Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Cuddly SA toys hit big time in NY
Local company’s products on Fifth Avenue, writes Carly Helfand
ALMOST any company would jump at the chance to have its products on display at Barneys New York, a premier Fifth Avenue department store specialising in luxury goods and frequented by celebrities and the social elite.
But for Taunina, a Woodstockbased atelier that has sold its hand-crafted, heirloom-quality stuffed animals through its website to customers in Africa, the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the decision to sell through a thirdparty retailer was carefully made.
Taunina, established in 2011 by chief executive Tracey ChiappiniYoung and Karen Jansen, employs underprivileged women to create unique pieces, using intricate embroidery and appliqué techniques.
Its teddy bears and bunny rabbits – each of which take about five days for an artist to complete – come with a passport and certificate that allow their owners to log on to Taunina’s website to track the social impact on the artists’ families and their lives.
“There’s a strong education and bond aspect to it because people are realising someone else’s dreams, and also realising their own dreams of making a difference,” Chiappini-Young says.
Barneys, which will feature Taunina’s collectables in its March 2013 Easter display, has been “very, very enthusiastic and supportive”. The company has agreed to educate buyers about each piece’s history, and encourage them to log on, creating a connection between two families.
“It’s about a personal narrative and the individuals involved,” Chiappini-Young says.
“It’s not about a consumable product that people are disengaged with. I don’t just want to push volume into the market. I want people to tell the story.”
The story of Taunina began with the partnership between its co-founders, who met while studying business in New York. Neither the South African Chiappini-Young nor Brazilian-American Jansen were strangers to the struggles of poverty in their countries, and they shared the desire to build a business that was about empowerment and skills development, rather than just donating money.
The luxury goods market provided the perfect outlet for the pair’s ambitions. People are becoming more aware of philanthropy, and wanting to make a difference, increasingly “wanting the association with money to have a strong association with doing good”, Chiappini-Young says.
“For me, that’s a massive opportunity in emerging markets where you’ve got this incredible wealth of skills and incredible wealth of talent – to nurture it appropriately and build a sustainable business around it whereby the owners in the business are the people who have been disempowered,” she adds.
Taunina’s 12 artists hail from countries including Malawi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe, and many of them learnt to sew or embroider when they were young.
As employees of Taunina, they receive 30 percent of before-tax profits, some of which is channelled to provide for housing, education and quality health care.
The Taunina studio features long communal tables where artists sit together, learn from one another and share ideas.
For seamstress Juliet Wilson Mutasa, who, like many of her colleagues, was never trained in embroidery, it’s an opportunity to learn and develop a new skill.
“We have to go to everyone so that everyone can teach us different stitches,” she explains.
The artists are also primarily responsible for generating the designs they use, a process that artist Gisele Saidi says gets easier the more you do.
“It’s fun working here because we are a lot of people, and this one has got her own way of doing it that one has her own way,” Mutasa says. “If we combine, it’s just going to be something that’s nice and pretty. It’s a new inspiration every day.”
Artist Mercy Choguya adds: “I like working as a team. It helps us to grow and get ideas from each other.”
To foster a spirit of support and collaboration, Taunina also writes its values into each employee’s contract, and gives out awards to recognise exemplary conduct and boost self-esteem.
Chiappini-Young says that watching the transformation in Taunina’s artists, who came from jobs such as bookkeeping, working in restaurants and being housewives, has been “unbelievable”.
“For everyone here, they see the opportunity and it’s reflected in the calibre of work that they produce.
“Every time, each development is better and better, so people drive themselves.
“It’s about saying to people: ‘It’s not my business, it’s not Karen’s business. This is our business and you’re building it together.’ ”
The upcoming months will be busy for Taunina, which will display in the UK’s Selfridges this spring in addition to Barneys, launch a home decor collection and open its first brick and mortar store.
But even as the company grows, Chiappini-Young says, Taunina will make sure not to endanger the intimate studio experience.
Each artist who joins Taunina will also be trained by one of its founding artists to preserve the “family spirit”.
“We’ve been approached through third party retailers all over the world. “For me it becomes quite egodriven to just become big quickly, but that’s not what it’s about. We don’t want to be big – we want to transform lives,” she says.