Having had the opportunity to live in La Guajira planted the seed to develop the business model for Waré Crafts. After working for seven years with Wayúu communities we acknowledged the talent, resourcefulness and dedication of people that are proud of their roots. Although they face daily basic challenges such as access to clean drinking water, electricity, education and health they have proved to be resilient. During this time we often asked ourselves how to implement productive sustainable investment projects with which communities would feel identified and moved to empower towards them.

After nearly two years of studies in Sustainable Business at the Business School of Lausanne in Switzerland we learned to understand the weaknesses, opportunities, strengths and threats that revolve around these types of projects. This led us to identify social entrepreneurship as the business approach that could help us answer this question. Thus, we set out to develop a business model that would create economic and social value respecting the Wayuu artisan tradition so that those whom decide to could live of this trade.

Our purpose is to transform a highly informal business, with multiple intermediaries into a simple scheme capable of bringing closer the community of artisans to the end user. At the same time we aim to the improve the distribution of profits within the value chain, allowing a greater percentage of the business profits to reach the artisan. Complete traceability of our products has become one of our business differentiators as well as recognizing the artisan as the heart of our model. We want our customers to carry a piece of indigenous design fused with contemporary art that tells the story of the person behind the craft.

KNOW THE FUSION