CHAPTER TWO

THIS BRACELET BUILDS COMMUNITY

Gifts That Give Back

----------

Giving—and thoughtful, generous giving at that—may be more rewarding than receiving on numerous levels, from the neural, to the personal, to the social.

—MARIA KONNIKOVA, AMERICAN AUTHOR

On a cold, rainy Monday morning in November, I drove from Washington, DC, to New York City with six huge duffel bags of products in the back of my car. They were for To the Market’s first-ever Macy’s in-store event, a trunk show at Macy’s Herald Square, being held just in time for the holiday gift rush. I was carrying items I thought would make great gifts—holiday ornaments created from discarded oil drums by impoverished artisans in Haiti, table runners and placemats made from upcycled saris by survivors of human trafficking in India, necklaces and bracelets created by refugees living in Greece, and beaded jewelry and clutches made by refugees in Uganda. I had no idea how much people would buy, so I erred on the side of bringing more than I might need. I loaded it all in my ten-year-old gold Acura MDX that I’d inherited from my mother and drove to my friend LeAnne’s in Harlem, where I was staying for the week.

My company had been up and running for two years by then. We had steady business-to-business relationships and a growing revenue stream. Still, I knew that an important part of our company was missing—partnerships with major retailers. I wanted to help change the supply chain of the retail industry, too, and selling our products at stores alongside those made in traditional factories would be an important step.

I’d worked for a year to get into Macy’s in hopes of becoming a regular supplier. Everyone in retail considers Macy’s a whale—a huge victory to land. Practically every designer and clothing and accessory manufacturer sends samples. Macy’s is such a big retailer that landing the account can make a huge difference for a company’s bottom line. For a small company like mine, having Macy’s as a partner also would ease negotiations with other stores. If we could reliably fulfill a purchase order for one of the world’s largest retailers, that would give other corporations more confidence in our ability to meet their own procurement needs.

Tuesday morning, I headed downtown from Harlem to Macy’s. It was still raining and even colder, but as I neared the store, I felt excited. I’d gotten this far in my effort to land an account from the legendary retailer.

We were doing our trunk show on Giving Tuesday, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two largest shopping days in the United States, but many people are still looking for holiday gifts on Tuesday. The average American spends almost $1,000 a year on holiday presents. Giving Tuesday, founded in 2012 by the 92nd Street Y in New York City and the United Nations Foundation, is designed to encourage people to think about humanitarian giving and ways to help those in need. The day felt like the perfect time to talk about To the Market and the power we all have to change lives by giving gifts made by vulnerable communities.

One of my favorite stories about meaningful gift giving is O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.” A poor husband who owns almost nothing beyond a pocket watch decides to pawn this single treasure to buy his wife a Christmas present—a fancy clasp for her lustrous hair. She, meanwhile, secretly chops off her hair and sells it in order to buy a chain for his pocket watch. Christmas arrives. The big reveal. Oh no! He has no watch for the chain, and she no hair for the clasp! They realize, through these gifts, how much they already have—lives rich in love.

This tale has warmed hearts for generations, and it highlights an experience we’ve all had: feeling cared for by receiving a gift, far beyond the value of the object itself. There’s an art and a value to receiving, too. Accepting gifts gives others a chance to feel generous and caring. In “The Gift of the Magi,” the sacrifice these two lovers make for each other also points to this aspect of giving—how much joy it brings to the giver. As Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer has noted, refusing a present prevents someone else from experiencing the joy of giving. “You do people a disservice by not giving them the gift of giving,” she has said.

I love giving gifts. It’s an easy way to let people know you’re thinking about them, especially when you choose something that has real meaning for the receiver (Disney princess shoes!). I actually have an annual gift budget—that’s how important this aspect of social life is to me. It’s also part of why Christmas is my favorite holiday. I appreciate the meaning and spirit of it, and the decorations and being near family. But I also love the presents.

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

Even from the outside, Macy’s Herald Square felt magical, with its holiday decorations and lines of people standing outside to get a glimpse of the Christmas window displays. Inside, huge diamond-like solitaire ornaments hung from the ceiling, along with long strands of glass droplets that looked like giant icicles from a fairy-tale Christmas. It felt very Miracle on 34th Street, one of my favorite holiday movies. Macy’s Herald Square is the iconic urban department store, a National Historic Landmark covering an entire city block in Manhattan. It’s nine stories high, and is one of the largest physical retailers in the world. The escalators on the upper floors still have their original wide, wooden treads (that your heels fall through, if you’re wearing pumps). They creak upward like an old wooden roller coaster, passing racks of fabulous clothes and housewares—and at that time of year, evergreen wreaths and boughs and sparkling lights and ornaments. I was excited to be there not only because Christmas is my favorite time of the year, but also because if sales went well that day, Macy’s would likely place an order to carry our products for spring.

It turns out that gifting is its own retail category, like accessories or housewares. I love the fact that retailers recognize the important role of gift giving in society. The gift market is an estimated $130 billion plus each year, with promotional or corporate gifts accounting about 20 percent of that. This is an encouraging figure to me, considering the number of products we sell that are bought as gifts.

