivated by the need to make a living.
Chand works closely with non-profit organizations, such as Washington-based Women to Women International, to make contacts in areas known both for distinctive craft traditions and for impoverishment and hardship - countries like Cambodia, Ethio-pia, Darfur, Jordan, Vietnam, Pakistan.
The nonprofits she works with, some of which she knew through her work at Eziba, already have operations in refugee camps and other troubled areas. She deals with with the coordinators of those organizations, not with the craftswomen themselves.
She has samples of work sent to her, then she redesigns them in colors or patterns she thinks will appeal to American buyers.
The Jerusalem Candle of Hope, a lantern filled with fragrant wax and inlaid with flowers, is made in Israel, primarily by Russian expatriates. Palestinian women embroider the small linen bags, bottom center, to hold the candles for the lantern.
The craftswomen then create a prototype from her redesign, and, once she approves it, they begin production, mailing what they make by air freight to an Agawam warehouse, in which Chand has leased space
"I'm building a market," she says. "Phase one is purely online, but I'm look at building a wholesale and corporate gift market and maybe a small focused gift catalog."
Among her first ventures is an "everlasting" peace candle made in Israel, primarily by Russian expatriates. Actually, it is a lantern filled with fragrant wax and inlaid with flowers. It doesn't burn itself, but is lit by a tea light inside. Chand has Palestinian women embroider small linen bags to hold the candles.
She calls this item the Jerusalem Candle of Hope. "Not of peace," she adds ruefully, "because peace is still far from a reality - especially now."
She does not take sides in the politics, but hopes that her business may contribute a ripple of reconciliation. Her customers often hope for the same. It is a niche, she says, small, but growing.
Chand is soon to launch the Kabul Necklace of Courage, a stunning collar made of deep blue lapis lazuli. It is beaded by Afghan women and is packaged in a filmy gauze bag that is sewn by women in Iraq.
Other products include a woven Darfur Basket of Strength, a necklace and matching cuff bracelet from Guatemala and a silk "Bag of Smiles" from Cambodia. The latter is named for an orphanage called the House of Smiles.
Chand says that many refugees spend 15 to 20 years in camps, and emphasizes the importance of their having the motivation of a decent way to earn a living.
Although she respects charities, she says, she deliberately chose a for-profit route, because it is sustainable. When the women get business orders, they feel engaged and valuable, she said.
And Chand said she pays them fairly, better than their local market price would be.
For a typical product - the Jerusalem Candle of Hope, for example, sold for $36 - five percent of the proceeds of each sale goes to the charity through which she coordinates the work, 35 percent to the women producers, 15 percent to costs of transportation and customs and 45 percent to her business.
She sold 1,000 of the candles in five weeks, she said.
Even back at her warehouse in the U.S., she focuses on a vulnerable population, hiring developmentally disabled adults to handle shipping.
She hopes she can triple sales, double her customer base and be profitable in three years.
A cynical observer might say that Chand underlines the fair-trade and humanitarian sides of her enterprise as just another marketing angle, but when she talks about what she is doing, her conviction and sincerity are unmistakable.
She believes in her product line - and that it will speak for itself. It isn't enough to sell a story, she says, the products have to be absolutely gorgeous. And she loves being connected to people all over the world.
"I feel called to it," she says. "Finally I have found a way to incorporate work into the tapestry of my life, to live what I believe in, and to create a livelihood from that."
For more information on the Amber Chand Collection, visit www.amberchand.com.
Williamstown woman selling refugee crafts
By Sally Patterson, Special to The Eagle
Sunday, September 10
WILLIAMSTOWN
Can candles and artisanal jewelry make a difference to the world? Amber Chand is betting her livelihood upon it. A former partner in Eziba, a Berkshire-based dot-com that marketed high quality Third World crafts via the Internet, Chand has started her new venture small. So far she is handling only a few carefully designed items as "The Amber Chand Collection: Global Gifts for Peace and Understanding."
But her vision is nothing if not grand in its determination to link personal gain to bettering the fortunes of others.
She is importing and selling goods made by women - many of them refugees - who have suffered from war, civil strife, genocide and natural disasters. She sees her enterprise as a partnership, in which everyone will win.
"The underlying mission is that women's economic security is a vital foundation for families, communities and societies," she emphasizes. "Women's hands are a force for peace. All over the world, there are women creating beautiful objects."
This is a way of helping them find markets.
Chand, who works out of her home with one assistant, a cell phone and a laptop, has several larger-than-business goals, some of them outgrowths of what she did at Eziba.
By hiring refugee craftswomen, she believes she can give them a chance to improve their lives with dignified labor.
By focusing on regions in conflict, she hopes to ignite a glimmer of cooperation and build small bridges to peace.
By overseeing the quality of the items she sells, she seeks to disabuse American consumers of the notion that Third-World goods are shoddy or second-rate.
Chand has good reason to be aware of the plight of refugees.
She was one herself, forced to from her native Uganda in 1972, when dictator Idi Amin ordered all East Indians out of the country.
Amber Chand, a former partner in Berkshire-based Eziba, a dot-com marketer that folded last year, has started her own line of artisan crafts made by women who are refugees or living in Third World trouble spots like Pakistan and Darfur. Chand was once a refugee herself, forced by a dictator to flee her native Uganda in 1972. Photos by Ben Garver / Berkshire Eagle Staff
As refugees go, Chand was among the fortunate. Her family had been progressive and believed in educating their girls as well as their boys. She had attended school in England and college in Uganda. Her mother had been a ground-breaker - becoming a lawyer and dressing in Western clothing.
