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 (1 Reader comment)

Jonathan House / The Times

BAMBOOTIQUE CHIC — Tammy Teske (left) and Beth Sethi hold some of the handmade handbags they sell.

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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.

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