Helping me with the sale that day was a part-time teammate based in New York named Mary. Macy’s had given us a small alcove space on the mezzanine, overlooking the main floor, maybe two hundred square feet of space. I could gaze past the railing and see the entire ceiling of the first floor below us flickering and glowing. Shoppers rushed around, bundled in scarves and hats, fur hoods and mittens, hijabs and hoodies. They carried big white Macy’s shopping bags printed with the word Believe in red. They spoke Chinese and Arabic and French, the languages blending together in an energetic, expectant holiday buzz. Snippets of conversation float by in that kind of crowd. “My God, why can’t we stay in here all day?!” Or, “Can you take a photo of us? We just got here from Florida this morning. It was eighty-four degrees when we left!”

Our stall had held an Etsy shop before us and would go on to hold a Michael Kors scarf display the next month. On this day, it was only us. We set up our stuff by ten a.m., and I didn’t leave that spot all day (other than to run to the bathroom). Much to my delight, I realized we were situated right next to a Starbucks. Anyone taking a break to buy a latte or plopping down on the coffee shop’s leather ottomans for a rest could look through the wire mesh wall separating the spaces and see our goods. This was a fabulous location because we had incredible foot traffic, and (almost as compelling to me) we could see the coffee. I drink a huge amount of coffee. When I’m traveling (which I am 90 percent of the time these days), I practically have coffee on an IV drip.

Starbucks is one of my favorite coffee companies because of its leadership in making high-quality coffee a staple for so many, and in using its purchasing power to improve farmers’ output and incomes. Even as the company has expanded, Starbucks has stuck to its principle of purchasing fairly grown coffee, developing its own certification program for growers, called C.A.F.E. (Coffee and Farmer Equity), which is similar to fair trade. (To learn more about Starbucks’s role in transforming the coffee industry, see chapter 3.) The company also offers employees health insurance. Nearly every coffee company worth its sugar has a fair trade line today, or some other way of assuring consumers that the farmers who grew the beans were decently paid. This is exactly what I hope to see in retail—using our mass love of fashion for good just as Starbucks uses our love of coffee for good.

Mary was doing shuttle runs throughout the day for caffeine and egg-white-and-turkey-bacon breakfast sandwiches (both of which I like to consume at all hours of the day). The rain drove shoppers indoors, and people were spending serious time looking. For twelve hours, I stood there drinking coffee, sharing our story, and helping people identify the right gift for each person on their list. “You’re shopping for your mother-in-law? How about these great upcycled horn spice bowls?” I’d say. I don’t get tired when I’m evangelizing about our products. I delight in sharing with people how they’re made, who made them, and the value of gifts that give back. Most important, I relish the chance to explain why I believe in the products’ ability to change people’s lives. Artisans such as those working in cooperatives in Uganda, Greece, and Haiti feel the impact of our purchases immediately and profoundly on the ground.

I talked about how buying a bracelet made by a mother in Uganda helps pay for her children’s school fees. (School is not free in so many parts of the world, and a lack of access to basic education generally means the next generation lives in the same poverty as the current one.) I talked about the usefulness of the little animal-print toiletry bags made by Freeset, how they help survivors of human trafficking build independent lives, and how the bags are just the right price for Secret Santa gifts. I showed off our Ethical Totes, amazingly useful, splurge-worthy large black bags with wide caramel-colored straps made from discarded goat leather by artisans who have survived ongoing natural disasters in Haiti. I showed the gold leaf cuffs, also from Haiti (I’d designed myself!), and rattled off potential gift recipients. “Girlfriend? Sister? Boss?” Shoppers would pick up the cuffs, push up the sleeves of their coats, and try them on.

I was very aware that this day was a significant moment in the arc of our business, the first time we were being shown by a retailer the scale of Macy’s. It was one of those moments when you just know that you are experiencing something very important in your life (and hopefully in the lives of others). I had worked hard to get us in there, which felt satisfying in itself. But the real question remained: How much appetite would there be for gifts that give back among customers of Macy’s, shoppers at a huge retailer focused on mass appeal? I knew the products spoke for themselves in terms of quality and design, but would the story help generate enough sales for Macy’s to place an order for spring?

BRINGING ETHICAL GIFTS TO A RETAIL GIANT

My first “in” with Macy’s came at a creative conference (one of my favorites—Alt Summit) in Salt Lake City in 2015. Macy’s was one of the sponsors of the event. I met some people from the regional marketing department and talked to them about our company. I knew Macy’s had an appetite for socially conscious purchasing because of the Heart of Haiti initiative the company launched after the 2010 earthquake that devastated that country. When it comes to positive social impact purchasing, one challenge for big, traditional companies, however, is figuring out how to incorporate it regularly into their business practices. A lot of companies have a corporate social responsibility division, but the buyers aren’t in that division. There can even be tension between the CSR people, who are judged by social-impact metrics, and those in more traditional functions, who are evaluated primarily on financial performance.

Also, most major corporations aren’t set up to work with nontraditional suppliers, such as an artisan group based in a remote valley outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Procurement is a specialized skill set, particularly when sourcing from co-ops in undeveloped parts of the world, employing survivors who are in the process of learning new skills. A company like mine is a bridge between small-batch producers and major companies. We bring design and management support to the local producers and source from a variety of cooperatives, which lets us supply at the scale that a big company like Macy’s needs.

