I am sitting with my
laptop under 5 layers of
blankets trying to stay warm. Huancavelica is a
town even higher up in
the Andes than Huancayo (13,000 feet) and
without heat it feels quite
chilly at night.
Since the last time I wrote we have visited
various artisan groups
living in beautiful places. A few days ago we
visited 2 groups outside of
Huancayo, La Esperanza and another whose name
is in Quechua which
I’m still trying to figure out. We have sold
several items from La
Esperanza. They are talented weavers using
a floor loom but have
not yet found the right design to use for
export products. The women are
all related somehow (something BOH and PJT try
to discourage when
working with groups because we 
prefer but that the
economic development reach
the wider community, but it can become
difficult when working in small
pueblos, where in many cases most of the pueblo
is related) and all know
how to spin their own wool, dye their fabric,
and set up and use their
loom. We worked on several different designs
that I think could become
strong sellers.
We also visited another group in
a pueblo called Copca
that is about 15 miles outside of Huancayo.
They are a new group and
still struggling to come up with designs. I
really enjoyed this group and
hope that they are able to develop some
products for export. They 
can mainly knit and they
are going to work on
slippers for children and adults. Again, I have
been racking my brains on
how to get sizing to work with these artisans.
In the market you can buy
these things called plantillas that
are outlines of the foot at
different sizes so that the producer can size
shoes/socks properly. I was
planning on getting them to help sock makers
with sizing but once I took
a look at the plantillas at this group
had, quickly realized that
buying plantillas would not be
enough…the largest size is a
40 which is about a women’s 8 ˝!!! Needless to
say,
plantillas will not solve my sizing
problem with foot
accessory makers!!!!
Wednesday we had a
beautiful trip from
Huancayo to Huancavelica on dirt roads that
wind precariously around the
mountains. The dominating occupation seems to
be herding alpacas and
sheep, and farming. We went a bit out of our
way to visit Huayanay (to
the right), the name of a town and also the
weaver group who make cotton
blankets, shawls,
ruanas, and scarves. They learned how to
weave a few decades
back from a Swiss family who lived in the area.
With the violence of the
Years of Terrorism, the family left in the
80’s. The problem for the
weavers was that this Swiss family only taught
them how to weave and
did not show them where to buy materials or how
to access the market.
So the weavers’ looms grew dusty until BOH came
along about 8 years
ago. BOH suggested the group move from using
wool to using cotton and
worked on fine tuning the weavers’ skills until
they 
eventually came up with
the exceptional products
they make today. Now the weavers know how to
purchase their own
materials and have a growing clientele. The
town is located in a stunning
location high up in the mountains and feels so
far from anything else.
Electricity first arrived to the tiny town
(about 100 people) three years
ago and the town is working with government on
getting internet to the
one computer (that belongs to the Huayanay
weavers) in town…
interestingly enough, they still do not have a
phone in the town.
I would love for Huayanay to begin using
organic cotton for their
products. I visited the cotton seller, Inca
Tops, in Lima the other week
and what I learned was quite disappointing. The
rep we talked to said
that not much organic cotton has been produced
in the past few years in
Peru so 1) it’s near impossible to find, and 2)
it’s very expensive. But he
said that the demand has increased and farmers
will be planting much
more organic cotton in the coming years. So I
am going to revisit this
next year.
Since arriving Wednesday, we have dedicated
a lot of time working
with the group El Mercurio here in
Huancavelica. El Mercurio formed
about 5 years ago and they have grown from a
handful of women to over
35. One could look at their growth as success
but after talking with them,
it may seem that they have expanded a bit
prematurely as they discuss
lack of work and income as a problem.
The group mainly knits finger
puppets and stuffed llamas
so it is work that they can technically do
at home. It is very
hard to figure out how much time an artisan
actually spends working on
making one single product if they work from
home because they stop
frequently to cook, look after their children,
etc. To help us figure out
what a good should cost, I have developed a
formula (you can see it here if you´re interested...I haven´t
had time to ranslate it to
English yet) that includes the cost of
materials, labor, and other
miscellaneous costs like taxes, rent, and a 10%
investment toward the
artisan group. Calculating the cost of
materials for 1 puppet took some
work because they buy their materials in bulk
but we managed to get
through that part relatively smoothly. After a
long and somewhat heated
discussion about how long it takes to make a
single finger puppet (with us
repeatedly emphasizing that we meant only the
actual time to make the
product – not including their breaks to do
other things), the artisans
finally agreed that it takes at least 2 hours.
Wow – if it takes them 2
hours to make a single puppet then they surely
are not receiving a fair
price. So in the afternoon we decided to
investigate further how long it
really takes to make one finger puppet. Each
woman was assigned a
different finger puppet to make and everyone
started at the same time.
We kept track of time and the average time it
took to make a puppet
ended up only being 1 hour.
Quick note: pricing with crafts is very
difficult. With Fair Trade
commodities like coffee, chocolate, etc it is a
lot easier, because across
the world the way that people harvest and
arrive to the final product
varies little. But in crafts, each product that
is produced is so different
and the materials differ so much that it’s much
harder to calculate what a
fair price is. Plus, with commodities, to do
the work you don’t have a
choice but to be on the farm, in Fair Trade,
some of the artisans
(especially the women) like it because they can
make a living while
taking care of their family at the same time so
this makes it difficult to
calculate the real time it takes to produce a
product.
El Mercurio wants to make
more money but they
are not working in the most efficient way. This
group has expressed their
desire to become a registered business (which
in Peru costs several
hundred dollars and from what I understand,
would not give them any
real advantage) but at the same time it is hard
for them to dedicate the
time to working as a real business person does
with set hours…all but one
are mothers and most have over-protective
husbands who do not like
them to be out of the house for very long. We
talked about how they
could work together as a team and specialize in
one area of the puppet –
some knitting the bodies, other stuffing the
heads, others putting the final
touches on - to make their work even more
effective.
While we want our
artisans to work comfortably
and happily, we also realize that the prices of
our products have to be
competitive in the market and we need the
artisans to be producing in
the most effective way possible. In large part
competing with products
that are made in factories where millions are
churned out by the hour
and workers are paid next to nothing. (I have
read that in conventional
trade, the price that we see on the shelf is
can be 100 times that of what
the producer makes.) Luckily, PJT’s retail
price is only 2 ˝ times what we
pay BOH for the products so that gives us a bit
more wiggle room.
El Mercurio also wanted to know why we had
to raise the price of
their products. So I explained how BOH
increases the price by 20% to
pay for Peruvian customs, tags, employees to
deal with foreign clients,
etc and how PJT needs to increase the price 2.5
to cover our own
expenses and explained what those are. It was
really neat to see how the
artisans immediately understood why we needed
to increase the price
and underscores why transparency is such an
important and wonderful
aspect of Fair Trade…there are no secrets in
the supply chain.
