Abury sells luxury bags from its Berlin boutique and in fashionable shops everywhere but its success is the result of a business model designed to strengthen relationships with small communities of craftsmen all over the developing world.
VENTURES AFRICA – On a popular shopping street in Berlin, the Kastanienallee, between the neighbourhoods of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, a boutique is selling luxury bags to a discerning clientele. That comes as no surprise. For years the luxury accessory market in cosmopolitan cities such as Berlin has been booming, and Abury is now just another destination for tuned-in fashionistas. The real surprise is in the company’s unique business model, which creatively incorporates new concepts of profit-sharing and micro-lending to create beautiful objects, earn increasing profits, and form deep and lasting working relationships with communities all over the world. And in a business climate where companies are increasing looking to go local in order to set themselves apart, a little school in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains has given Abury a distinctive and lasting advantage.
Learning to Get Lost
Andrea Kolb, founder of Abury, first came to Marrakesh, Morocco in 2007. Methodical by nature, accustomed to giving presentations filled with pie charts and Venn diagrams (she founded her own communications company in 1999), she came to Morocco with a very specific plan. And as anyone who has ever come to Morocco with a plan has learnt, plans – especially specific ones – always change.
The plan was to create a workshop space close to Europe where businesses and non-profits could come to think creatively – out of the European box – about their work. Having written her university thesis on evolving strategies for sponsoring culture and art, Kolb was excited about the possibilities of getting smart people together to come up with new answers to existing questions, as well as new questions that hadn’t yet been asked. She and her partner consulted with psychologists and neurologists for advice on how to create the optimal conditions for this sort of creative thinking. The answers they got tended to emphasize one major point: their space should challenge visitors in unexpected ways but give them a “safe haven” to explore those challenges. “So we wanted to create what you could call a ‘guided insecurity’,” says Kolb. With this goal in mind, Marrakesh, with its combination of traditional medina streets and modern tourism, its mythical name, its mix of cultures, and its proximity to Europe, seemed like the perfect place to execute the plan.
Almost immediately they found a beautiful, 300-year-old riad, or courtyard house, called Anayela deep in the medina and began renovating it using traditional Moroccan techniques. Marrakesh presented plenty of challenges, especially for a young German woman overseeing a team of Moroccan men on a construction site, but then challenge had been an integral part of Kolb’s plan all along. The renovations took about a year, during which time Kolb slowly became friends with the craftsmen working in the house, principally by talking to them about their work, which she found increasingly fascinating. Carpenters, ironmongers, plasterers and tile workers – these men were capable of creating work of astonishing beauty using techniques that had long been lost in Europe. Kolb wanted to know more and was surprised to discover that the craftsmen were not nearly as impressed by their skills as she was. There was no money in this kind of work, the men told her. They were seen as mere labourers by the community. Consequently, their children had no interest in learning skills that had been passed down for generations but which were now seen as useless. Kolb was shocked, and those conversations continued to stick in her mind as she travelled back and forth from Berlin.
Anayela was soon complete. Nowadays, it hosts retreats for companies and agencies, as well as individual tourists. It also co-hosts Marrakesh’s own TEDx conference, founded by Kolb. But whether she knew it or not, those conversations about Moroccan crafts had already begun to change her plans. One day in Marrakesh, still learning to get lost, she turned down a side street and saw a beautiful handbag. A short time later, stepping off a plane in cold Berlin, Kolb carried with her that bag. And that bag would change everything.
Where the Story Started
The bag was purchased as a present for a friend, and it was a big hit. It inspired that familiar question asked by women all over the world: “Where did you get that bag?” It was a beautiful bag but even better, it had a story. It was a story of Marrakesh; of the medina, the winding streets, the ancient Moroccan crafts. Partly because of the story, everyone who saw the bag wanted one for themselves. So on Kolb’s regular trips back to Marrakesh, she began to explore the leather souks where bags like these were still made by hand.
Many of the crafts made in Marrakesh are aimed at passing tourists looking for cheap trinkets – teapots, small carpets, kaftans – to take home as souvenirs. From one shop to the next, little differs and there is a lack of character between items. Concepts of quality and design are almost irrelevant, because these objects are not produced to sit on the shelves of boutiques in Europe and elsewhere. In the past, however, individual Moroccan craftsmen, like artists, were renowned for their skills. In the heart of the medina, far off the tourist maps, Kolb discovered some of them still working, completely unaware of the appeal their handiwork might have to a demanding European luxury market.