I stayed in touch with the marketing folks from Macy’s after the conference and later set up a meeting at their regional office in Houston. I flew to Houston to explain why we think consumers are interested in social-impact gift giving, and which items would likely perform well in their stores. I also stressed the fact that it’s becoming increasingly important for stores like Macy’s to source ethically because of the trifecta of pressure and interest from consumers, investors, and regulations. Sourcing ethically is no longer just a way to “get bonus points” with customers; rather, it’s increasingly required by law and expected by consumers and investors.

That meeting with the regional Macy’s team in Houston was encouraging but ultimately didn’t lead to a next step. A few months later, I noticed on LinkedIn that a close friend from college, Kevin, knew a buyer who worked at Macy’s in New York. I asked Kevin to connect me. I’m always looking on LinkedIn to see who I know, and then following up on introductions. Many people can be reluctant to ask for help, and to follow up. They worry about coming across as pushy or aggressive. But LinkedIn’s core purpose is networking, and it’s possible to be assertive and still quite considerate. You definitely don’t want your focus on your goals to feel transactional to others. When people connect you, they’re extending political capital, and it’s always a good policy to let them know how much it means to you. I almost always write a thank-you note to someone who makes a connection for me. I’m a huge fan of asking for what you need and also taking the time to show people how much you genuinely value their effort, such as by sending a thank-you note or even a little gift.

SEND A THANK-YOU NOTE
OTHERS WILL THANK YOU FOR

It’s important to acknowledge the efforts that others make for us, whether they involve time, money, attention, or an introduction. Saying thank you is a small gesture that makes other people feel good, and has a major “return on investment” from a relationship perspective. Also, as research from the field of positive psychology shows, writing a gratitude letter to someone who had a special impact on your life, and reading it to that person, brings more happiness than fun activities like going to the movies. We get pleasure from giving. Here’s how to express thanks and give back.

Choose Cards That Protect People or the Planet: There are so many beautifully designed cards made from recycled paper today; it takes almost no extra effort to send a note on one of them. Look for cards made from 100 percent post-consumer waste (PCW) paper. Or choose thank-you cards made from Forest Stewardship Council–certified wood (FSC) that comes from a responsibly managed forest and can be recycled. Bamboo is a sustainable fiber that can be made into super-luxe paper. Another good option is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital stationery, with incredibly cute pictures drawn by patients. Profits after expenses help fund the hospital.

Give Good Chocolate: So many chocolate makers and ethical candy creators have sprung up in cities around the nation in the past ten years. It’s easier than ever to say thanks with chocolates that support a local maker, improve lives of farmers, protect important ecosystems, and promote sustainable growing. (See chapter 6 for suggestions.)

Send Sustainable Flowers: Who doesn’t love a bouquet of flowers as an expression of thanks? The Bouqs Company works with farmers who use sustainable, eco-friendly growing methods, and only cut what they sell, avoiding wasted flowers. Or you can save money and support a local florist by logging on to Bloomnation.com, a community marketplace that cuts out the wire-service middleman and their fee. BloomNation lets you search for and order from a local florist, and view photos of that company’s actual arrangements (rather than a stock image of a bouquet that may not match what you buy).

Kevin connected me to his buyer friend, Heather, in New York, and I took another flight to pitch my gifts-that-give-back vision, this time to the New York headquarters of Macy’s at Herald Square.

Heather totally got it. She genuinely believed in what we were doing and felt that there was a strong place for us in Macy’s. She introduced me to someone else, an omni-gift buyer named Sarah, who oversaw all sorts of gifting sections. This was the fourth person I pitched to at Macy’s. Sarah and Heather became our champions. Since Macy’s had already ordered everything they’d be selling for holiday 2016, they came up with the idea of doing an in-store trunk show on a consignment model.

Trunk shows are one strategy businesses are using to deal with consumer over-choice. Trunk shows can drive people into stores and attract the attention of overwhelmed consumers facing endless options for gifts and other products today.

On Giving Tuesday, we had that great location, but in some ways, we were lucky that shoppers found us at all, given how many other points of sale existed. There were nine floors of retail, and that was just within Macy’s. If you looked out the windows of the Starbucks next to us, you’d see a Sephora on the other side of Thirty-Fourth Street, alongside Old Navy, Foot Locker, a luggage and camera store, Skechers, and a now-shuttered, family-owned women’s clothing store with its original sign still intact: “Cliquer’s Colors Fashion Inc.” An even larger sign hung above it: “Retail Space for Lease.”

The Cliquer’s storefront is a sign of the times for so much in the retail landscape. All these options existed on just one block in Manhattan. The Internet makes every home as competitive a retail environment as Thirty-Fourth Street. Because of this, retailers are looking for new ways to stand out and remain relevant.

Differentiation is a huge part of retail competition. During the last five years in particular, price differentiation—going cheaper than your competitors—has heated up, particularly online. People will generally buy a commoditized product, whether it’s milk or a Nintendo game console, where it’s least expensive. But competing on pricing alone is tricky and getting harder all the time. There is a race to the bottom, price-wise, and from a business and humanitarian perspective, everybody loses.

Another route to differentiation is to offer products that no one else has. This desire to sell something different has spurred the growth of private label clothing—pieces or collections that a company like Macy’s buys from a factory or designs itself to sell under its own label, often adding a unique embellishment or signature style. Today, private label clothing, taken together, is larger than any single brand.

