[Dialogue] An Article of Interest

[Janice Ulangca]

Thanks, Judy.  I did check out the website, and bought something for the 50th wedding anniversary celebration of good friends.  Abe & I were close to Richard & Jan Deats in the Philippines when they were both teaching at Union Theological Seminary.  Richard just retired as Communications Director for the U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation, and Richard & Jan's daughter converted to orthodox Judaism and lives with her family in Israel.  FOR has had many peace mission efforts in Palestine/Israel, and so for a special gift for the Deats' the Jerusalem Candle of Hope, made by both Palestinian and Israeli women, is perfect.  Pricey for a candle, of course, but the amount goes for much more.  I admire the persistence and care of Amber Chand.
Janice Ulangca
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jack Gilles 
  To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 17, 2006 8:29 PM
  Subject: [Dialogue] An Article of Interest


  Dear Friends,

  A colleague of ours in India, Marguerite Theophil, sent me the following 
  article.  It is something that will interest all of you.  Be sure and check 
  out the website listed at the end.  Marguerite is active in women's work 
  here in India and keeps in touch with the worldwide network of women 
  activits.  Her email address is: <weave at vsnl.net>.  Enjoy,

  Judy Gilles

  Amber Chand: an Executive Profile - Indus Business Journal, Boston

  Naomi Grossman

  November 06, 2005


  WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  -  Amber Chand knows something of what it's like to be 
  despondent. Last January, the company she helped found in 1999, Eziba Inc., 
  a retailer of handcrafts made by artisans from all over the world that had 
  raised $40 million in venture financing, ran out of funds and had to close 
  down.

  A few months later, the co-founder of Eziba and Chand's brother in law, Dick 
  Sabot, died suddenly of a massive heart attack.

  "There were many nights of sheer devastation," said Chand, who is 55. "I sat 
  by myself and asked, what do I do next?"

  In her darkest moment, recounts Chand, she recalled a toothless, 
  impoverished Bolivian woman, a weaver Chand had met in her travels to find 
  products for Eziba. As Chand was leaving the 54-year old woman, she stopped 
  her. "Please do not forget us," Chand said she was told. "The look of 
  yearning in her eyes stayed with me. I kept seeing them."

  Chand remembered all too well the horror-filled worlds in which many of the 
  women she met, while searching the world for crafts to sell, lived and it 
  was that knowledge that got her to get up and start again. Now, she is 
  officially launching her latest venture, the Amber Chand Collection, an 
  online catalog that promotes handmade objects made by women in regions of 
  conflict and post-conflict.

  "It was the call of women artisans from around the globe that got me to do 
  this again," said Chand. "This is my personal commitment. I'm not hiding 
  behind a company. This is my collection."

  Chand's other vivid memory is that Eziba's most successful product was the 
  Rwandan Peace Basket, a naturally-dyed, fiber-woven basket that was made by 
  both Hutu and Tutsi women. After the Eziba catalog focused on women in a 
  conflict area and included stories of many of the women artisans from 
  Rwanda, the women's fashion magazine, Marie Claire, picked up on the story 
  and published Chand's journals of her journey to Rwanda to meet these women. 
  Within a year, the baskets were sold out  there had been 6,000 of them at 
  $55 each.

  "The stories of the women were so compelling," said Chand.

  Chand was so inspired by the success of the peace basket, and by the ability 
  of her business to help these women that her next stop was Israel where she 
  conceived of the Jerusalem Candle of Hope. The product, a hurricane wax 
  candle crafted by Israeli women living near Nazareth, which contains an 
  embroidered bag stitched by Palestinian women living in Bethlehem, was 
  launched in November 2004, but within two months Eziba was forced to shut 
  its doors.

  The candle will be the Chand Collection's first product but this time, Chand 
  is taking no chances. Eziba, she said, was an early spawn of the heady 
  dot-com era, when connecting people from all over the globe was still a 
  novel idea. At its height, the catalog had 200 products, 200,000 customers 
  and $8 million in annual revenues. Amazon was one of its major investors and 
  the company was eventually able to secure $40 million in financing, all of 
  which, said Chand, it needed, especially because people were still using the 
  more expensive print catalog to buy the products.

