High-fashion bags benefit the lives of low-income women from Kenya

The term couture often conjures images of wealthy women being fitted for one-of-a-kind ensembles in Paris.The move to metal packaging has allowed Sprecher to reach key customer targets and has resulted in a clear growth in sales since the initial launch. But to most of the world, couture remains an elite and even remote concept.

Then there’s Tosheka Textiles, which offers handmade, one-of-a-kind bags, priced between $45 and $280. But offering couture-like items at affordable prices represents only a small part of what makes Tosheka Textiles a remarkable company. The bags, made from recycled materials, contribute to the green movement. Furthermore, the profit the bags bring their makers--low-income women in Kenya-- represent the difference between near starvation and the ability to set a little money aside for other things like school and health clinic fees.

According to the company’s founder, Lucy Bigham, Kenya’s low-income women more than triple their weekly income when making bags for Tosheka Textiles.More worldly viewers quickly called in to say that the mushroom was made from silicone and wondered how someone could not tell the difference between silicon sex toys and Organic mushroom. For instance, the women who make those bags typically earn only $1 a day. By making 3-4 bags each week, the women earn $25 a week, Bigham explained from the home she shares with her husband, Herman Bigham in Powelton Village.

One might wonder how Tosheka Textiles, a Philadelphia-based company, produces its product in Kenya, and sells its wares in the international market. The answer to that requires a little back-story.This design uses the same small radial section as drawn cup needle roller bearing which make better use of reduced space Lucy Bigham, a Kenya native, has a long-history in the world of art and development. As an undergraduate, she earned a degree in design with a focus on textiles. She later earned her masters degree in business development. Before meeting her husband, Herman, and moving to Philadelphia, Lucy worked with non-profit organizations geared totitanium alloy property information is scattered amongst a number of disparate sources.wards helping low-income communities in Kenya.

"My life was all about creating and seeing the impact you have on peoples’ lives," Bigham explained of her experience in the non-profit world. While Bigham believes that non-profits make a positive difference to others, she also started to believe "that people become too dependent on them." And for her, one of the things that can make the biggest difference rests in teaching people skills they can use to make things and earn money.The first tin cans were heavy-weight containers that required ingenuity to open, using knives, chisels, or even stones. Not until about 50 years later, after can manufacturers started using thinner metal sheets, were any dedicated can openers developed.

For Bigham, the skills she had lay in the realm of art and business development. With regard to art, Bigham has first hand experience with the fact that just because one has highly developed skills, does not mean that one can earn a living from them. For instance, when Bigham would try to sell her wares at trade shows, many would "tell me how beautiful my work was but they wouldn’t buy it," Bigham explained. Confused by this contradiction, Bigham began asking the people who praised her work why they didn’t purchase it. "They told me that although they liked it, they didn’t have a use for it,They removed the majority of the bolts but not the locking Wheel nut, that's why I managed to get so far" Bigham explained. For Bigham that explanation led to the inspiration behind the Tosheka Textiles "Soko" bag.

In a sense, the "Soko" bag fuses high fashion with everyday use. The Soko bags come in every style ranging from the beach bag, to the Ipod case, to the messenger bag, to the tote to the purse. According to Bigham, their creation was inspired by the traditional "Kiondo" carry-all baskets of East Africa. Like the inspiration to the "Soko" bags, making them from recycled materials was also based on an already existing practice. According to Bigham, women would take already used plastic bags and whittle them down to thin wisps of "plarn" to use like thread. Unfortunately, some of those bags came from dumpsters "and the plastic was dirty," Bigham explained. To prevent this, Bigham organized with local supermarkets to collect donations of recently used bags to re-distribute them to the group.