A third major way to differentiate products is to find things that have a good story and to share that story on the label or the website—particularly if it includes an element that makes people feel good about buying and giving. The quest for a good story combined with the need to offer items no one else has is where ethical sourcing comes in, and is great news for those of us who care about how our products are made. I’m optimistic that today’s hyper-competitive retail environment, along with increased scrutiny and consumer pressure for supply-chain transparency, will continue to make retailers scramble for products made by artisans and other nontraditional makers around the world.

On Giving Tuesday, I’d brought six duffel bags of gifts that shoppers in New York couldn’t find anywhere else, each with a great story. That combination is largely why we were able to get into Macy’s. Now all that remained was seeing how well our gifts would sell.

RISING FROM THE RUBBLE—HAITI’S CREATIVE FORCE

I designed the gold leaf cuff I was selling at Macy’s during my first-ever trip to Haiti, in the spring of 2016, about six months before the Macy’s in-store event. I’d been invited by the Artisan Business Network (ABN), a business development group created through funding from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund after the 2010 earthquake.

Although I first conceived of To the Market after being inspired in India, people face hardships all around the world. Haiti, for example, has been plagued by natural disasters and ongoing political and economic instability. I wanted to help harness purchasing power to support artisans in places like Haiti, too.

Haiti is about as far from the sparkly, perfume-scented sales floor of Macy’s as one can imagine. An undeveloped, lush Caribbean country the size of Maryland, Haiti occupies the western third of the island of Hispaniola. The Dominican Republic covers the eastern side of the island, and while many people know the D.R. as a tourist destination with white-sand beaches and a bustling nightlife, Haiti is better known for tragedy and poverty.

Hispaniola is so mountainous that its original inhabitants, the Arawak (who lived there when Christopher Columbus made landfall in 1492) called it “land of the mountains”; the name “Haiti” derives from the original Arawak word for this description. Spain claimed the island as its own before ceding the western portion, which now comprises Haiti, to the French. By the 1700s, the Europeans were calling Haiti the “Jewel of the Antilles” because it was the most successful of the French colonies, with its output of agricultural products including sugar and tobacco from plantations worked by slaves.

The slaves revolted in 1791, eventually forming the world’s first independent black republic. They named it Haiti after the Arawak name. But the African slaves’ hard-won independence was soon followed by internal conflict among leaders of the new country, as well as crippling trade embargoes by European nations. There was then fighting with the nation next door, a series of dictatorships, bankruptcy, and international interventions (including humanitarian aid) that often created nearly as many problems as they intended to solve.

Today, Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. It’s so close to the United States, about 675 miles from Miami—roughly the same distance as between Miami and Atlanta, or Dallas and Denver. When you arrive, the crowds of impoverished people standing outside the gates of the airport and hanging around the little towns, clamoring to help with your luggage or wash the windows of your car in hopes of a tip, are a jarring contrast to the shiny cleanliness, soaring ceilings, and well-stocked stores of the U.S. airport you just left. Haiti has the lowest Human Development Index in the Americas, a composite statistic including life expectancy, education, and income per capita. This is the figure that the United Nations uses to determine if a country is considered developed, developing, or underdeveloped. As of the 2015 Human Development Index report, Haiti was ranked 163 out the 180 countries. (The United States is number eight.) More than half of Haiti’s ten million citizens live in poverty.

If you look at the toll of natural disasters alone, it almost seems as if Haiti sits on the doomed side of the island. In 2004, Hurricane Jeanne hit Haiti, killing more than 2,400 people. Four years later, a series of hurricanes and tropical storms swept through Haiti, destroying infrastructure, knocking down power lines, and strafing roads in the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Then in January 2010, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck just southwest of Port-au-Prince. This was the largest quake on the island in two hundred years. The earthquake killed about 200,000 people—some buried under rubble and never found—and left millions homeless.

The quake also destroyed many of the remaining grand nineteenth-century public structures in Port-au-Prince, including the parliament building, the main post office, the city hall, and the Notre Dame Cathedral. It smashed the United Nations building and killed 30 percent of the country’s civil servants. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported to have responded, after hearing about the earthquake, “Why Haiti?” Having seen so many impoverished parts of the world, she, like so many, just couldn’t believe another tragedy would hit this nation.

While Haitians were still digging themselves out, there was an outbreak of cholera, introduced, it was later discovered, by a United Nations envoy there to help survivors of the earthquake. Cholera infected about 700,000 people.

After the earthquake, the artisans were a group that really needed help. They’d lost their workshops but not their ability to produce. As New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson put it in a 2016 article, one good thing came out of this really horrific earthquake: “The disaster drew the world’s attention to Haiti’s long struggle—and, to some extent, offered a chance for a fresh start.”

This fresh start included the creation of the Artisan Business Network, the group that invited me down. The ABN opened an office in Port-au-Prince, and hired a director, Nathalie Tancrede. Tancrede is a Haitian American who was working in New York when the earthquake struck. She looked on Facebook for ways to volunteer, offered to help translate, and wound up moving to Haiti and taking the job running the new ABN.

I’ve met so many people like Tancrede since starting my business. Many are Americans, often missionaries, but I’ve also met leaders from Europe and other countries, as well as from within local communities. These are people absolutely dedicated to connecting struggling artisans with markets in the developed world. They are real heroes. It is unbelievably inspiring to travel to some of these countries with ongoing social and economic problems, and to meet the people making a difference.

