Young lives, embellished
Aspire Accessories makes artisans out of young adults with autism
Editor’s note: “A Special World” relates programs and experiences by and for the disabled community in Greater Houston.
Inside a nondescript suite of offices just off West Sam Houston Parkway, magic is being made.
A team of budding artisans is mastering tools of the trade: a hydraulic press, Kwikprint heat embosser, laser engraver, sewing machines and other equipment. Into these go raw materials — leather, canvas, acrylic trays, wine glasses and more — and out come finely crafted jewelry and all sorts of freshly embellished bags, keychains, coasters and other items, many of which can be personalized as gifts.
Remarkable work, for sure. But what makes it magical is that the young adults producing it have autism or similar special needs.
Welcome to Aspire Accessories, which looks to give this population transferrable business skills by teaching light manufacturing, retail and customer service. I recently stopped by the open house celebrating the program’s first anniversary.
“I know all the prices,” Griffin Matthews, 23, tells me with the confidence of an artisan two years on the job. He points out luggage tags for $16 on up to a “bird bag,” a canvas hunter’s bag, for $110. He also touts four scented varieties of Man Salt, a bath soak for men that was born, he says, when
a guy “kept using his wife’s, and he got in trouble.” Aspire Accessories mixes, weighs and packs the bath salts, which are sold on Amazon.
As those with autism finish school, their families often struggle with their limited employment options. Aspire Accessories attempts to answer the “Now what?,” creative director Denise Hazen tells me.
Hazen found herself asking that question a few years ago about her son, Nick. She helped him channel his strong hand-eye coordination into making leather bracelets, which were sold via Social Motion Skills, a nonprofit offering autism-related enrichment programs. Hazen started Aspire Accessories under Social Motion Skills, and now Nick, 21, and 16 other artisans hand-braid that leather “to perfection,” she says.
Intense focus makes such quality plaiting possible — all elements lying perfectly flat, perfectly spaced, perfectly tensioned. Some might find this level of detail monotonous, but it is often well fitted to autism spectrum disorder.
As Hazen shows me around, Nick seems unfazed that his workplace has been invaded for the chatty, catered affair marking the first-year milestone and showcasing his and others’ talents. He breezes through to tell his mother he’s hungry, pausing to process her reply that his father is on his way to pick him up. Taking an extra beat in the give-and-take of conversation is common among those with autism.
Hazen keeps some bestsellers stocked, but much of the inventory changes seasonally.
Now, in the midst of Father’s Day, graduation and wedding season, things are hopping. The outfit already has sold $75,000 worth of products this year and is on track to hit $200,000 by year’s end, according to Wendy Dawson, founder and executive director of Social Motion Skills. Items are sold in house and online; orders have come from coast to coast.
As the inventory has broadened, so has the scope of what the artisans, who range in age from 19 to 34, can accomplish.
Jan Quinlan, like others on staff, has a special education background. A big part of helping this group achieve goals, she says, is breaking tasks down into small chunks.
“There are a lot of steps (to accessorizing a piece),” Quinlan says. “I helped one guy learn how to tie a knot … Then we keep moving the skill level up.”
To round out their experience on the retail side, workers are learning to upload photos and write descriptions of the merchandise for the website.
For the most part, the job functions like any other. Participants are given a weeklong tryout to see if they like “artsy retail production,” as Dawson describes it with a chuckle. They work two to five shifts a week, and their paycheck is direct deposited.
The pay, however, isn’t the biggest gain.
“Before I came here, I had no friends,” says Matthews, who does “a little bit of everything” but is particularly proud to have conquered the embosser after mildly burning himself. Now he’s the one who gets everybody together to socialize after work. The Heights resident plans to start at Houston Community College in the fall.
“Just because we have autism doesn’t mean we can’t do what others do.”
And what they do is magic.