Modern African Style: Swahili Imports

 

Leslie Mittelberg founded Swahili Imports in June 1995 in Eugene, Oregon, long before the terms “green” and “fair trade” became common parlance.

During the years she lived in Nairobi, Kenya, Leslie became entranced with the city’s bustling and vibrant market filled with handmade goods. Upon her return to the U.S., she quickly learned that there was no shortage of African market crafts in the U.S. wholesale market, but the designs looked the same and did not represent the creativity and variety she had seen first-hand.

Leslie returned to Kenya that year and tracked down the original creators of the products she admired. Believing strongly that African artisans could not only provide functional and stylish objects for mass distribution, but also engage in sound financial, ecological and social exchange with U.S. buyers, Leslie returned to Oregon with a line of African gifts and home decor that had never been seen before.



Leslie called her company Swahili Imports—after the people of the East African coast—whose warm, community-minded nature and amazing skill inspired her vision. Today, Swahili’s African network includes individual artisans, export agents and micro-enterprises in the nations of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Sudan. Retail stores, museums, educational institutions, catalog companies and individuals around the globe now sell Swahili Imports products, and the company’s offerings have been included in InStyle, Vogue Living, Shape, Real Simple, The New York Times, Canadian House & Home and Home & Décor Singapore magazines.

Accountability
Swahili Imports is a member of the Fair Trade Federation, a group of like-minded companies and organizations that pledge to:
• provide fair payment to workers in developing nations
• educate artisans and workers to increase their potential for advancement
• develop products and processes that protect and conserve the natural environment
• promote fair trade as the standard in commercial exchanges

Swahili Imports also works in partnership with Shared Interest, a UK-based fair trade financial cooperative that is currently the world’s only 100% fair trade lender. Share Interest advances funds directly to artisans based on submitted purchase orders from Swahili Imports. The partnership allows Swahili Imports to leverage high-volume orders in multiple nations and provides another level of fair trade accountability for company operations.

Orders provide many African artisans with a vital supplemental income. Even with a small staff, Swahili Imports maintains accountability with artisans by communicating day-to-day by email and text, and by visiting groups in person at least once yearly. This allows the company to confirm that payments are being received and properly allocated to individual artisans, discuss solutions with artisans and develop and implement new designs.

The producers across Africa that work with Swahili Imports value their natural environment and employ sustainable methods of production. Artisans are required to abide by local and export regulations governing the legal harvest of hardwoods to ensure compliance with U.S. import standards and to uphold proper management of their local forest resources. Artisans are encouraged to utilize materials fully by converting scraps into marketable products, and to employ recycled, reclaimed and highly renewable materials in product designs. Swahili Imports also promotes production processes that are healthy and comfortable for artisans.

Benevolence
To further promote health and prosperity of African communities, Swahili Imports donates a portion of profits to three transformational non-profits working directly in Africa:

The Makindu Children's Program, established by Winnie Barron in Brownsville, Oregon, cares for over 400 orphans in Makindu, Kenya, through a highly effective community placement program. Older women with no other way to earn an income are paid to take orphans into their home, and the program augments that care with daily meals, showers, health care and school lessons.

Caravan to Class is a non-profit organization founded in 2010 to rebuild a school in the village of Tedeini, outside of Timbuktu, Mali. Immediate success in Tedeini has allowed Caravan to class to expand its efforts to build a permanent and thriving educational infrastructure in all the villages surrounding Timbuktu, with outreach particularly focused on increasing literacy among the under-served nomadic Tuareg.

Friends of Kenya Schools and Wildlife was established in 2002, when Director Gwen Meyer and her husband John Neumeister spent three weeks in Kenya. The organization grew out of a desire to help address the poverty and inequity they saw during that first visit. FKSW projects focused on education, specifically the construction of nursery schools, support for teacher salaries, school supplies, school lunch programs and scholarships for students to attend primary school.

Selling African Products Online
In 2005, Swahili Imports redesigned its wholesale and retail websites, with the intention of providing easier access year-round to Swahili products than a printed catalog allowed. The company had previously relied fully on gift shows for direct marketing and sales, but realized that a growing number of buyers were embracing online purchasing.

Utilizing Mighty Merchant software, Swahili Imports online catalogs have now become the main channel for incoming orders and new customers. With the invaluable assistance and guidance of Dive in Designs, the company that originally built the sites, and now HEROweb, following a recent merger, Swahili Imports works hard to create an easy, efficient and enjoyable online shopping experience for both busy professional buyers and individual African craft enthusiasts.

Future Growth
Swahili Imports remains dedicated to the potential for even greater exchange between African artisans and global consumers. With so many talented artisans already earning income from Swahili Imports orders, the company faces the challenge to bring greater exposure to current artisans' work while further enriching the network with new faces and products.

Swahili Imports is dedicated to African artisans, as their skill, determination and sharing spirit form the backbone of the company's operations. Envisioning a day when the channel between Africa and America opens wide enough to bring greater prosperity to hard working African artisans and greater appreciation of African craftsmanship to all Americans, Leslie and her team continue to scour Africa from her back roads to her high rises, looking for more amazing handcrafted products.