Though the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has closed down in the years since the earthquake, the Artisan Business Network got a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank, a multilateral financial institution focused on the economic prosperity of the Americas. The grant enabled the ABN to invite me and five other buyers and buying consultants to fly to the island and meet the artisans in person on a guided buying trip. The ABN also brings designers and consultants to the island, and even to the studios of artisans located in the very remote, mountainous interior. The global market changes quickly, and designers and consultants can help artisans choose colors and focus on products that are in demand at the moment, helping them mix their traditional craft with modern design.

I was thrilled to be invited on this buying trip to meet the artisans and see what they could do. Being on the island allowed me to see how the products are made and to connect emotionally with the artisans, which was the aim of our hosts. The trip directly helped me with product development, immediately expanding our ability to source from Haiti. I didn’t have a network there, and Haiti is not a country I would necessarily be able to navigate by myself, making the guide immensely helpful.

The ABN is a great example of an effective development effort that includes the private sector. By bringing over companies like mine, the nonprofit ABN helped expand the marketplace for local makers. The trip connected artisans personally to private industry, essentially working to help citizens of Haiti pull themselves out of poverty through self-employment. This kind of public-private partnership brings together the strengths of for-profits, nonprofits, and government agencies to address serious social problems—and create potentially sustainable solutions, which I loved to see.

Sustainability is key. Many U.S. companies hurried down to Haiti to buy handicrafts in the aftermath of the earthquake. They ordered novelty items, often designed to be sold as gifts, aimed at generating immediate income for artisans. This rush of orders was a great help, but the projects weren’t necessarily conceived of with a thought to the future. While in Haiti, I heard so many stories of designers or companies flying down to do a new “made-in-Haiti” collection. A co-op would hire a bunch of workers to fill the order. Everyone would get busy cranking out great products and bringing home cash to help them rebuild. But then the work on that collection would end, and the store or designer wouldn’t place another order. The artisans had to be let go. Many didn’t understand what had happened. Why was their work no longer needed? Wasn’t it good? They faced a sudden return to unemployment or underemployment—and yet another instance of instability and dismissal.

I don’t blame the designers; they’re not development experts, and these interventions came from the right place and provided economic relief in the short term. But when it comes to making lasting change that lifts people out of recurring desperation, we need to think about the sustainability of our efforts and of those we choose to support. Just as rescue can be only a stopgap measure, so too can job creation. We have to evolve in how we operate in undeveloped countries, because what we’ve been doing for decades hasn’t fully worked. Sustainability for the medium and long term has to be part of the metric we use to gauge success. If we create a job that ends in three months—or if we place a big order and then never hire the artisans again—we haven’t solved the problem in any lasting way.

Economic consistency is part of having control over your life, whether you live in Haiti or in the United States. At my company, if we get a large order from a place like Macy’s, we’ll try to parcel it out to different co-ops in order to create opportunities for more artisans and to avoid the surge-and-crash scenario for any one group. Our model of sourcing from multiple cooperatives also benefits our business and helps with our own sustainability. By not relying on one specific group to fill an important order, we mitigate our own risk of failing to deliver.

When my group arrived in Haiti, the ABN’s Nathalie Tancrede met us at the airport. We drove directly to see Caribbean Craft, the largest handicraft producer on the island and an expansive operation, as far as artisan cooperatives go. Nearly 150 artisans were hard at work when we arrived. They were scattered about in a handful of buildings, creating and painting papier-mâché home decor items, such as cute roosters, rhinos, and giraffes that could hang in a kid’s bedroom or make a fun gift for an animal lover of any age, and adorable standing ducks. They were beautifully painted in bold colors. Caribbean Craft also houses one of TOMS shoes’ painting facilities, where Haitian artisans create a special, limited line of hand-painted shoes.

Caribbean Craft is run by Magalie Noel Dresse, an energetic, upbeat young woman who was a real stabilizing force after the earthquake. She had enough purchase orders to continue employing people, even when other folks couldn’t. (Oprah visited her after the earthquake.) I was impressed by the sheer scale of the operation, and the fact that they were making ornaments and wall art for West Elm, a highly successful retailer that has publicly committed to sourcing the majority of its products from ethical producers by 2020. Dresse won an Innovative Social Sustainability Bravo Award from the Latin Trade Group in 2013 for her work. Still, as people’s memory of the earthquake began to recede, purchase orders were dwindling even at this well-established producer.

That night, we stayed at the Marriott hotel, a new, modern hotel whose very presence felt quite significant. A major international chain hotel suggests that a country is open for international business. It symbolizes business potential; there’s a recognizable place to stay with the amenities a businessperson expects. I was aware of the importance of an international chain hotel from the U.S. government’s efforts to get a large hotelier to open in Kabul. The government provided incentives to encourage this investment in Afghanistan with the idea that a good hotel would help spur more business development.

When we arrived at the Marriott, I was excited to see chandeliers, wall art, soap, and glasswork made by the country’s artisans. Tancrede walked us around and told us which co-op or artist did what. It was a beautiful manifestation of how the local art and design could fit seamlessly into a high-end environment, and it made me excited about bringing products back to the United States to sell. The hotel also sold artisan products in a tiny gift shop that was about the size of a closet (a nice walk-in closet).

