Sisters In Trade

By Coeli Carr

Who could have predicted that foot scrubbers would bring big change to a small village in Pakistan? Ann Thariani's fascination with handcrafted terra-cotta foot scrubbers began when she lived in Karachi with her Pakistani architect husband Kumy and led them to start a company, Gilden Tree. Sales of the product skyrocketed, but the women who made the scrubbers were not the only beneficiaries. The Tharianis decided to pay to educate the women's offspring, with one challenging stipulation: the girls, who often stay at home in rural Pakistan, had to go to school with the boys. "Everything Gilden Tree does is a reflection of my values," says Ann. "You have to treat every human being with respect."

Thariani is part of a cadre of U.S.-based businesswomen committed to bringing a better life to financially disadvantaged women overseas, who often live in patriarchal societies in which work outside the home is frowned on or condemned outright. Why are women entrepreneurs getting in the business of giving back? "Women have a special gift for friendship," says Clare Brett Smith, an executive at Aid to Artisans, based in Hartford, Conn., which helps match U.S. entrepreneurs with artisans overseas. The other component? "Trust. It's one of the basic elements of a decent business."

Giving It Back To the Girls

HOW DID THARIANI FIND THE INSPIRATION for her business? Newly married and living in Karachi, she had exhausted the supply of pumice stones she had taken with her from the U.S. She found jahwaan, traditional foot scrubbers, in the local market. "They looked really rough and strange, but when I started using one, it made my feet smoother and softer and did a wonderful job cleaning them," she says. As she prepared for a visit to her native Omaha, Neb., with her son, she asked herself, "Do I bring foot scrubbers for family and friends or pack the baby's clothes?" When she got eight orders for the tool, a business was born.

A family friend helped the couple find two small clans near Karachi whose women were able to make a sophisticated version of the foot tool. The Tharianis, who live in Omaha, have since added a Gilden Tree skin-care line to their company, but the Foot Scrubber--which sells about 100,000 units annually--is still their best-moving product, with a presence at Whole Foods, bath shops and spas.

The growing business gave the female producers a disposable income, something they had never had before. "There's a real change in the power in families once a woman can earn," Thariani says. Her epiphany came, she says, when she heard the husband of one of the women say about his newly schooled daughter, "kind of with mock annoyance, 'That daughter of mine, she's always got her nose in a book.' That was a tectonic shift in these people's lives. These are no longer families of laborers. They're now educated families." The Tharianis--and the Pakistani girls--are the winners.

Sewing for Independence

SOME OF CATHY DEALE'S BEST-SELLING products have nautical and shell motifs, even though many of the Zulu women who embroider them have never even seen the ocean, let alone a sailboat. But they don't seem to mind. Thanks to Deale's importing business, the craftswomen near Durban, South Africa, are living much better than ever before.

Deale stumbled into her business when she was on an overseas trip. A native of South Africa, she had owned a corporate-gift company there before immigrating to the U.S. with her husband in 1997. When she went back to visit, Deale saw beautifully detailed embroidery made by Zulu craftswomen. "I just knew people would want them here," she says. Although the women have "extraordinary natural talents in beading, weaving and stitching," she says, the Zulu artisans were either illiterate or barely educated. She discovered that many of their husbands had died of AIDS, which has ravaged the country. "Many of these women are holding their whole family together," says Deale.

She partnered with four existing businesses that produced embroidered linens, hand-embroidered baby garments, beaded handbags and jewelry, and she imports the products through her two-year-old company, Jacaranda Living, which is based in Wellesley, Mass. Deale's best-selling category is waffle-weave cotton towels, and she says her nautical designs sell well among the Cape Cod set.

As she developed her business, Deale was passionate about improving the Zulu women's living standards. Many of the women she employs were skilled artisans with limited markets for their wares. Others, who were unskilled, received training. The extra earnings have helped them, as sole breadwinners, support their families better and raise money for medicine for close relatives with AIDS. (Deale says according to two of her suppliers, at least half of their workers have family members who suffer from or have died of the disease.) What's more, the crafts work allows the women to stay at home, where they can care for their families, instead of traveling to labor in factories. According to Deale, the women earn good wages, by South African standards. She won't discuss how much they make but says she has given them raises twice in the past two years. "I've developed a market for them. I knew if I could sell their products here, I'd be making enormous strides in helping people who would otherwise be unemployed," she says. "When I give them a nice big order, they have a lot more work to do, and they're going to get more money."

Funding a Family Dinner

EVEN BEFORE ENTREPRENEUR PAULINE Lewis decided on Vietnam as the source country for her embroidered handbags, she wrote a nonnegotiable directive into her business plan. Her company, Oovoo Design, would work with only women-owned businesses and female artisans. "I wanted to know that the money I was giving back would go directly into the hands of women," she says.

Lewis was burned out when she left her corporate marketing job to start Oovoo. The Malaysian-born entrepreneur traveled to Vietnam to investigate opportunities there. She was stunned by the styles in one of the handbag shops she visited. Less than a month later, Lewis was back in Vietnam, meeting in Ho Chi Minh City with the retailer, a woman who had a group of embroiderers working for her in many villages north of Hanoi. The two women partnered up, and designer Le Thi Hong Tu agreed to create a new line for Lewis, act as point person and oversee the embroiderers. Some 500 of them now stitch the bags' panels in their homes, and 120 other sewers complete the bags in Ho Chi Minh City. Lewis got the first samples in hand in July 2004, and she sells her bags to about 300 boutiques across the U.S.

Doing business in Vietnam hasn't been easy. In the beginning, Lewis ended up discarding as many as 100 bags because the quality of the local fabrics was inconsistent. She then imported suede, leather and other materials, which caused other headaches.

Those start-up difficulties have been smoothed out, and because Lewis' embroiderers earn more than they would get at a factory, the enterprise attracts the best talent. The workers also are paid a monthly bonus of around 8% and a larger one at the Vietnamese New Year, roughly equal to two-thirds of their monthly salary. Each year the designer takes the 120 sewers in Ho Chi Minh City on an all-expenses-paid weekend vacation.

In addition to the financial benefits, Lewis wants the workers to feel a connection to the buyer. When she visited the producers this fall, she thanked them and described how much customers love their bags. "I told them that their work mattered," she says. "I have the women in my mind when I'm selling the bags here. It adds meaning to know that when you're buying this bag, you're buying a family dinner back in Vietnam." It's not bad for business either. o