Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Melissa Sevy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.
I consider myself an “accidental entrepreneur.” Over a decade ago, I spent a few months living in a small town in Uganda. One project I worked on involved teaching disease prevention through hand-washing with soap to groups throughout the surrounding villages. After several sessions, I came to learn that many of the people who attended the classes actually couldn’t afford soap. This made me realize that people didn’t need my classes, they needed jobs.
I have since spent much of the last decade living and working in communities in Uganda, Rwanda, Nepal, India, and Palestine and have seen the plight of brilliant artisans across the global south who find it nearly impossible to access the global market. I developed Ethik as a platform to connect these talented crafters to conscious consumers with the driving philosophy that when people have access to fair pay and consistent work, they and their families can thrive.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Initially, myself and two colleagues started a non-profit to provide employment opportunities for many of the Ugandan women we had come to know throughout that first summer living there. We set up a structure to train women in crafting jewelry that we would sell in the US, sending the funds back to support these women and their children. Turns out, running a non-profit can be very non-profitable, and we scraped along for several years. It was my side hustle for the first couple of years, and eventually became my main gig. I would spend several months at a time in Uganda, and then come home to a smorgasbord of side hustles– including running dogs, teaching dance lessons, selling my plasma, and weaseling my way into a couple of adjunct teaching positions at local universities—all to pay the bills and save up for my next trip.
The breaking point came about 7 years in, when I was still struggling financially and felt completely burnt out. It was either shut the organization down and get a “real” job, or make a huge shift to our structure. Almost on a hunch, we chose the latter, changing to a for-profit structure to harness the market for social good. Having come to know the plight of artisans in our small Ugandan town, we came to see that artisans around the world faced similar challenges. In fact, artisan craft is the second largest industry employing people in the developing world, second only to agriculture. This means there are hundreds of millions of people making indigenous handcraft as their sole source of income—the vast majority being women. Across the board, the biggest issue these artisans face is access to global markets and receiving fair compensation for their work. By working at that root issue we saw a huge opportunity for impact on a global scale, and that is how Ethik began.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ethik.co/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethik__/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopethik
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethikcollective/?viewAsMember=true
Image Credits
Taken by my team, or our partner artisan groups provided to us with permission.