The next day, we drove to a workshop called Atelier Calla, run by Haitian designer Christelle Paul, who is well respected on the island for her design and business savvy. Paul has a very upmarket, sophisticated eye. I’d seen pictures of her work and was particularly interested in the fact that she was creating sleek, stylish items out of discarded cow horn from the island.

Atelier Calla was in a neighborhood that used to be quite nice but had recently been overrun by gangs. We arrived to find a concrete wall surrounding the compound, with a heavy sliding metal gate cut into it. We called out to the guard inside, who opened the gate, then shut it behind us. (This is a pretty typical setup in Haiti and other places in the developing world.)

Inside the compound gates, a half-dozen workers sat on metal stools in the courtyard, polishing small pieces of cow bone on their laps. Others wrangled large cow horns into buffing machines. It was hard work, but the atmosphere was calm. I could hear the workers chatting to each other above the whir of the buffing machine.

Christelle Paul stood just outside her office, wearing black, arty-looking glasses and a necklace she’d designed herself made from a leather rope and wooden pendant. She had a regal look, with her hair pulled back in one of those flawless, slicked-back ponytails, and a lovely, confident, contented smile. She showed us around the atelier and explained her process. Some of the artists were making little catchall bowls out of the polished horn, and I immediately knew they would appeal to U.S. customers. These became part of the collection we brought to sell at Macy’s.

After leaving Atelier Calla, we drove to an inspiring operation called Papillon, focused on orphan prevention. Papillon employs impoverished parents who might otherwise give away children they can’t feed (a surprisingly common practice in Haiti, as I learned). The two hundred plus parent-artisans at Papillon were busy making all kinds of amazing objects out of discarded materials, including beads rolled from old cardboard soda cases and strung into bracelets. A few young men and women, wearing jeans and T-shirts, with woven friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists, sat at old wooden tables slicing up cardboard cases with paper cutters. They collected the resulting ribbons into long, neat piles. I could hear the swish of the blades coming down, and the conversation and laughter of the workers.

In the next room, other people rolled the strips into multicolored, disk-shaped beads and stacked them on long sticks, like lollipops of every hue. The printing on the boxes created a dappled effect, and the lacquer both fused the beads together and gave them a high gloss. They looked like pricey ceramic or glass beads. The creative atmosphere was infectious and I suddenly had inspiration for a potential corporate gift. Couldn’t the marketing department of a consumer food company like General Mills, say, give social media influencers jewelry made from cut-up cereal boxes fashioned into similar beads? I snapped some photos to use in a pitch, and we continued on.

We left Port-au-Prince and headed inland toward Croix-des-Bouquets, a village about twenty minutes north of the capital. Almost all of Haiti’s legendary metalwork, fer decoupage, is made in Croix-des-Bouquets. The metalwork tradition started in the 1960s with one Haitian artisan, Georges Liautaud, whose story is another example of the power of the individual to make change. Liautaud created flat, elaborate crosses out of old railroad ties to decorate the mausoleums at a local cemetery. Cemeteries in Haiti can be surprisingly ornamental, and Liautaud worked with themes of spirituality and magic, images of animals and local flora, and African and European symbols.

A local art dealer saw his crosses and commissioned him to make home decor. Artisans in Croix-des-Bouquets started imitating his style and technique. Soon a new kind of folk art was born, with artisans making bowls, candle holders, and various kinds of wall decor from upcycled metal, not just railroad ties but also the huge drums used to ship oil and, later, ketchup and soap. Liautaud’s studio became the center of the new movement. The Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and France’s Musée National d’Art Moderne have collected Liautaud’s work, and museums have also collected metalwork of other Haitian artists.

As we approached Croix-des-Bouquets, I could see artisans sitting in small, pavilion-like workshops in their front yards, each with a roof and three walls, open to the street. I could hear the banging of metal coming from the front yard of practically every house. I couldn’t wait to see what people were making. I jumped out of the car and walked ahead of everybody, popping into one stall and then another, eager to see the work. Entire families were running home-based ateliers, hammering old oil barrels into flat sheets, cleaning, chiseling, forging, cutting, polishing, and painting.

I saw so much activity around me. My wheels began to turn. I thought, I’d like to take a bit of this and a bit of that! Artists were applying gold leaf to a few items, and I thought it would look great on a piece of jewelry. Others were carving a leaf pattern onto wall art, and I wanted to see that on a bracelet, too. I would never pretend in a million years to be a jewelry designer, but walking through the village, I suddenly got a very specific idea for a bracelet I wanted to see. I asked the second or third group I met if they could make the design I envisioned. The artisans were open to the concept and seemed eager to give it a try.

Some of the artisans there were shipping as many as ten thousand pieces a year to New York City and Europe, I learned. One of the town’s top artisans, Serge Jolimeau, sells his wares at a market in Santa Fe, New Mexico, every year. Jolimeau makes hand-cut metal wall art featuring fish, flowers, and Haitian women walking through jungles of palm fronds, their own hair flowing like vines. The last survey done by the Artisan Business Network showed that the Croix-des-Bouquets community had collective sales of more than $2 million a year.