  "The real success of Eziba was that it took handcrafts that had shoddy 
  reputations from all over the world and it reframed and rebranded them to 
  show that they were stylish and sophisticated and chic," said Chand.

  But, according to Chand, the company grew too quickly and needed more 
  funding to sustain its growth. To compound that, in 2004, she said that one 
  of the company's lead investors transferred its credit line, which had been 
  set up to enable the company to purchase products for the holiday season to 
  equity in the company, translating into a $7 million loss of funds. The nail 
  in the coffin was the Fall 2004 catalog which was mailed to the wrong 
  mailing list.

  By January 2005, the company had to close and that spring it was acquired by 
  Overstock.com.

  "I'm sowing the seeds now that were already sowed through Eziba," said 
  Chand. "But the structure of Eziba couldn't sustain that mission."

  For Chand that means that she is no longer focused on fast growth and high 
  profits, what she calls the "testosterone" approach to business. "This is my 
  life work," she said. "I'm using a business as a model but it's my mission, 
  my calling." Still, Chand said she deliberately made the Collection a 
  for-profit business. "The intent is to support the producers on the ground," 
  she said. "In order to exist it needs to be sustainable."

  Chand's initial funding for the venture is a modest $100,000 from a group of 
  women investors. "I was looking for women who were supporting the company 
  because they believe in the mission," she said.

  Slow and careful growth are Chand's buzzwords now, along with a laser beam 
  focus on her mission. The warehouse she found in Agawam, Mass., to house the 
  products employs developmentally disabled adults. It felt right, she said, 
  that "the Jerusalem candles would be packed by them."

  For Chand perhaps the most significant part of the venture lies in the fact 
  that for every candle sold â?" retailing at $32 each, 30 percent goes back 
  to the women making the product with another five percent going to support 
  The Parents Circle Families Forum, an organization that supports Israeli and 
  Palestinian families, who have all lost close relatives to the violence in 
  the Middle East.

  Chand prefers to put it another way. "Ten embroidered bags feed a 
  Palestinian family of four for a day," she said.

  Chand is aware of the volatile nature of the region's politics; she had 
  initially conceived of a candle on a coaster but didn't want the Israeli 
  product to be sitting on the Palestinian's. She deliberately called the 
  candle one of hope and not of peace, reflecting the region's political 
  reality. She also made sure to ask the women, both the Palestinian and the 
  Israeli whether they were okay working with one another. They all were.

  Chand anticipates selling 2,000 candles over the next two months. Marketing 
  will involve e-mail broadcasts, public appearances and ads.

  Eventually, Chand would like to see 12 products in her collection, all of 
  which will be sold exclusively online. Currently, plans include products 
  made by women in Darfur, in Indonesia and in New Orleans. As part of Chand's 
  approach, which involves visiting with each group of women to discuss the 
  project, Chand will write about her journeys and about the stories of the 
  women artisans in the Internet catalog and on her own blog. "A woman in 
  Omaha, Nebraska can connect with women in a Sudanese refugee camp," she 
  said. "The goal is to support and empower women."

  It is the women, said Chand, who educate the children and strengthen the 
  communities. In addition to her travels, Chand's knowledge of the world was 
  formed as someone born to Indian parents in Uganda who were forced to leave 
  the country because of political turmoil in 1973. Her family went to England 
  but Chand came to the United States to study anthropology at the University 
  of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

  In 1986, Chand was directing the museum shop at the Williams College Museum 
  of Art in Massachusetts. Thirteen years later, she felt she had enough 
  connections with artisans around the world to go out on her own.

  And now, she's ready all over again.

  "This story is a story of hope when life comes and knocks you down,  if your 
  company closes or there is a hurricane," she said. "It's been a very humble 
  journey [but] I'm grateful in the end that this happened.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>                          CHECK OUT: 
  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>http://www.amberchand.com/






------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  Dialogue mailing list
  Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
  http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060517/af30c383/attachment.htm