Bambootique offers unique fair-trade products

Many of the items are also created from products that promote sustainability

The Times, Nov 30, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

TUALATIN – On Dec. 26, 2004, sisters Salbiah and Ratina lost everything – their home, their livelihoods and their 10-year-old brother. They were out of town the day the deadly tsunami swept their hometown of Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing more than half the city’s residents and taking the lives of more than 200,000 people throughout South Asia.

Today the two are trying to rebuild their lives by sewing women’s handbags and selling them through a non-profit cooperative. Now Oregonians can purchase those handbags from a Tualatin-based business that imports fair-trade women’s accessories, from developing countries throughout the world.

Bambootique is co-owned by Beth Sethi of Tualatin and Tammy Teske of Portland, who met while working for Tigard-based Northwest Medical Teams. As a disaster response officer, Teske spent considerable time in Africa and Indonesia. Sethi’s position as Latin America program manager took her to Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador. When finished with their duties providing disaster relief, each found time to seek out locally made handicrafts.

“When we returned to Portland, we’d wear this beautiful handmade jewelry and accessories and people would ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ over them, but there was no place they could buy them here,” said Sethi.

That’s when the two came up with an idea – start a business that imports high-quality women’s accessories and also benefits the women who created them. Bambootique currently operates out of Sethi’s Tualatin home, and she recently left her position at Northwest Medical Teams to concentrate on the business full-time. The company’s mission is to bring hope to vulnerable women worldwide through fair wages and preservation of their cultural heritage.

In order to make it into Bambootique’s inventory, products must meet guidelines established by the Fair Trade Federation. These include buying from vendors or cooperatives that pay a fair wage, provide healthy and safe working conditions, engage in environmentally sustainable practices and provide equal employment opportunities for all, including the most disadvantaged. The goal of fair trade is to benefit the people producing the goods by reducing the number of middlemen, minimizing overhead costs, and returning up to 40 percent of the retail price to the producer.

“In addition to selecting goods that are fairly traded, we try to buy products that help preserve the artisans’ cultural heritage,” said Sethi. “Creating a market for these locally made handicrafts gives people an economic reason to carry on a craft that has been practiced by their culture for centuries.”

For example, Bambootique sells candles from Guatemala made from a wax-like substance found in seeds from the Arrayan tree, one of the primary trees of the rainforest.

“In Guatemala, almost all of the original rainforest has been deforested to make way for agricultural land. Production of these candles provides income for indigenous people and gives them an incentive to preserve the forests rather than cut them down,” Sethi said.

From Thailand, Bambootique imports handmade paper, note cards and gift bags created from the bark of the mulberry tree. Shoots of the tree are harvested, leaving the parent tree intact, making it a sustainable process. These and other products created by women in rural northern Thailand boost the economy in areas that have been largely bypassed by the economic boom experienced in the more developed cities.

Bambootique also is committed to educating its customers about the issues facing developing countries. Accompanying displays at fairs and bazaars will be signs and take-away flyers that give customers background information on the artisans who created the products and how each purchase makes a difference in the life and culture of the producer.

“There are a number of large, nation-wide import stores that sell handicrafts, but just because something is handmade it doesn’t mean it’s fairly traded. It could have been made in a sweat shop,” Sethi said. “By buying direct from the cooperatives, we offer our customers unique, boutique-quality accessories at reasonable prices.”