It’s exciting to see people around the world really appreciate the artistry of Haiti, but it’s not enough. The artisans in Croix-des-Bouquets, for the most part, live pretty humble lives. Most people have their own homes, usually cement block structures without indoor plumbing. Life here is easier than in some of the rural parts of Haiti, where a family might live in a mud dugout, but people are still constantly hustling to pay for things most of us take for granted—like water. Everyone has to buy water in Haiti. Some areas have city water, but it only comes on once or twice a week. In rural areas and villages like Croix-des-Bouquets, they don’t even have that. Several companies sell water, driving around with water trucks. You fill your tank at home or you can buy it for about one dollar a bucket. Most artisans buy it by the bucket to supplement cisterns they’ve set up to catch rain. Families need several buckets of water a day.

Since the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund closed down in 2015, the ABN has been searching for ways to stay afloat. The grant from the Inter-American Development Bank helped, as did one from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. But when I visited, the IADB grant was coming to an end, and despite the success of a handful of artisans, the vast majority didn’t have the sales connections yet to survive on their own. Getting grants to support artisan entrepreneurship can be tough, as many potential funders don’t see the impact as clearly as they would if they were funding hospitals or roads. With artisanship, sales numbers and jobs created and sustained are the measures of effectiveness, and these can take several years to manifest.

During our trip, we visited many workshops in small towns, rural areas, and the city. It’s hard to fathom the level of devastation caused by the earthquake and the ongoing poverty of the country. But Haiti also has an unbelievable artisan tradition, amazingly resilient people, and an entrepreneurial spirit that I found truly inspiring. The country is one of the top handicraft producers in the Caribbean, even wholesaling products to other islands.

There are a lot of explanations for why Haiti has such a thriving creative culture. Tancrede said she thinks that the Haitians’ mixed African and European ancestry has created an exciting blend of cultural traditions that leads to inventiveness. I think the national ethos of creativity and entrepreneurship has built on itself and continues to generate its own momentum. And a lack of traditional resources can encourage people to find new ways to use old things; scarcity can be a driver of creativity.

Or maybe it’s the land itself. Even the original inhabitants were creative. Christopher Columbus was apparently impressed by the woodwork and weaving of the Arawak on the island. He brought back some of their work, and it “stimulated the first real interest in anthropology in Europe,” according to Eleanor Ingalls Christensen, author of The Art of Haiti. I definitely found myself caught up in the creative fervor and inspired by the feeling that you can make something unique out of just about anything.

For the last two nights of our trip, we moved to a beautiful hotel called Hotel Montana, made up of a series of small buildings scattered across a hillside high above the city. We could see the entire city laid out beyond the patio, and the clouds topping the mountains in the distance. The rooms were simple but cheery—painted bright orange and yellow, and outfitted with lovely fabrics made on the island.

Hotel Montana is known for its panoramic views, and for having been totally flattened in the earthquake. Before the earthquake, it had been a popular place for international visitors. (Brad Pitt was one of the hotel’s celeb guests.) The quake destroyed the hotel, killing fifty-two people on-site. The owner was buried under the hotel during the earthquake and trapped there for a few days. The story goes that when rescuers finally unburied her, she stood up, brushed herself off, and said, “What took you so long?” Then she got right to work rebuilding her hotel.

To me, this story reflects the spirit of the country. There’s this feeling of “All right. Dust yourself off. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Let’s keep moving.” That energy and perseverance symbolizes Haiti to me. Everywhere I went on that trip, the artisans were working—and talking and joking around with each other—their hands moving nonstop as they created objects of real worth from materials of limited face value. I didn’t meet one cranky artisan in Haiti. I wanted to sell enough products in the United States to be part of the effort to help these hardworking people dust themselves off and keep moving.

INVESTING IN ARTISANS

There are a lot of ways you can make a difference in the lives of artisans, even beyond your own purchasing power. Here are a few ideas.

Get in on the Ground: Want to work at or create an artisan cooperative in Haiti or another part of the world? You can start by volunteering with a reputable group in a location that interests you. Write to the cooperative leader about your interests and skills. The group might need photography, marketing, packaging, manufacturing processes, computer programming, teaching (English, computer skills, financial literacy), mental and physical health care, or childcare. Artisan groups offering social services almost always need help, even if it’s just for the short term. Some offer a stipend. Volunteering will help you decide if and where to commit full-time and how to start a cooperative yourself. It also helps you more effectively represent the work of the artisans to American buyers.

Host a House Party: Traveling to a country with a rich handicraft tradition? Leave room in your suitcase for artisan creations. Back home, rather than regale your friends with tales of your travels, invite them over for a house party and sale. Serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres and sell the fifty bracelets (or earrings or scarves) you bought abroad.

Take It Online: Go one step further and set up an inexpensive online store through Shopify or Etsy. Snap photos of your finds, include the story of their origin, and voilà! Instant store! While traveling, tell the cooperative that this is a one-time purchase so the artisans know what to expect. If you decide to continue, communicate your buying strategy (one purchase for the whole year or more frequent installments) to enable the artisans to plan.

WILL BUYERS AT MACY’S BITE?