Just as her genuine curiosity had allowed her to form relationships with the craftsmen at Anayela, so Kolb began to learn more about the world of the leatherworkers. Walking around the medina with one of her finds slung over her shoulder, old men would stop her to ask her from where she had purchased the bag, because they had known the craftsman who had made it years before and recognised the style. Like artists, the styles of these craftsmen were their signatures. As she continued deeper into the medina searching for new discoveries, so Kolb became adept at knowing which bag to take into certain situations (taking “accessorising” to a whole new level), and bags became her passports to different parts of the medina.
By then a new idea had firmly rooted itself in her mind: find the best Moroccan craftsmen and work with them to design and create quality bags that not only told a story but which would also be attractive to a discerning luxury market. She began to talk with the craftsmen she had met. Some saw a European woman and imagined instant riches, others proved unreliable with deadlines, but most liked the idea and agreed to work with her. Her contracts were handshakes. An experienced businesswoman, this scared her, but she had already learnt enough from Morocco to know that she simply had to accept the fear. “If they were willing to trust me, a German woman they hardly knew, on a handshake, then I had to be willing to trust them,” she says.
Abury was founded in 2011 and put out its first Abury Ipad bag. “I liked the idea of this – an old tradition protecting a modern gadget,” says Kolb.“And then using modern business strategies to protect something old” This partnership between new and old is at the heart of Abury’s business model. Abury now brings designers from all over the world to Marrakesh to partner with the local leatherworkers in creating new designs, and it has six models with another four coming to market soon.
The Business of Art
Abury’s Marrakesh bag craftsmen are well paid but here’s where the company takes it a step further: 50 percent of its profits go to a foundation that it has set up to improve local communities. So not only are the craftsmen earning a good, regular income for their unappreciated art, their communities are also now benefitting from this almost-forgotten tradition. But it is not a donation, according to Kolb, as the money has been earned, and it is slowly changing the way these communities think about their unique traditions, as well as allowing Abury to integrate into the communities where their work is done. The supply chain begins with a handshake, a school and a cup of tea.
Volunteers help run the foundation from Germany but there is also staff on the ground, and projects are chosen by engaging with members of local communities. In the mountains outside of Marrakesh, in a Berber town called Douar Anzal, is a women’s sewing school, where much of the embroidery for the company’s bags is done, giving these women a chance to earn their own living. The school is also used to teach reading and writing, three hours in the morning to children and three hours in the afternoon to local women.
To build the space for the school, which can accommodate as many as 50 people, Abury improvised with yet another financial model. The foundation did not build the school itself but rather guaranteed that it would pay a monthly rent upon completion of the structure. Because trust had been established through crafts, the community got it done. Now this embroidery, sewn in a school in Douar Anzal, is worked into bags and distributed to boutiques all over the world under the Abury label. Kolb travels to Marrakesh at least once every two or three months to oversee production but also to reconnect with local craftsmen and to check in on the school in the mountains. It is a long way from the boutique on Kastanienallee but thanks to her history there, Douar Anzal feels like home.
Experiential Design
If the benefits of this experiment to Moroccan communities and to craftsmen open to learning about European tastes – is obvious, the European designers brought in to work with the leather craftsmen of Marrakesh have benefitted just as much. Kolb recognises how hard it is for young designers to break into fashion. Abury gives them access not only to potentially life-changing experiences in other parts of the world but also helps them form creative connections to emerging markets. In 2012, following a presentation at the ESMOD University in Berlin, two promising design students were chosen to create Abury’s next collection. For three months a young Brazilian student stayed in Marrakesh sharing her knowledge and learning new techniques, and a Spaniard travelled to Ecuador, where Abury is expanding its community-based business model. The future, Kolb says, will bring broader design contests, thereby enabling young talent to live similar experiences all over the world. Indeed larger companies are already signing up to sponsor these competitions and associate themselves not only with bright young talent but also with the community work that Abury is doing around the world.
Worldwide Future
True to its origins in the winding streets of Marrakesh, Abury has grown organically, without outside investment. It now has a staff of four and turnover is good. “We’ve got proof of concept,” says Kolb, who is now looking for investment as the company continues to expand. With Ecuador already on the Abury map, and the foundation beginning projects there, the company has scouts in Kenya, Romania and Afghanistan looking for unique crafts traditions, as well as communities with which to engage. Kolb sees Abury’s future in this sort of worldwide diversification. “This is how the business scales,” she says. “People have said to me, ‘You’ll never be able to produce 10,000 bags a year in Morocco,’ and maybe that’s true, although I do think it’s possible, but as we continue to discover places in Africa, Asia, South America – all over the world – the possibilities are limitless.”
Which, if you think about it, was more or less the plan all along.