Chand was, therefore, not untutored in the ways of the world when she was thrust into exile. She received a scholarship to study anthropology at the University of Michigan, where she earned her master's degree in 1975.
Later, after marrying and settling in Boston with her husband, Thomas Plunkett, she worked in the marketing division of a linguistics company, translating ads for global marketers.
"It was there that I got sense of what it was to market," she said.
Then, preferring to raise a family - they have two daughters - outside an urban environment, Chand and Plunkett moved in 1983 to Williamstown, where his sister and brother-in-law were already living.
Although she found a safe haven in the United States, Chand has always felt somewhat culturally displaced, a woman without a country, or at least with more of a global outlook than a sense of total belonging anywhere.
So it was natural for her to bring a multicultural aesthetic to her business life.
She worked for a time at the Center for Development Economics at Williams College, then she ran the gift shop at the Williams College Museum of Art, learning hands-on about retailing by buying and selling global art products.
In 1999, she joined her brother-in-law, Richard Sabot, a Williams College economist and a founder of Tripod, a successful dot-com company, in establishing Eziba. The multimillion dollar venture progressed with dizzying speed - perhaps trying for too much too fast, she admits in hindsight - and then crashed last year with equal abruptness.
Her current endeavor, launched last October, nine months after Eziba folded, takes the remnants of that business concept in a different direction and on a much less headlong scale.
It is more collaborative, more considerate and purposeful. It is also less "testosterone-driven," Chand says with a wry chuckle.
Whereas Eziba plowed large amounts of money into quick fame and recognition, she said she is growing this business slowly and organically - from her dining room table, using the powerful tools of the Internet and word-of-mouth.
This is a more feminine business strategy, she says, adding that she would like eventually to attract some investors - especially women.
Recently separated from her husband, she said she was also motivated by the need to make a living.
Chand works closely with non-profit organizations, such as Washington-based Women to Women International, to make contacts in areas known both for distinctive craft traditions and for impoverishment and hardship - countries like Cambodia, Ethio-pia, Darfur, Jordan, Vietnam, Pakistan.
The nonprofits she works with, some of which she knew through her work at Eziba, already have operations in refugee camps and other troubled areas. She deals with with the coordinators of those organizations, not with the craftswomen themselves.
She has samples of work sent to her, then she redesigns them in colors or patterns she thinks will appeal to American buyers.
The Jerusalem Candle of Hope, a lantern filled with fragrant wax and inlaid with flowers, is made in Israel, primarily by Russian expatriates. Palestinian women embroider the small linen bags, bottom center, to hold the candles for the lantern.
The craftswomen then create a prototype from her redesign, and, once she approves it, they begin production, mailing what they make by air freight to an Agawam warehouse, in which Chand has leased space
"I'm building a market," she says. "Phase one is purely online, but I'm look at building a wholesale and corporate gift market and maybe a small focused gift catalog."
Among her first ventures is an "everlasting" peace candle made in Israel, primarily by Russian expatriates. Actually, it is a lantern filled with fragrant wax and inlaid with flowers. It doesn't burn itself, but is lit by a tea light inside. Chand has Palestinian women embroider small linen bags to hold the candles.
She calls this item the Jerusalem Candle of Hope. "Not of peace," she adds ruefully, "because peace is still far from a reality - especially now."
She does not take sides in the politics, but hopes that her business may contribute a ripple of reconciliation. Her customers often hope for the same. It is a niche, she says, small, but growing.
Chand is soon to launch the Kabul Necklace of Courage, a stunning collar made of deep blue lapis lazuli. It is beaded by Afghan women and is packaged in a filmy gauze bag that is sewn by women in Iraq.
Other products include a woven Darfur Basket of Strength, a necklace and matching cuff bracelet from Guatemala and a silk "Bag of Smiles" from Cambodia. The latter is named for an orphanage called the House of Smiles.
Chand says that many refugees spend 15 to 20 years in camps, and emphasizes the importance of their having the motivation of a decent way to earn a living.
Although she respects charities, she says, she deliberately chose a for-profit route, because it is sustainable. When the women get business orders, they feel engaged and valuable, she said.
And Chand said she pays them fairly, better than their local market price would be.
For a typical product - the Jerusalem Candle of Hope, for example, sold for $36 - five percent of the proceeds of each sale goes to the charity through which she coordinates the work, 35 percent to the women producers, 15 percent to costs of transportation and customs and 45 percent to her business.
She sold 1,000 of the candles in five weeks, she said.
Even back at her warehouse in the U.S., she focuses on a vulnerable population, hiring developmentally disabled adults to handle shipping.
She hopes she can triple sales, double her customer base and be profitable in three years.
A cynical observer might say that Chand underlines the fair-trade and humanitarian sides of her enterprise as just another marketing angle, but when she talks about what she is doing, her conviction and sincerity are unmistakable.
She believes in her product line - and that it will speak for itself. It isn't enough to sell a story, she says, the products have to be absolutely gorgeous. And she loves being connected to people all over the world.
"I feel called to it," she says. "Finally I have found a way to incorporate work into the tapestry of my life, to live what I believe in, and to create a livelihood from that."
For more information on the Amber Chand Collection, visit www.amberchand.com.