At the Macy’s trunk show in November, six months after that buying trip to Haiti, the store finally closed at ten p.m. I stayed for a couple more hours, packing up unsold items and displays. Many employees were around, and everyone was exhausted from the holiday hours. I was exhausted, too, but also full of adrenaline. Doing a pop-up feels like putting on a play. I’d been the director and producer, and now I was sweeping the stage and picking up dropped M&M’s. I was also wheeling the unsold goods downstairs on a dolly to load back into my car. I felt like we’d done what we’d come to do. We’d generated buzz. We’d engaged shoppers. We’d even run out of some things, like the cow horn bowls and spoons from Atelier Calla and the gold leaf bracelets I’d designed in Croix-des-Bouquets.

I drove back to Harlem, where I collapsed on the couch in front of the TV with my friend LeAnne and watched a holiday movie. I was physically tired, but also elated. We’d shown that there was a serious demand for our goods, and it was Christmas in New York.

A week or so later, I got a call from Macy’s. Our sale was a success. They wanted to place an order for spring, a selection of items from various artisan cooperatives we’d shown, including the gold leaf bracelets, spoons and papier-mâché ornaments from Haiti, bags and beads from Uganda, and more. It was an order for thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry and home goods. They would be priced, tagged, and displayed at Herald Square that spring.

I was so excited that I actually spun myself around in my office chair. Then I immediately called Nathalie Tancrede in Haiti to share the news. She picked up the phone, and when I told her, we both just started giggling. It was such a feeling of wonder to land this order—like we’d pulled off something huge and beaten the odds.

And it mattered: The order would help provide a few months’ worth of employment for about a hundred people in Haiti. Because one person’s livelihood affects many others, those employed artisans would further support about five hundred more. The order could do so many different things for various artisans. It could pay for drinking water for one artisan family for a month, and employ the guy who drives the water truck. It could be used to buy food from a local vendor, and pay the school entrance and exam fees for the artisans’ children. (A hundred dollars covers school and exam fees for two children for a year.) It could also pay the guy who buffs the kids’ school shoes and the taxi driver who takes them to school. (There aren’t school buses, and many of the artisans don’t have cars.) The order could pay for much-needed medical supplies for some, or help cover the cost of a generator for a small business. Businesses and artisan co-ops need portable generators in places where there isn’t electricity, or even where there is because the island’s spotty electric grid can cause constant production delays.

The Macy’s order is part of what I believe to be a changing tide in Haiti—or can be, if we focus on sustainability and increasing product lines. There’s been growth in the artisan sector since the earthquake, largely due to the work of the ABN and other collaborations between international designers and Haitian artists. But the same folks who bought in 2011 need to keep buying today. We can help by sharing information about the artistry and spirit of our close neighbors and by buying their goods.

As I hung up with Tancrede, I thought about who I wanted to tell next. I now had a place to send my friends from business school who often asked where they could see To the Market products in person—Macy’s. The collection would be in the store by March. I picked up the phone once again, with Mother’s Day presents in mind. I was excited to share the news of a new way to give gifts that give back.

SOCIAL IMPACT GIFTS FOR EVERY OCCASION

Even if you don’t have a designated gift budget, you probably spend more money on presents than you realize. More than a quarter of Americans spend eighty dollars or more on a birthday present for their significant other. Most of us also buy presents for parents, children, siblings, friends, and co-workers. Here are a few ways to choose gifts that give back.

• Baby Gifts: Sari Bari, which employs female human trafficking survivors, has some of the cutest block-print baby blankets I’ve seen—as a gift, they celebrate new life for the baby and for the woman who made the blanket. You can order online at To the Market. Or check out Baby Teresa, an Australian company named after Mother Teresa that sells classic-looking fair trade onesies, bibs, hats, and blankets made from 100 percent organic cotton, and donates one-quarter of profits to groups that empower women from pregnancy to parenthood.

• Father’s Day: Two of my favorite go-to gifts for guys are socks and ties. The sock company Conscious Step creates stylish, organic cotton socks that support different causes, matching appropriate styles to specific donations. I particularly like the men’s tidal-wave-pattern socks that include a donation to the nonprofit Oceana, which protects oceans. I got my father a set of six socks, with proceeds going to causes he cares about, including ending hunger and planting trees. Tie company Reddendi sells handcrafted silk ties (and pocket squares and cuff links) with lovely, understated designs. Reddendi has partnered with the Africa Educational Trust, and one tie pays for one year of school for a child in South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, or Kenya. Reddendi has similar educational partnerships in Syria, India, and Peru. Neck & Tie Company’s fashion-forward casual and wedding ties (that could go head-to-head with Hermès) support one specific person or family at a time. (Check online to read individual stories.)

• Mother’s Day: In case you can’t get to Macy’s Herald Square to check out To the Market goods, log on to Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit started by one of my heroes, Christy Turlington Burns. Every Mother Counts is committed to making childbirth safe for mothers around the world. The charity partners with popular brands to put together a new collection of great gifts each Mother’s Day that help support the cause.

• Wedding Presents: Heartful.ly—a company started by my friend Kate—allows couples to create a registry filled with charitable projects, like sending a girl to school in India or supporting foster children in the United States. Now you can also create a birthday registry on this site.

• Birthdays, Valentine’s Day, and Everything Else: If you know what he or she or you like but don’t know how that present helps the planet, check out DoneGood.co, a start-up that makes it easier than ever to put your dollars to work for a better world. Install the DoneGood Google Chrome browser extension on your desktop, browse Amazon, Google, or any big-name retailer for your object of desire, and DoneGood will show a socially responsible, planet-friendly alternative.